G4S, the London-based company that provides security in a range of areas, has created a cryptocurrency storage solution. The company that is operating in 90 countries across the globe, normally provides care and justice services, as well as logistic support for big amounts of cash. The new offer from G4S according to the company’s website was driven by the fact that the cryptocurrency market which has seen a sharp rise in the price of Bitcoin (EXANTE: BTC.EXANTE) from $800 to $6,000 just in a few years, created broad opportunities for investors and for criminals.
Big cryptocurrency thefts that occur lately with an enviable regularity and that are bringing fraudsters billions of dollars are the major problem for financial institutions to consider entering the market, the company thinks.
“Our clients approach us to discuss solutions to their requirements because of G4S Cash Solutions’ experience in protecting high-value items and G4S Risk Consulting’s experience in developing bespoke solutions to complex challenges. Working with our clients, we are continuously applying their expert knowledge of crypto-assets and our best practice in physical security to a sector at the cutting edge of financial technology,” said Dominic MacIver, the senior risk analyst at G4S Risk Consulting.
His company that is quite familiar with the traditional financial market arrangement sees no great difference between it and just a decade old cryptocurrency market, as the latter has also become a target for “robbers, scammers, market manipulators, and many others.”
To fight this, G4S has built high-security vaults to store the assets offline.
“We not only take the assets offline, but break them up into fragments that are independent without value and store them securely in our high-security vaults, out of reach of cyber criminals and armed robbers alike,” Maclver continued.
To be able to gain access to G4S vaults, intruders will have to face “multiple layers of security and robust protocols,” however in order to be able to possess the assets they will have to combine all the fragments with the help of “specific technology.”
In 2018, many existing cryptocurrency companies, also associated with the traditional finance, created their own similar solutions to this problem. Coinbase, Goldman Sachs, Bakkt and other companies have announced safe storage services.
Earlier in May, it was reported that Argentinian Wences Casares’ startup Xapo has gathered approximately $10 billion in Bitcoins in their underground bunkers, Xapo was originally created to guard Bitcoin keys on offline servers in safe vaults with substantial amounts of digital safeguards.
This week, Fidelity Investments, a multi-trillion-dollar asset management company has launched its own “enterprise-quality” repository for digital currencies with trading opportunities. Storage will be arranged on the so-called cold wallets, which will not have access via the Internet. In addition, the security system will include multi-level physical and electronic control mechanisms.
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