It only made sense with all the hacking and theft that alternative ideas in the world of crpyto currency would come to light. A new start up Xapo has just raised $20 million.
Dan Primack wrote on Fortune:
It’s the brainchild of Wences Casares, former CEO of digital wallet company Lemon (acquired by Lifelock last December). His new company is called Xapo, and has raised $20 million in first-round funding led by Benchmark. Other investors include Fortress Investment Group (FIG) and payment-focused VC firm Ribbit Captial.
Xapo’s vault — actually there are two, both at undisclosed locations — is a so-called “cold storage” facility for storing bitcoin, which means that it is virtually impossible to hack (well, unless you get past the armed guards). Not only are the servers not online now, but the fact that they never were online means no one was ever able to “fingerprint” them, and predict how they would generate the randomness of public/private bitcoin keys (information that is essential to stealing bitcoin). And, on the off chance a breach does occur (or Xapo goes bankrupt), all of the bitcoin contained in the vaults is insured.
