I have a two year old daughter, and before she was even born I created an email account based on her name and I’ve been writing letters to her, sending pictures and videos etc. And when she’s older I’m going to let her know about the account and password, right now it’s just stored in private.
Just yesterday I sent her an email with one of my wallet addresses/seeds/passwords etc for her to use later in life almost like a savings account? But I told her she isn’t to use it until I’m either dead and gone or I say that she can.
Now I started to think of ideas, and not sure if zcash or something like ethereum would be better, to maybe send bitcoin to or I guess even zcash itself but have it cryptographically locked until a certain time?.. or I guess it might be better to use a certain block number (maybe if an application that exists to perform this action it could also estimate when the investment can be unlocked/deposited)? And it wouldn’t be until then that the bitcoin or other cryptocurrency was usable.
Maybe something like this already exists or is in the works, I just think something like this could be very popular. Or even if there was a way to display to the network that an amount of coins are locked up for so long, it could drastically start increasing the way people view it as an investment.
I hope you also made a GPG private key for your daughter and encrypted that email…
re: savings etc… Dash is going all-out on what can be done with their governance model - there may be others but Dash is the only network I know of that supports (or will soon support) features like that. Dash also has an actual, actively developed advocacy channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAzD2v9Yx4a4iS2_-unODkA
This is possible in Zcash with a Bitcoin script opcode called OP_CLTV. It does exactly what you suggested: locking until a certain blockheight. That opcode is used for more sophisticated things like cross-chain trades or lightning network; what you describe is a simpler direct use of the opcode.
Zcash supports Bitcoin script only for transparent addresses, so anyone who locked funds in this method would reveal the amount and the lock height. Those locked funds could be set up directly from a shielded z-address, however, so the history and source of the funds would be protected. Likewise, once the lock-height is reached, they could be sent directly to a shielded z-address for strong privacy. (In general, we call this technique of unshielding into a Bitcoin script, then shielding out of that script ‘the sandwiching technique’.)
If you are serious about doing this, I believe it might take some developer effort to make sure you’re creating the lock correctly. I’m not yet aware of a tool that does this directly.
I also love your idea that it would be cool for a block explorer to show how many funds are locked up for how long. That kind of reminds me of the econometric stats about long term savings bonds.
