VELIC wants to address the current fragmentation in the cryptocurrency space, which is why it offers the full palette of crypto solutions. The Vault service is one of its key features, being represented by the first letter of its name. But why do retail and institutional investors need a secure custody solution for their crypto funds? Isn’t it much easier to just keep your digital coins on a hardware wallet? Well, from all the storage options, the cold wallets are among the most secure ones. However, when it comes to larger amounts of coins, a secure vault service is needed.

Before emphasizing the importance of a vault solution, we’d like to share with you a sad statistic. Last year, research firm Chainalysis estimated that about 3.79 million Bitcoin had been lost and couldn’t be recovered anymore. When we hear about Bitcoins missing, we think about scams and hacking attacks. However, a significant portion of the Bitcoin cannot be retrieved because the owners had simply lost the keys. Thus, one in five Bitcoins out there won’t enter the circulation anymore.

Typically, Bitcoin holders are storing their crypto funds in digital wallets that can be accessed exclusively via private keys. This is great because this method ensures a high degree of security. Generally, hardware or cold wallets are regarded as the best choice because they are separated from the Internet. On the other side, if owners lose their private keys, the respective wallets might get unreachable forever. This drawback is often ignored because investors are confident in their abilities to keep good care of their keys. However, there are many unpredictable aspects that can negatively impact the state of investors’ crypto funds. Speaking about large funds, this problem becomes even more relevant. It would be stupid to lose hundreds of coins simply because you accidentally lost the keys and forgot them.

In this context, a Vault service, like the one provided by VELIC, might help crypto investors store their funds in a secure environment and have peace of mind. They can travel wherever they want and update their operating systems and devices as many times as they need without being afraid of losing or touching private keys.

And it’s not only about Bitcoin — the same is true about any blockchain-based coin that involves private keys. This is why investors have turned to vault services en masse. Coinbase was the first to propose a Bitcoin Vault solution, which was advertised as a more secure storage option compared to its own online wallet. Thus, the vault service came with additional security measures, such as delay in payments, confirmation of each transfer, and so on.

Nevertheless, even vault services might not help if the operators are suspicious. This is because such deals involve a high degree of trust. Indeed, investors have to give access to their keys to a third party, which sometimes might end up badly. For example, tens of thousands of QuadrigaCX clients might never see their crypto funds again after founder and CEO Gerald Cotton suddenly died in India, taking the only password to the exchange’s digital wallet with him.

To avoid such issues and still keep the funds secure, VELIC implements a security protocol based on a proprietary secret sharing methodology. We expect that this approach will eventually help VELIC establish itself as one of the safest and most flexible vault service providers.