Imagine your kids as crypto millionaires while you're still alive. If you want to give your kids a crypto inheritance — and I know from talking to many of you on one-on-one calls scheduled through jerrybanfield.com that a lot of you do — then this post will give you an original idea I don't think anybody's ever said before.
If you're wondering what's going to happen to your crypto after you die, and you're telling yourself that you're building all this wealth for someone else, this is something you'll want to sit with. In my opinion, it's just plain backwards to go around trying to build your wealth in crypto and then spend your time thinking about who you're going to pass it on to. A far better strategy, the way I see it, is to make sure that by the time you do pass, you've already given everything away — and you've gotten to watch the people you love actually enjoy what you gave them. Piling up all this crypto and thinking someday your kids can enjoy it strikes me as a waste. You may be stacking up coins in your portfolio that will go to zero by the time you pass, and in the meantime you went around broke and stressed out and gave your kids nothing.
So here's how I think you could make your kids crypto millionaires with Internet Computer Protocol. None of this is financial advice — it's my experience and my opinion, meant to spark your own research and your own thinking.
Why I'd pick ICP for an inheritance
The number one reason I'd choose Internet Computer Protocol for this, based on my research, is that for an inheritance you want a crypto that you believe will go up indefinitely, that is ideally drastically undervalued now relative to the technology, and that provides staking rewards so you never have to touch the principal. To me, all three of those properties are essential.
Here's the problem with the obvious choices. If you're fooling around with things like Bitcoin and Ethereum, those only go up if the price appreciates. You can't really hand those to your kids now, because in many cases they'd just sell immediately. In my view, Internet Computer Protocol is the only crypto that makes a near-perfect inheritance, because it has the key properties I want in one place: an undervalued asset, a locking mechanism, and staking rewards.
Even if your kids are 10 years old, you can set this up now and have it ready for them when they're 18. Even if they're a little younger, you could theoretically set it up today, eight years in advance.
The basic setup
The way I think about it, making your kids crypto millionaires comes down to setting up an account in the Network Nervous System on ICP that holds around 1,000 ICP, locked up for eight years. I believe the price of ICP will be well over $1,000 eight years from now, which would put your children in millionaire territory. The best part is that the neuron can compound the interest — around 16% APR right now at the maximum — and you can simply leave it compounding, or your children could begin living off of it as soon as they're ready.
So the first real step, if you want a crypto inheritance for your kids, is to thoroughly research Internet Computer Protocol yourself. I think Bitcoin and Ethereum are going to make terrible inheritances over the next eight years; the returns, in my opinion, are probably going to be disappointing. I'd be shocked if Bitcoin did much more than a 20X in the next eight years, because the technology is already way behind. Bitcoin might end up being a kind of souvenir in the future, but I don't see it being a real store of value or "digital gold" eight years from now. It's too slow, and newer technology is coming that I think will make it largely irrelevant — the same way I wouldn't have encouraged investing in AOL stock once you could see that dial-up Internet was going to yield to fiber. My belief is that older crypto is going to yield to all-in-one chains where you can build and run everything fully on-chain, the way you can with ICP, and that gives it enormous utility.
Before deciding on any crypto inheritance plan, you need to figure out for yourself which single crypto is in the best position to build wealth over the long term and is grossly undervalued right now. I've researched this for over a hundred hours, but you really need to do that work yourself. I've spent a lot of time thinking through how much to commit and when, and I get into that in detail in my ideal ICP accumulation strategy. If you've already gone through that process and you see the value in Internet Computer the way I do, then here's how I'd set things up for your children.
How much ICP, and how to fund their account
I think you want at least a 30X target. If you can put in more than $10,000 to $15,000 worth of ICP — about 1,000 ICP at the prices I've been buying at — that's a great number. I don't even check the ICP price every day, believe it or not, because I'm locked for eight years. On a daily basis the price doesn't matter to me. What matters is whether this is where the future is heading, whether there's better technology in crypto, and whether it's a great way to rebuild the whole Internet. It looks like it's going that way to me. If you're still working out how much is "enough," I shared my honest take on that in 100 ICP is enough, 10,000 ICP is God tier.
To create an account for your kids, the strategy I'm taking is this: once a child has a device — a phone, an iPad — I create an account for them on their own device, so that device is authorized and they can interact with it and see it. Then I immediately set up a recovery phrase for that account, in case they lose access to the device. I keep that recovery phrase in a safe place, and they keep a copy in a safe place too, and then the account is locked. I've already filmed a full walkthrough of how I do the Internet Identity and Network Nervous System setup, so I won't repeat every click here.
That's the basic strategy: set it up on their own device, then fund their account with around 1,000 ICP. I think 1,000 is a great number. If you have a lot of money set aside for your kids, 1,000 ICP is enough that it should make them a millionaire within eight years. If you don't have that much, I think a solid minimum is around 300 ICP — if the price hits $3,000 one day, they'd be in millionaire territory.
The passive income that comes with it
Because of how ICP's voting rewards work, if your child becomes a millionaire on ICP, they'll also be getting paid. Assuming the price holds at whatever level made them a millionaire, they'd be earning over a hundred thousand dollars a year in voting rewards. Imagine watching your child, eight years from now, collect a hundred thousand a year in passive income. If you're divorced, you might just become the favorite parent of the two. And if you're not, you get to enjoy that with your spouse.
Obviously you can add to it over time — a little bit, consistently, whenever you can. But the key thing is to put it into one single neuron, lock that neuron for eight years, and do not start unlocking it. Just leave it locked indefinitely. Then make sure you're following DFINITY's neuron at a minimum, or you can follow my neuron, which is listed in my OpenChat linked on jerrybanfield.com. I make sure my neuron votes on everything. If you follow DFINITY, you'll get about 89 to 90% of the voting rewards — so if the maximum is 16% APR, you should get at least 14% just by following DFINITY. If you follow me or someone else who votes 100% of the time, you should get the maximum rewards.
Compounding versus living off the rewards
Another decision is whether you want to compound the rewards in your child's account. If you can only set aside a little — someone watching live asked what the minimum is, and I believe you can lock as little as one ICP — that's fine. Even if you can only lock 10, 20, 50, or 100 ICP, if you go into the Network Nervous System and select "automatically restake new maturity," you can compound the rewards into a bigger and bigger principal.
Now, those compounded rewards get locked with the principal and can't be pulled out until the dissolve delay is started. But for a child's account, that can be perfect, as long as the ICP price is at a low point. Anything under $100, in my opinion, you just compound and keep building the principal up. Then when it goes over $100, your child could uncheck that setting and start actually drawing income from the ICP.
To put numbers on it: if you locked up about 3,000 ICP in your child's account and the price went over $100, your child could draw roughly $100 a day in genuine passive income — assuming you're following DFINITY, my neuron, or another neuron that votes 100% of the time — indefinitely, as long as the price stays over $100. And if you lock up over 3,000 ICP, whatever the price, your child would receive that much ICP per day, every day, indefinitely. The beauty of it is that you get to watch them enjoy it.
I talked to a parent today on a one-on-one call who said they wanted to do crypto as an inheritance. I told them: set up ICP. Take some of your Bitcoin, convert it into ICP, create an account for your child, and explain all of this to them. This is a good father-son, mother-daughter, father-daughter, mother-son activity — whatever the combination — to teach your child about money and about investing. If you want to talk any of this through, you can always join the Jerry Banfield Family and ask me directly.
And whatever you do, make sure you hold and enjoy your own bag too. I laugh thinking about parents who lock up 1,000 ICP for each of their kids and then gamble the rest of their own portfolio away and lose everything — and then watch their kids become millionaires earning hundreds of thousands a year in voting rewards while they're broke. That would be hilarious. So hold your own bag and enjoy it, the same way you get to enjoy your kids'.
Some honest considerations before you do this
Again, this is not financial advice. It's educational and, I hope, entertaining material — an idea to spark your own research and your own thinking. I've researched ICP for hundreds of hours and reviewed hundreds of altcoins in the last year alone, all to find the best thing for myself and my family, and I'm sharing what I found. But it's up to you to do your own research and think all of this through yourself.
One reason I love ICP for an inheritance is the locking feature. There is absolutely nothing else in crypto I would want to lock up for eight years and bet my kids' inheritance on. And you might think: okay, well, what if it goes to zero? What if I give my kids ICP and it goes to zero? Well, at least you tried. At least you made an effort. And according to the book Everyday Millionaires, most kids who get an inheritance from their parents just blow it anyway — and the parents are already dead and never even get to see it happen. The way most people do it is so pointless that, at minimum, if you make an effort and go through this educational process together, even if it doesn't work out financially, that itself could be a meaningful way to connect with your kid. That's better than the effort most people make right now, which is almost none. Most people are hardly even talking about inheritance or estate planning. They just die, the stuff gets thrown to the kids, and you end up with the spouse and the children hunting around for crypto after the parents have passed. It's a mess. This, to me, is a way to do it nicely and to enjoy being alive together.
The resistance you might feel — and what's underneath it
The last point of resistance I want to name is this: some of you think you want to give your kids an inheritance, you think you're doing crypto for them, but the idea of setting up a real account for your children with real money in it makes you feel like you don't have enough yet — like you need to build more, gamble more, get your portfolio bigger first.
Here's the thing. If you don't have enough to give a little bit today and set something up for your kids, you're probably going to feel that exact same way in the future. And feeling that way now is, more likely than not, going to result in you never actually having anything worthwhile to give them later. Sometimes we say we're doing things for selfless reasons — "oh, I'm just building this crypto portfolio for my kids" — but that's a public motive sitting on top of a private one: that you're trying to make all this money because you're scared and you don't feel you have enough. You're really doing it for yourself, but presenting it as for them. That's something worth looking at and facing honestly inside.
If you have some resistance to it, it doesn't have to be done this exact way, either. The problem is that with most other cryptos you can't really do the eight-year lock that makes this a genuine long-term gift. If you just hand your kids a lump sum of Bitcoin, they'll probably dump it on the market and take the cash right away. That's why I love that ICP has this unique locking functionality, and it's one of the reasons I think ICP is positioned to succeed where most other cryptos are going to fail. If you really boil it down to which crypto makes the best inheritance, there's nothing I'd rather give than ICP.
That said, I've been wrong before. For my cousins' graduation, I gave them Steem back in 2017. The hundreds of dollars of Steem I gave them is basically worthless now — and that was a good lesson. They also could have just sold it, and I hope they did. It's kind of pointless to give an inheritance today that can instantly be sold and dumped, which is exactly why I think ICP, with its locking, is far superior to anything else on the market for this. But it's very important that you come to that conclusion through your own research and by using the technology yourself.
The plan I'm actually following for my own kids
So this is what I'm doing — the inheritance plan I have for my children. I have 2,900 ICP locked for eight years, and it's not unlocking, which means it's effectively locked indefinitely at this point. My plan is that once I get up to 6,666.66 in voting power — yes, that's six sixes — I'm going to stop building my own ICP pile and focus on building my kids' pile. After that, I'm off the hook indefinitely. Kids: this is your inheritance. This is it. Anything above and beyond this, it's up to you to make your own way in the world. The rest of that money, your mother and I are just going to spend, give away, and try to die with nothing.
If you want to go deeper on any of this, I keep reviewing it across my crypto videos in my ICP Crypto playlist, including my thinking on where the price could go in ICP can pump to $100 anytime. And if you have questions about setting any of this up for your own children, the best place to reach me directly is inside the Jerry Banfield Family.