High-end Swiss watchmaker Franck Muller has partnered with alternative assets investing firm Regal Assets to release the bitcoin (BTC) storage watch “Encrypto,” according to a report by Cointelegraph Brasil on May 23.
In addition to being a high-end fashion accessory, with a price ranging from $9,800 to $50,600, the watch reportedly also functions as a cold wallet for BTC. The watch is reported to be engraved with a public address on its dial and comes paired with a private key on a USB drive. According to the firm, the “deep cold storage wallet” is unhackable and uses “offline generated, non-deterministic TRNGs (True Random Numbers Generated).”
In a press release from Regal Assets, regional director of Franck Muller, Erol Baliyan, commented on the leading cryptocurrency, saying “Bitcoin is the millennial gold.” He added:
“Bitcoin is the [...] perfect marriage between innovation and personal choice.”
The Encrypto can be bought with BTC or traditional payment methods. The company is reportedly considering the production of functionally similar timepieces that support other top-five cryptocurrencies, such as ether (ETH) and Ripple’s XRP.
As reported May 24, another Swiss luxury watch and clock manufacturer, Vacheron Constantin, will start using blockchain technology to track its timepieces.
Last year, Cointelegraph reported that Hublot — yet another Swiss luxury watch maker — released a limited edition model commemorating the 10th anniversary of the bitcoin white paper. The watch, Big Bang Blockchain, could only be bought with BTC and only 210 copies were made, a reference to Bitcoin’s fixed supply cap of 210 thousand (21 million) coins.