Every company says it will be here in eighteen years.
Some of them will be. We would rather your child’s money did not depend on which ones. Here is exactly what happens to a capsule if Till18 is acquired, shuts down, or simply stops answering email.
Nothing happens to the money. The capsule is a contract on a public network, not a row in our database. It holds the asset, it enforces the unlock date, and it names your child. None of that runs on a server we own, and none of it needs us to keep paying a bill.
The keys belong to your family from the first day. We never hold them, which means there is nothing for an administrator to seize, a creditor to claim, or a successor company to renegotiate. This is also why we cannot help someone take money out early, however sympathetic the story.
What you print on day one
Before a capsule seals, you print a recovery kit and put it somewhere unremarkable — most families keep it with the birth certificate. It contains the capsule’s address on paper, plain-language instructions a lawyer could follow without knowing anything about us, and a fallback key split three ways among your guardians, of which any two can reconstruct it.
It deliberately mentions no website of ours. A recovery route that points at our domain is a recovery route that expires when we do.
The rehearsal
Every family runs one recovery drill in the first weeks, on purpose, while the capsule is nearly empty and the stakes are nothing. It takes a few minutes and it is the only way to know the kit works — for you and for us.
If we are acquired
A buyer would acquire our software and our brand. They could not acquire your capsule, because it was never ours to sell. They could not change its rules, add a fee to the emergency path, or move the unlock date. The worst a bad owner could do is make the app unpleasant — at which point the kit in your drawer is the whole answer.
Recovery kit — what is on the paper
- The capsule’s address
- Printed
- Step-by-step instructions
- Plain English
- Fallback key
- Split 2 of 3
- Mentions our servers
- Never
- Needs our app
- No
- Rehearsed by your family
- In week one
Reprint it whenever you like. Losing the paper is recoverable; we can print another. Losing the paper and your guardians is the scenario the split key exists for.
The four ways this normally goes wrong for families, and where each one stops.
The app shuts down
The capsule keeps running. You open it on unlock day with the printed kit, or with any wallet software that can read a public network. Our disappearance is an inconvenience, not an event.
The company is sold and the product is “paused”
Features can be paused. Contracts cannot. A new owner has no key, no admin switch and no ability to alter the unlock date — those powers do not exist, so they cannot change hands.
A back-end provider collapses
Our login provider can be swapped without touching a capsule, because it signs on your behalf rather than holding anything. If it vanished tomorrow, your family’s keys would still be your family’s keys.
The parents are gone
The child was named as the permanent beneficiary the day the capsule was sealed. The guardians hold the fallback. Nobody has to find us, or prove anything to us, for the capsule to reach the person it was built for.
The honest limits, in one place: the network the capsule runs on is young, and the issuer of the asset it holds can freeze tokens under a court order. Neither power belongs to Till18, and neither can redirect a capsule to anyone other than your child. We write about both on the security page.
Their 18th birthday is already on the calendar.
Setting one up takes ten minutes. We open capsules in small groups so every founding family gets a real conversation.
For parents and guardians (18+). One email to confirm, one when your capsule is ready — nothing else.
iPhone and Android apps arrive with the first capsules. Everything works in a browser on day one.