I mean, what's the point of long term held assets then? That's one of the points of investment. Most people don't do anything with index funds either and expect growth year over year.

Crypto isn't quite the same as an index fund, but many people use crypto as an investment with expected growth and they've been right so far.

> I mean, what's the point of long term held assets then?

Mainly as a hobby project, as far as I can tell. The overwhelming majority of categories of "long term investment" are either completely mathematically impossible to deliver on the promises (this is where most of the crypto investors are), or have already proven themselves to be complete crapshoots where you either win big or lose big (this is where the people "investing" in things like beanie babies and trading cards are).

There's no investment that can gain value indefinitely. There's some that will probably gain reasonably steady value for the length of your or my lifespan, but they're few and far between, and usually rely on active management, government backing, or both.

> Most people don't do anything with index funds either

It's rather the point of an index fund that those are actively managed. You don't just type "i want to invest" into your Compaq Presario, turn the computer off, and come back twenty years later expecting to have double the money.

Clearly, and if you had read a line or two down you’d have seen where I say they aren’t quite the same, and you entirely missed my point which is that people see them similarly as just another part of their portfolio.

And actually with most index funds I don’t even have to type, I just click a few buttons. They’re not managed by the end user.

It’s generally recommended to review your finances at least once a year, even if they are long-term investments in index funds. That helps people maintain the access and records they will need to benefit from their wealth someday.

If crypto on a hard drive is a significant part of your finances, an annual check on it for access or corruption seems reasonable to expect.

I check something like every few hours, but many people do not even though I generally agree with you.

That strategy seems to work fine for my 401k

You can always call up a financial institution and verify your identity via SSN and other documents. This should apply to Coinbase as well at least since exchanges were regulated so it's not a big difference anymore.

If you don't do that and leave the account dormant for too long then most institutions will attempt to contact you via any method they can until they get a current address. If they can't reach you after another period of time then they will/can liquidate your assets and send them your last known residence state's commerce department. The state will keep your money in your name until you or an inheritor claim it.

Exactly. My grandmother's best friend bought me a single share of American Express stock for my 1st birthday in 1985. I never knew about it, of course (I was 1), but years later, in my 30s, I started to get contacted by the transfer agent to claim my dividends, as described here: https://ir.americanexpress.com/resources/shareholder-service...

I was able to gain access to my stock, which had split into multiple shares several times in the intervening decades, and had also turned into two symbols, via a spin-out of Ameriprise. To my great surprise, this single share had turned into holdings worth thousands of dollars of value in modern times.

Because it was bought for me originally in the 80s as a physical stock certificate (and I had no clue where that certificate physically was, or whether it had been lost/destroyed), unfortunately some of that value would be eaten by fees if I wanted to liquidate the stock: a 2-step process involving a lost certificate printing/mailing fee, and then sending the certificate back in to sell it. My understanding is that Wall Street wanted to discourage the management of paper certificates over the last few years to make the backoffice much more efficient, and introducing fees for printing lost certificates is unfortunately one of the ways Wall Street accomplished that, among other incentives for digitization.

So, I just let the registered stock sit there in its digital form, rather than take the fee hit -- I figured there might be some chance AXP/AMP might be taken private, in which case I'd receive a check in the mail, now that my address was updated with the transfer agent.

Then, a couple of years ago, I was going through some of my Mom's old photos of me and I came across the original 1985 stock certificate in her records. A big elaborate document with a fancy seal on it, I am now wondering whether it might be worth more as a long-term collectible -- a memory of a prior era of "long term value", for collectors of economic history. Regardless of whether it is or isn't, at least my 1-year-old self didn't have to worry about its "AXP Wallet", or any other such absurdity 1-year-olds couldn't possibly manage for themselves.

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Curious update: after I wrote this comment, I did some research on American Express's corporate history 1985 to present. That led me to this detailed LATimes writeup of their 1994 spin-off of... Lehman Brothers (!!!). No kidding. I love this line, and the unironic hubris it suggests: "The spinoff will give Lehman executives what they have dreamed of for years: freedom from American Express. [...] Long an independent pillar of Wall Street, the august Lehman Bros. was acquired by American Express in 1984 and merged with Shearson. But the Lehman culture never fit with Shearson or American Express, and the firms never developed the synergies envisioned." https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-01-25-fi-15121-... ... Of course, 14 years later, Lehman would collapse and enter the history books as the failed investment banking firm emblematic of speculative risk-taking during the 2008 financial crisis. I was working in my first post-college job in an office across the street from Lehman's building, and I still vividly remember the long line of suddenly-laid-off workers streaming out of the entrance, distraught, in September, 2008. Meanwhile, American Express keeps chugging along, a 171-year-old American corporation. Maybe corporate culture does matter, after all.

I’d do the same thing that I did to access 401k accounts before they were ever accessible on the internet. Write a letter. Call a person. Visit the office.

It’s a 401k, not a Google+ account. They legally owe me the money.

This post makes me wonder about your age. And not in a negative towards you, but in raising my awareness that a younger generation now accustomed to poor customer treatment by Google and other online providers might not realize that this money is still theirs and is extremely recoverable.

So many online companies have taken an approach of "virtual property is no longer yours if you can't remember a password, or change phone numbers" - but it's shocking to me to see someone assume that applies to physical property as well.

Or maybe the promise of slowly depreciating value sitting in a bank account seems slightly too bad.

False dichotomy.

>Did the promise of free money for doing nothing not seem slightly too good to be true to you?

Isn't that the entire premise of stock index funds?