Photos: The secret Swiss mountain bunker where millionaires stash their bitcoins
Attinghausen, Switzerland
I’m being driven along the eastern shore of Lake Lucerne when my guide points out our destination. “The bunker is in one of those mountains,” says Maxim Kon, gesturing at a fog shrouded peak on the opposite shore as he pilots his BMW convertible.
Kon is taking me to see one of the vaults where Xapo, the company he works for, stores its customers’ bitcoins. It’s no ordinary vault: I’ve been told it’s inside a decommissioned Swiss military bunker dug into a granite mountain. Its precise location is secret, and access is limited by security measures that would put a Bond villain to shame.
Kon won’t tell me how much bitcoin is stored in the vault, but he says he sometimes takes customers with “millions” of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency stored with Xapo to tour the vault. It’s odd to think of a virtual currency needing physical storage, but just like your most precious photos, even a cryptocurrency needs some kind of material container. Xapo’s founder is the Argentinian entrepreneur Wences Casares, the “patient zero” of bitcoin among Silicon Valley’s elite. It was Casares who gave tech luminaries like Bill Gates and Reid Hoffman their first bitcoins.
A bitcoin vault doesn’t store actual bitcoin units. Technically, what’s being stored are private, cryptographic keys. These keys form a pair with particular, public-facing, keys and provide access to the balance of coins stored on the bitcoin network. Gaining unauthorized access to someone’s private keys is akin to making off with a gold bar.
Stories of hackers finding their way through even the best secured accounts are legion, and it’s ironic that bank-like methods have to be used to keep cryptocurrencies safe. If someone gets hold of your private key, there’s no way to claw the funds back or demand a refund. That’s why a firm like Xapo that stores bitcoin is a juicy target for hackers—and why it requires paranoiac levels of security... (cont'd.)
$6115 for the bitcoin. I still have alot of bitcion, but invested a little too much in shitcoins. But still 90% of my crypto is in Bitcoin.
Alot of people I trust seem to think it's going to go up even more after the Segwit2x fork. Although, I feel like people are now saavy enough to see how bitcoin reacted after past forks and perhaps everyone is just scurrying to get bitcoin right now to ensure they get their free coins after the fork. [Reply]
Originally Posted by BWillie:
$6115 for the bitcoin. I still have alot of bitcion, but invested a little too much in shitcoins. But still 90% of my crypto is in Bitcoin.
Alot of people I trust seem to think it's going to go up even more after the Segwit2x fork. Although, I feel like people are now saavy enough to see how bitcoin reacted after past forks and perhaps everyone is just scurrying to get bitcoin right now to ensure they get their free coins after the fork.
Why not peel off a little along the way in case it collapses? :-)
Sell (1) at $6,000K
Sell another at $6,500 or $5,500 whichever comes first
Good theory. problem I see is the distributors and retailers are typically the same company. So how would they get them to 'buy in' and charge customers less? [Reply]
Originally Posted by scho63:
This is a warning sign when someone who never discusses investments wants to now get in......usually the end not the beginning
I've never been a harbinger of doom before. Kind of fun. [Reply]
Originally Posted by MagicHef:
I've never been a harbinger of doom before. Kind of fun.
if we knew that we would be making a ton of money. You just have to research all the coins. I am personally still big on Ethereum making a run like bitcoin has but it will just take years for that too happen. [Reply]
