A Look Inside The Secret Swiss Bunker Where The Ultra Rich Hide Their Bitcoins | Zero Hedge
Description: Somewhere in the mountains near Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne lies a hidden underground vault containing a vast fortune...
Keywords: Zero Hedge,Zerohedge,Finance,Economics,Markets,Politics,Analysis,Bear Market,Bill Gates,Bitcoin,China,Jamie Dimon,Switzerland
Date: 2017-10-18T00:00:00Z

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# A Look Inside The Secret Swiss Bunker Where The Ultra Rich Hide Their Bitcoins

by Tyler Durden
Oct 18, 2017 6:55 PM
0
SHARES

Somewhere in the mountains near Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne lies a hidden underground vault containing a vast fortune.

It’s no ordinary vault, according to Quartz. Built inside a decommissioned Swiss military bunker dug into a granite mountain, it’s precise location is a closely guarded secret, and access is limited by myriad security precautions.

But instead of gold bars, the bunker contains hard drives on which customers’ bitcoins are being kept in what’s call “cold storage” – i.e. the owners’ private keys are protected by an air-gapped hard drive. The vault is one of many operated by Xapo, an early bitcoin company known for its cold storage wallet products and a debit card that pays for transactions in digital currencies.

The company won’t disclose how much bitcoin is stored in the vault, but one employee who spoke with Quartz said he sometimes takes customers with millions of dollars in bitcoin on tours of the vaults where their fortune is stored. Xapo was founded by Argentinian entrepreneur and current CEO Wences Casares, whom Quartz describes as “patient zero” of bitcoin among Silicon Valley’s elite. Cesares reportedly gave Bill Gates and Reed Hoffman their first bitcoins.

As Quartz explains, the bitcoin vault doesn’t store actual bitcoin units. Instead, what’s being stored are the owners’ private cryptographic keys that allow the owner to access and transfer his or her bitcoins by matching the key with a public key that’s used to identify the coin on the blockchain. Gaining unauthorized access to someone’s private keys is akin to making off with a gold bar.

The inexorable rise in bitcoin’s valuation has been marred by notable hacking incidents like the collapse of Mt. Gox, which ushered in the longest bear market in bitcoin’s history. Security fears appear to have subsided as bitcoin’s price has soared to all-time highs, but incidents like the collapse of the DAO have inspired investors with substantial bitcoin wealth to look into protecting it.

To store the coins, Xapos contracts Deltalis, the company that technically operates the 10,000-square-foot data-center that now inhabits the decommissioned bunker.

> Server racks for banks, and any client who needs secure data processing, fill a cavity dug over 320 meters deep in the granite mountain. The Swiss military built the facility in 1947, and it served as the army’s secret headquarters during the Cold War, Agence-France Presse has reported. Inside, walls covered with detailed maps and ancient radio electronics serve as vestiges of its military past.

To enter Xapo’s private vault in the Deltalis data center, visitors must endure an exhausting series of security procedures.

> Streiff leads us to a concrete facade jutting out of the mountainside, the bunker’s entrance. We step through about a foot of concrete and enter the lobby. I sign in as I would at any office building, except I also have to present my fingerprints and be photographed. After that I step through a “man-trap”—a phone booth-sized cylinder made of bullet-proof glass that shuts me in until an operator opens the door on the opposite side.

> Once through the man-trap, we touch our ID cards and pass through a set of steel revolving doors, then walk down a 100-meter long passageway through the granite. At the end of the passageway are two red steel doors that I’m told can survive a nuclear blast. Streiff invites me to try to close one—my 90 kg (198 pound) frame can’t budge it. “They’re closed every night,” he tells me, showing me how to hang off the handle and use his body’s momentum to gradually swing it shut.

> Streiff and Kon are taking me to see Xapo’s “private suite,” an ultra-secure, customized, portion of the data center. We pass through a second man-trap and then end up in front of a nondescript white door. “This is further than anyone outside Xapo has been,” Streiff tells me, as he unlocks it. Inside is a space about the size of a walk-in closet containing a cooling unit, and yet another door. But that’s as far as they’ll let me go, and I’m not allowed to take photographs.

Security is similarly tight inside the vault. Nobody is allowed the enter the “cold room” where the bitcoins are stored on air-gapped hard drives. To protect against an electromagnetic pulse attack, the cold room is equipped with a Faraday cage, a type of barrier meant to block electromagnetic fields.

> Beyond that door, I rely on what Carlos Rienzi, Xapo’s head of security, tells me later, when I’m back in London. Rienzi chose the vault for Xapo, and he designed the private suite and its security protocols. His “threat model,” as computer security jargon goes, is to protect against attacks from “well-funded terrorist groups or hackers.”

> There are two more portals inside the suite: the first leads to an operators’ room, and the second to a “cold room.” The cold room is encircled with steel slabs to form a Faraday cage: a barrier that protects against a possible electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that could wipe out the data—and thus the keys to the bitcoin—stored in the room. For digital assets like bitcoin, thick walls and a secret location are not enough. A shield against invisible modes of attack like an EMP bomb must be provided for.

> No one, not even the operator, enters the cold room. Its door is sealed with tape—like a crime scene—to ensure it’s not tampered with. The cold room contains hardware, which is never connected to the internet, used to sign bitcoin transactions. Signing a transaction can be performed offline. The operator accesses that hardware using “special cabling,” sending encrypted data to the hardware for signing. Finally, before a transaction can be approved, two more sign-offs, in two other vaults located on separate continents, must be performed.

> I ask Rienzi if he feels pretty confident about the security measures he has in place in Switzerland. “We are under attack 24/7,” he tells me, referring to the terrorists and hackers he designed the vault to guard against. “This is not a race. It is a chess game. You have to think about the opponent’s next movement. You can never relax.”

Of course, all the security measures in the world can’t protect investors from a sudden plunge in the bitcoin price. However, the digital currency’s indomitable - for now - performance has silenced at least one of its most prominent critics. Then said, unlike precious metal specie, one carefully targeted EMP would be all it takes to sever the ownership chain for a long, long time.

Still, with the digital currency recently reaching yet another record high, despite relentless jawboning and rhetoric by everyone from Jamie Dimon to central bankers to China, we can only imagine the business of protecting bitcoin fortunes is set to boom.

- China
- Bill Gates
- Jamie Dimon
- Bear Market
- Switzerland
- Bitcoin

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Clock Crasher Oct 18, 2017 7:00 PM

Goldmoney is also vaulting Crypto and collecting fees.

Their stock has been exploding. All Time highs this week.

If bitcoin is going to 100,000 then goldmoney stock is going to 10 bag minimum.

Clock Crasher Clock Crasher Oct 18, 2017 7:04 PM

If gold goes to 10,000 ontop of a sustained bitcoin explosion then goldmoney should 100bag. she has never seen a day trade over a million shares and shes +100% off the lows. Just saying.

Automatic Choke Clock Crasher Oct 18, 2017 7:07 PM

When I first saw the article, I thought it said "BACON storage facility".

Whew, I thought they were talking about something really valuable. False alarm.

bamawatson Automatic Choke Oct 18, 2017 7:26 PM

BACONcoin goes well with WHOPPERcoin

overbet bamawatson Oct 18, 2017 7:30 PM

Awfully tight security to protect something the btc bashers on here claim to be worthless.

Mr_Potatohead overbet Oct 18, 2017 7:37 PM

Yeah, but the security at Fort Knox is even greater for something that many claim is equally worthless and not there.

wee-weed up Mr_Potatohead Oct 18, 2017 7:48 PM

Ha! Both they and their Bitcoins will end up dead comes the EMP.

espirit overbet Oct 18, 2017 7:38 PM

Hey, who welded the doors shut?

TuPhat overbet Oct 18, 2017 7:43 PM

That's exactly why it's worthless.

overbet TuPhat Oct 18, 2017 7:48 PM

Your definition of worthless is somthing that I can hit a bid on right now for $4600?

HelluvaEngineer Automatic Choke Oct 18, 2017 7:28 PM

This shit is going to turn out to be the phoenix 2017 or whatever the hell it was currency from the Economist or whateveritwas magazine. The "chosen" are front running BC being the new chosen means of enslaving the populace. Wait for it...

You front-runners will be digital billionaires and you'll also have a damn RFID implanted in your head.

Ranger4564 HelluvaEngineer Oct 18, 2017 8:32 PM

1. You can't just be rich because you want to be rich, you have to rape or kill someone to be allowed to be rich.

2. You really think the banks are that stupid that they will allow the average slob become one of them? No. The point of this BTC / ETH rise is to convince the populace of the legitimacy of virtual / digital / non-existent currencies. Once society is well trained, the banks will kill off the BTC / ETH and introduce their nightmare.

marysimmons Automatic Choke Oct 18, 2017 8:04 PM

PM's and BTC could both go to the moon with dramatic devaluation of fiat currencies which is happening worldwide now. The difference is that more PM's can always be mined (for the right price), whereas there will never, EVER, be more than 22 Mil BTC. So in a few years, when a billion people or so are trying to turn their fiat into BTC, and other non-inflationary digital currencies, and bidding up the price if for no other reason than to preserve their wealth, a 6, 7, 8, or even 9 figure price of BTC in $USD is not out of the question. This possibility (probability) alone makes it worth the risk of picking up a BTC, or even 0.5 BTC now.

Freddie Automatic Choke Oct 18, 2017 8:15 PM

Ha ha. No way I walking into a cave / coal mine. What is even funnier is banner ads on ZH offering jobs at the 17 inteligence agencies for Uncle Scam! What a joke!

https://www.intelligencecareers.gov/?gclid=CJj0ouay-9YCFUhZhgodWZIGrQ

This includes the NGA or National Geospatial Intelligence Agency which is one of the more secret ones. I bet they have staff not that far from me too.

Sorry Uncle Scam. I do not want to go kill Christian (or non Christian) civilians in Syria or Iraq for the banksters.

I wonder if they are hiring for psycho Jason Bourne like gigs?

HRClinton Clock Crasher Oct 18, 2017 7:16 PM

Fork these "Storage" facilites! Be it for Gold or Crypto.

Another RENT-SEEKING biz model. Fork that!

Keep it in cold storage at home or at a quality Storage Facility, where you keep all your other important (2nd Amendment) stuff.

espirit HRClinton Oct 18, 2017 7:32 PM

So you didn't qualify as a patron, did you?

overbet HRClinton Oct 18, 2017 7:42 PM

I use a trezor. Just keep your backup keys is a fire safe at a couple locations and youre good to go.

Sudden Debt Oct 18, 2017 7:01 PM

why was money to store a number?

CPL Sudden Debt Oct 18, 2017 7:16 PM

Then who was phone?

Sudden Debt CPL Oct 18, 2017 7:44 PM

you could memorise it ;)

Raffie Oct 18, 2017 7:02 PM

nice

Juggernaut x2 Oct 18, 2017 7:04 PM

Is this a joke?

cheech_wizard Juggernaut x2 Oct 18, 2017 7:08 PM

Someone has been watching one Mission Impossible movie too many...

Winston Churchill Juggernaut x2 Oct 18, 2017 7:22 PM

Its a joke alright.putting electrons into a underground vault.

Even Mosley cannot possibly defend this stupidity, but will probably try anyway.

Talk about counterparty risk,don't the pumpers keep tell us its counterparty risk free.

espirit Winston Churchill Oct 18, 2017 7:41 PM

That copy of the 'Key' is probably insured for millions of 0's and 1's.

Ikiru Winston Churchill Oct 18, 2017 7:59 PM

On the other hand, there are countless vaults and safes that only hold paper fiat money. Sure seems kinda crazy to spend that much money protecting pieces of paper, right?

Jay Winston Churchill Oct 18, 2017 8:25 PM

Just print out the QR code and laminate it. Store in a fireproof place.

Hank Stinkhammer Juggernaut x2 Oct 18, 2017 7:35 PM

Cryptards remind me of JP - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-ho9L4Jazw

Son of Captain Nemo Oct 18, 2017 7:12 PM

Something only a "Max Keiser" could invent!...

One thing you can say about Jews. They love magic tricks and theater... Especially when they make "real money" DISAPPEAR!

BEHOLD THE "BUTTCOIN"!!!

serotonindumptruck Oct 18, 2017 7:07 PM

The ultimate bugout bunker.

If you think you need a hardened, underground fallout shelter to protect your digital Bitcoin, presumably to provide shelter for a global economic reset, then you may need to revisit your initial premise.

espirit serotonindumptruck Oct 18, 2017 7:16 PM

What are they protecting again, and from who?

Might want to revisit that premise...

gatorengineer espirit Oct 18, 2017 7:29 PM

scamming fools that dont understand shitcoin.... That is all

Yukon Cornholius espirit Oct 18, 2017 7:34 PM

Having your private keys, like your gold, guns and food, held in a 3rd party facility seems pretty retarded to me. Of course, I've always had trust issues.

HelluvaEngineer serotonindumptruck Oct 18, 2017 7:30 PM

Seriously. A Kubota tractor will be worth more than anything in there. Hell, a box of .223 will be worth more than anything in there.

moorewasthebestbond Oct 18, 2017 7:08 PM

Moore was the best Bond.

Nobody wants to get "Mt. Gox'ed"!

HRH Feant2 Oct 18, 2017 7:12 PM

Nice bunker!

Justin Case HRH Feant2 Oct 18, 2017 7:20 PM

After the nuclear holocaust only hard drives will be found and new millionaire archeologists will rule the world with their new found wealth.

nmewn Oct 18, 2017 7:15 PM

See, here's my idea...

Lets create a "currency" out of nothing then, we'll be bury the keys to the nothing currency in the ground and then, charge people enormous amounts of real currency to protect the keys to the nothing currency!

...I swear...lol.

espirit nmewn Oct 18, 2017 7:21 PM

Come on, you've got to have a sense of humor to enjoy the complexity of cryptos.

"This is where they store the 0's and 1's, err ... BITCOINS!

bamawatson espirit Oct 18, 2017 7:29 PM

to be really really safe they store the 0's in a separate bunker from the 1's

espirit bamawatson Oct 18, 2017 7:36 PM

How about a joint venture storage facility?

I'll flip you for it. Your choice.

smallblockchevy350 nmewn Oct 18, 2017 7:39 PM

You mean real currency like the currency they create more of out of nothing every day?

overbet nmewn Oct 18, 2017 7:43 PM

https://venturebeat.com/2015/01/15/bitcoin-wallet-xapo-makes-its-super-s...

Old article but says its free service. Certainly they would accept btc as payment

alexcojones Oct 18, 2017 7:15 PM

Wait-! That's GoatRider's house!

He sent me pics years ago!

Yellow_Snow Oct 18, 2017 7:17 PM

They wouldn't have gone thru all this trouble unless they thought that Bitcoin price hits 6 figures.

Justin Case Yellow_Snow Oct 18, 2017 7:21 PM

They wouldn't have gone thru all this trouble unless they thought that Bitcoin price hits 6 figures

or people are gullible enough.

overbet Yellow_Snow Oct 18, 2017 7:44 PM

It will definitely hit 6 figures. Everything will even a Prius

DavidFL Oct 18, 2017 7:18 PM

Its all part of the scam - Incredible how stupid the supposedly smart people are!!

espirit DavidFL Oct 18, 2017 7:30 PM

A vault to hold the keys to a vault of Bitz.

ROTHFLMAO

Shpedly Oct 18, 2017 7:30 PM

Gotta give the Swiss credit. They must have studied PT Barnum very well.

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