We have sold over 250 Physical Litecoins to over 15 countries during our first week in business. Im so glad people are interested in the coins, your support will help us continue this project and release more coins in the future. If you haven't done so, please check out our website to place an order:
https://www.cryptovest.com. All orders that were made before today have been shipped. Thanks for all your support, we hope you all like your coins!
Updates:Re: Using 1/2 inch hole punches to assemble a bunch of coins:I tried out two half inch hole punches to quickly cut out private key inserts, but I was disappointed with both. They are easy to use and both have a window for precise cutting, however they cut too large of a circle and cut pretty far outside the lines. This causes a bulge when the coin is assembled. If you don't care about that, then these hole punches are recommended (let me know and I'll sell you one for cheap.) I will not use them on our assembled coins though, because of the said bulge in the hologram it creates. The models I tested were Ek Tools "Mini Punch" and Paper Shapers (a... ummm... ek tools company) "Decorative Punch". Both were labeled as 1/2 inch punches.
How many Zinodaur Physical Litecoins will be made?There will only ever be 3000 unloaded coins with this design and 1000 loaded coins (with added security features- not yet for sale.) Once all 3000 unloaded coins and the 1000 loaded coins sell out, there will be no more coins minted with this design. There will only ever be 5000 original Zinodaur holograms made, once all 5000 have been sold, the replacement hologram will have a slightly different design, likely with the year they are made on them so they are easily distinguishable from the originals. By only releasing the original coins and holograms in limited quantities, we hope to increase the collectors value of the coins & holograms (although we cannot promise this.) Over time as coins get redeemed, the original holograms will become more and more rare. Also, coins in pristine condition will become more and more rare over time, be careful when handling your coins because dropping them from about the waist high can damage the coins (hardly noticeable, but you can see it upon close examination.)
General security procedure upgrade:All holograms, printed private key inserts (sometimes more are printed than needed), and the laptop used to generate and print private keys are stored securely in a safe at all times. The only record of the private keys and addresses used for our assembled coins are either hidden under the hologram, or shipped to the customer. Absolutely no record of addresses and private keys are kept by us, and assembly is personally overseen by me and done by trusted family members. IF the safe is stolen, all coins that have been assembled and/or shipped are not compromised.
Security procedures for assembled/loaded coins:1. A brand new laptop was purchased for generating & printing private key inserts. The Windows setup was completed without file sharing enabled.<br>
2. I connected to my personal password encrypted Wifi to do the following things:
2a. Update the Anti Virus (McAfee) and perform a full system scan.
2b. Saved local copies of bitaddress.org & liteaddress.org
2c. Downloaded the CryptoVest Coin Insert Generator from our web server & also the Casascius Bitcoin Utility program from Casascius' server.
2d. Microsoft Office was installed in case it is needed for later projects.
2e. Installed the printer drivers.
2f. A full scan with McAfee was ran to ensure the PC was clean after downloading the needed files.
4. No extra web browsing was done, I simply downloaded the needed files and updated the needed programs.. nothing else. The reason for connecting to the internet at all: I felt this was safer than downloading everything on my normal PC (used for web browsing, etc.) and saving it on a flash drive or disk. Although I am pretty certain my normal PC is not infected (I have held 100-800 BTC on here in the past several months and I think this would have disappeared then), I thought it safer to use a fresh install, only download the things I needed, and never connect to the internet again.
5. I disabled the Wifi network adapter. This will stay disabled for the remainder of the laptop's life, and this computer will never connect to the internet again.
6. The laptop along with all holograms and printed private key inserts are stored in a safe. If this safe is ever stolen, all coins that have been sold & shipped are not compromised, as no record of the addresses or private keys are being kept after coins are assembled.
7. I personally oversee the assembly of all coins and only use trusted immediate family members to help me assemble them. No records of private keys or addresses are kept by us.
Price change for unassembled coins:After assembling hundreds of coins, we've come to the realization that it takes just as long to put together the package for unassembled coins as it does to actually assemble them. Therefore, we needed to adjust the price of the unassembled coins accordingly. I apologize about this, I am kind of learning as I go here and did not realize how long it takes to assemble the coins/packages. Both assembled and unassembled coins will now sell for 2.99, so if you ordered in the first week you got a good deal (we hardly broke even on those coins.) For the success of the business, to bring different designs to the community, and to make more coins & replacement holograms in the future, this price adjustment was necessary.
Bulk Packaging:Bulk packaging has been implemented on all orders of 20 coins or more, because it is easier to assemble many coins this way and also easier for us to prepare the packages. A 10% discount is applied automatically when adding 20 coins or more to the shopping cart. If the coins are for gifts, please specify that you would like individual packaging (or even bulk packaging on smaller orders) and we will accommodate you. All orders under 20 coins are automatically sent in individual packaging.
What's next?We are planning on making a better quality replacement hologram for the Zinodaur coin, a physical Bitcoin (design yet to be decided), and minting LikeHero's Physical Litecoin design (+hologram). I am looking into increasing the quality of both the coins and the holograms the next time around, yet still keeping the low prices. There is no ETA on those, so please don't expect them anytime soon... I am pretty much a one man operation (when it comes to choosing designs/manufacturing/security/web site/customer service/etc.. I only have help for assembly/shipping). I also have a day job along with a couple other crypto related projects that keep me busy. I love doing things for the community because I love the original libertarian principals of cryptocoins and I want to help further their adoption. I am not doing this because I have a huge stash of coins. I do not plan on stopping anytime soon, so expect more affordable novelty cryptocoin products from us in the future.
Thanks again to everyone that has ordered for your support! I hope to offer more products and services in the future,
Ch
