Storage vaults for Bitcoin?

…a raft of bitcoin thefts at exchanges like Mt. Gox is raising the question of whether the sophisticated currency still needs the same sort of physical security infrastructure—impenetrable steel vaults, armed security guards, and even paper ledgers—as cash and gold.

A Silicon Valley startup called Xapo is among a handful of young companies trying to become the Fort Knox of bitcoin, building secret bank vaults deep in the earth that would safely store millions of dollars worth of bitcoin code on computer drives. And if modern bank robbers still manage to pry open the vault? Xapo promises to fully insure all deposits.

On Wednesday, Xapo said it raised $20 million in funding led by venture-capital firm Benchmark, to support a network of underground vaults that the company says are in mountainous regions on multiple continents.

There is more here.  I think of this as a lesson in how bid-ask spreads tend to reemerge, one way or another, no matter how hard we try to abolish them.  One key question about Bitcoin is whether it has found a better place to “put” the bid-ask spread.