Singapore’s first online broker, Insurance Market, has arranged insurance for customers that store cryptocurrencies with The Safe House, a vault facility owned by Singapore bullion dealer Silver Bullion.
In what he describes as a “first of its kind”, Insurance Market CEO Otbert de Jong said this development will provide holders of cryptocurrencies the safest way to store their private keys to protect their wealth.
Owners of cryptocurrencies have “Private Keys” that act, simply said, as a password to their account. Whoever holds the private key can avail of the balance in an account, so the safekeeping of Private Keys is of the utmost importance. Loss or theft of a private key is disastrous.
The Safe House has developed a unique safe “physical crypto storage” process that has become widely recognised standard, known as the Gregersen-Gono standard. That process has been assessed by Lloyd’s underwriters, who have given it the thumbs up by insuring the stored private keys and the account balances they represent. Insurance Market worked intensely with Silver Bullion, the Safe House and the Lloyd’s underwriters to structure this facility to enable people to safeguard their assets.
Insurance Market said that although the focus of its brokerage activities is digitised online insurance, this type of insurance will also serve the needs of personal clients with digital interests. Cryptocurrency holders run risks that they need to protect and that is the essences of what both Silver Bullion and Insurance Market enable here: to protect people’s wealth and health, said Insurance Market CTO Nelius Strydom.
Insurance Market was in the news last month when it announced that it will act as sponsor and lead of a group of insurance companies and distributors that will participate in the further development and roll-out of the new pilot insurance eco system “Inmediate” that will make insurance cheaper, easier and more accessible, using blockchain smart contracts.
“The insurance we have obtained has comprehensive coverage that protects crypto currency owners from loss of their stored private keys. I believe it will give our customers peace of mind knowing that their crypto wealth is truly secure with us,” said John Tay, director of The Safe House.
“We have had this type of insurance in place for bullion for years but private keys insurance for crypto accounts is a novelty.”
Physical crypto storage is used in the cryptocurrency world by investors who want to preserve their digital assets for a long-term investment. Keeping them at exchanges and hosted wallets puts them at risk of losing all coins in an instant. Physical crypto storage entails generating and storing the crypto coin’s private keys in an offline environment such as a vault, away from the internet.
