Civic Wallet is now offering “FDIC-like insurance” for cryptocurrency holdings worth up to $1,000,000.
Civic Wallet is a multi-signature non-custodial wallet that now comes with a $1,000,000 guarantee from Coincover.
Civic Technologies (CVC) has been known in the crypto space as one of the leading providers of decentralized identity and is now purportedly the first company to offer a non-custodial wallet with $1,000,000 protection. The wallet is currently in private beta.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Civic co-founder and CEO, Vinny Lingham compared its key feature to the protection offered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC):
“This is the first time that both technical and non-technical users can feel safe about their holdings. Until now, people had to keep their coins in the cold storage, but now they don’t have to worry about it as their holdings are insured up to $1,000,000 just like a bank account with the FDIC.”
Coincover CEO, David Janczewski said, “Coincover is not an insurance company, we like to think of ourselves as ‘protection and security company for cryptocurrency’, for the insurance, we work with Lloyd’s of London underwriters.”
Inheritance benefits
This being a multi-signature wallet, one key is stored by the user, another by the custodian BitGo, and the third one, currently by Civic, but will eventually migrate to Coincover. According to Lingham, one of the main benefits of this insurance is that in case Civic goes under, users will not lose their coins.
Another major advantage is the ability of legal heirs to recover funds through Coincover. For now, the coverage is only available to the United States residents but in the future, it will be extended globally and will include all the coins supported by BitGo.
Lingham noted that the coverage is free, but in the future Civic may start charging a fee on the accounts containing over $1,000,000 worth of cryptocurrency.
Civic Wallet users must still abide by stringent Know Your Customer requirements by supplying their government-issued identification and subjecting their visage to facial recognition software.
Users will also be able to connect their bank accounts and buy crypto without leaving the wallet.
As wallets containing higher amounts of cryptocurrency continue to grow in number, an insurance policy could not have come at a better time.
