At the end of July 2024, young man N.D.D.K, born in 1999, unfortunately passed away due to a stroke. At a very young age, K. did not have time to leave any will related to the multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency assets that he owned and traded on Binance - one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. This put K.'s family in a difficult situation, not knowing how to get these assets back.
After seeking support, K.'s family contacted Coin.Help and its founder, Mr. Phan Duc Nhat, for help in retrieving K.'s digital assets.
An email was sent by the Coin.Help team to Binace exchange to retrieve K's assets.
Mr. Phan Duc Nhat said that when receiving the request from K.'s family, the Coin.Help team contacted Binance to carry out the necessary procedures. However, the biggest challenge was that the family did not have any other information besides K.'s email and phone number. Important information such as K.'s will, wallet balance or UserID were not known to the family.
At the same time, the fact that Binance does not have a representative office in Vietnam makes this process even more complicated, as all procedures must be done via email and online support portal.
According to Mr. Nhat, the family then had to prepare copies of many documents. These documents had to be translated into English and notarized.
Once the documents were fully prepared, Binance sent a "Letter of Authorisation" for the family to fill in with relevant information about K's parents. This document also had to be notarized before being sent back to Binance.
The verification process continued to drag on as Binance requested a “Letter of Indemnity” to finalize the information about K. and his heirs. Fortunately, this document did not need to be notarized, only requiring the signatures of both parents.
After all the procedures were completed, Binance announced that they needed 21 days to process. On October 6, 2024, 70 days after Coin.Help started working, K.'s family received all of their digital assets worth billions of dong from Binance.
Mr. Phan Duc Nhat said that in the context of crypto not being recognized as a legal asset in Vietnam, the recovery of digital assets faces many legal and technical obstacles. This requires a deep understanding of the legal process and patience, especially absolute trust from the victim's family.
Coin.Help is a non-profit organization, with the participation of many leading experts in the fields of finance, auditing, security and law for the blockchain field.
Theo NLD