A new type of physical bitcoins is designed to appeal in the same time to collectors, history fans, precious metal lovers and to those who wish to spread a word about bitcoin.

It has often been said that bitcoin is “digital gold”. Many bitcoiners, expressing contempt for modern fiat currencies, praise precious metals such as gold and silver. They have now a possibility to keep silver coins with BTC stored.

And that is not all. There are two types of newly-minted silver bitcoins, one featuring a portrait of William Shakespeare and the other that of Nikola Tesla. A hologram on the reverse side conceals the private key to the bitcoin wallet while leaving the public address as a QR-code visible through the transparent window. The coins also contain famous quotations from the two geniuses as well as the phrase: “Not legal tender of any Government.”

When sold, each coin contains 0.01 BTC. The owner may choose to create a new wallet or use the one offered by Infinitum. The coins can thus serve as a storage of both digital and physical value besides being a collector’s item.

A silver bitcoin, weighting a troy ounce (31.1 grams) is currently sold for $99.

First such coin was issued in May 2015 and featured Leonardo da Vinci. It was soon followed by a second one with Albert Einstein. A representative of Infinitum posted information on Bitcointalk forum and asked users to vote for the next famous person to be shown on a physical bitcoin. Only four bitcoiners answered, two of them suggesting Nicola Tesla. Shakespeare, Michelangelo and Beethoven gained one vote each.

Alexey Tereshchenko