Precious metals trading network GoldMoney has joined London start-up Elliptic in providing off-line secure storage services for Bitcoin users.

Launched last week - and underwritten by Lloyds of London - Elliptic stores user's cryptographic keys on offline servers in a secure location.



The company is banking on business from bitcoin holders fearful of losing their horde to online hackers.



At launch, Elliptic proudly declared itself the first service of its kind in the world, but it is already facing competition from another new entrant, dubbed Netagio.



Part of the GoldMoney group of entities, which currently stores $1.4 billion in precious metals for customers in independent secure vaults across five countries, Netagio claims to have built an advanced infrastructure for the safe storage of digital currencies.



While the majority of customers' Bitcoins are kept in Netagio's offline vault, beyond risk of theft by hackers, a handful are made available online for swift transfer to other customers or exchanges. Netagio's free-to-use accounts sit behind two-factor authentication security and can be set by customers to allow access only from preset, user-defined locations.



Simon Hamblin, managing director at Netagio, says: "Being a part of a larger established group that has a heritage in the dealing and safe-keeping of precious metal since 2001 makes it one of the most compelling storage offerings in Europe."



He says Netagio also aims to offer customers the ability to buy and sell Bitcoin, as well as other asset classes, directly through its platform in the near future.