A new service called Elliptic Vault opened in London today, the main aim of the service is for people to be able to store their bitcoins in a safe place while knowing that if they are stolen they will be insured.
Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson told the BBC, "One of the main concerns people have with Bitcoin is that it"s quite difficult to store securely, Offering people insurance seemed an obvious step."
Robinson started the company with two friends, the first barrier they had to overcome was to find an insurer who was willing to insure bitcoins.
Robinson stated, "The industry is very conservative and they did not understand Bitcoin. "They were also influenced by the negative publicity Bitcoin received, although this has improved since Silk Road was taken down and stopped dominating the Bitcoin agenda."
If a customer does need to use the insurance service provided by Lloyds of London the payout will be calculated using the Bitcoin to US Dollar exchange rate at the time of the claim.
Elliptic will be storing the bitcoins using a process known as "deep cold storage", this is the process of encrypting the bitcoin keys and then storing multiple copies of them within several layers of encryption on offline servers. The copies are only accessible by a select few of Elliptic"s directors.
Around the world governments are trying to decide how to legislate for the bitcoin currency. Singapore has become the first country to issue a guide on how taxation should work, they have also put more checks in place to make sure illicit financing by criminals and terrorists does not happen.
Source: BBC | Image courtesy of blogthinkbig