A software company in Switzerland is now printing physical Bitcoin bills. They are the world’s first smart banknotes – actually non-banknotes, because they represent BTC. However, Tangem specializes in this technology for any digital assets.
Each bill is essentially a standalone bitcoin wallet. In this way, not only is the security of the cryptographic passwords intact, but “breaking into” one bill’s wallet does not provide access to any others.
Bitcoin has the benefit that it is the most widely used cryptocurrency, but it also has no “owner.” Profits made when individuals exchange for the smart bills will go entirely to Tangem. Each bill costs about $2 to make, but this will reduce greatly as production scales.
They will be available in similar places to where ATMs would be located, but the first shipment is to Singapore. They are available in denominations of 0.05 and 0.01. With Bitcoin around the $10,000 USD, this is $500 and $1000 USD or €420 and €840.
Smart Banknotes
Unlike using cryptocurrency online, physical transactions are immediate, free, anonymous and there are no fees. They are truly decentralized, meaning it will never be restricted by technological limitations. – Cofounder Andrew Pantyukhin
Potential
Other currencies – The technology can be applied to any country’s standard fiat currency for added security benefits, or to materialize any other existing cryptocurrency.
Identification – The technology of cryptographic signatures could be added to government or privately issued identification cards. It would provide an unhackable, unreplicatable form of identity verification.
Other – debit cards, loyalty cards, gift cards, tickets – essentially any applications that require or could benefit from digital proof of something physical, or the reverse as in these Bitcoin Bills – physical proof of digital assets.
We are a new way of tying the physical and digital together, which has never been done before. Inherently we treat digital as easily copyable and this technology guarantees it cannot be copied. That again has never been possible or practical before. – Cofounder Andrew Pantyukhin