People need to think of mobile wallets like their actual physical wallets. Would you carry around $400,000 in cash in your wallet? Of course not, you would put it in a bank account somewhere. Why, then, would you carry around $400,000 in bitcoin in your mobile wallet instead of putting it in a hardware wallet or cold storage? Mobile wallets should be for small amounts of daily carrying and spending bitcoin, not for your life savings.

Also, don't protect a mobile wallet with biometrics, since they are incredibly insecure and can be duped, faked, or forcibly taken from you as in this case. Use a strong password or PIN instead.

That's not really related only to bitcoin because I've seen many cases like this when a man kills his father to take control over his real estate, gold, or even for cash and that's not a new story at all which can be happen in any situation for anyone and with any asset, not just bitcoin, but still, that's really sad to see a son kills his father for money or bitcoins even if his father was a bad man still he was his father and doing such thing was not good at all in any situation, but regardless of this, the most interesting part of the story is whoever if the earth could even imagine on 10 years ago that bitcoin would be that much valuable for people to kill other people for it.

Probably not enough trust to literally hand over the exchange account's credentials or the wallet's private keys, but trusted enough to be live in the same home/room and probably give access to the phone's pin. Obviously the son still needs to have access to the phone itself, so this is the solution he thought of.

In fact, the father was already kind of aware of the surrounding before such an accident happened:

I also do aware that such immoral acts may happen outside the bitcoin space, but in the first, place keeping such a large amount of bitcoin on a mobile wallet shouldn't be the norm. The barrier to simply stealing or hacking bitcoin within a mobile wallet is way more prone to be lost.

I won't keep that much money on a mobile wallet. It's obvious that there's a danger if somebody knows that you're holding that much and you're too vocal with it.
It's a typical robbery that someone can think of even the closest people that you know if they know that you're holding that much. You don't really trust anyone with your assets.

"Ghersony’s father—whose name has not been published—recalled being told by his son that he was “too emotional” and “too attached” to his crypto holdings." I do remember some other post here where we talked about not revealing your crypto HODLings to anyone, that conversation right there clearly shows that the Father told the son he had Crypto Hodling worth $400k. To me, the first important step to securing your Crypto assets is not Telling anyone about them but you can leave info on how to recover them if it becomes necessary.

It's sad that the son killed his father just because of money.

I'm sure the father has all the trust for the son, but his son knowing the father has the bitcoin stored on his phone was probably tempted to steal it. Nowadays, it's hard to trust anyone even your family, so it's better to keep silent about your holding and make sure you don't store in an online wallet if we are speaking of a huge amount of money already.

What disturbed me more here is the Son willing to kill the father just for the money, not the bitcoin stolen by the son.

It is not about trusting their family. It's about carrying around $400,000 worth of bitcoin on their phone instead of storing it somewhere safe. If his family member were able to recover the coins from his mobile wallet application after his death, then it means anyone could have stolen his phone and somehow recover the coins. It is not safe to store large amount of coins in a phone wallet.
Not sure if the son is stupid or someone else over here.... How does one steal from his own dead father that probably left the wealth for their children?

That might be the reason on why he prefer using a phone than other alternatives because he is already old and you know older people do not want to tire their self much and sometimes their mobile phones do not have a password but I bet this is not the case that happen to this story because why would his son drugged him anyway when he can just easily stole the money but even if he stole it, what can his father do?

I do not think he will punish him heavily because that is his child in the first place but maybe he do not want to lend his son a money because his son was a drug addict and will only use the money on drugs. He should have rehab his son before because drug addict people are kinda dangerous.

That's the great thing about Bitcoin: it weighs nothing and doesn't take up physical space. $400,000 in $50 bills weighs 8 kg and would make your wallet 80 cm thick.

Given enough people, some of them are bound to do stupid things.

That's not a smart thing to do. Giving additional people access to your wallet increases the risk of losing your funds, even if they mean no harm they can make mistakes.