Bitcoin Forum

The image below is the first of 6 coin denominations my company will be releasing this year, designed with "ease of use" as paramount.  For security, we used a closed system that tracks coin ownership, with 2-factor authentication built in.  For those that don't want that service, the private key can be included underneath the hologram as an option.

https://www.titanbtc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Titan_One_frontWM.jpg
Titan One physical bitcoin, Front

https://www.titanbtc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Titan_One_reverseWM.jpg
Titan One physical bitcoin, Reverse


Current price is $269 or 1.39 BTC. as of October 22 @ 20:30 GMT

Shipping is included.  

http://www.titanbtc.com/product/titan-one/

This is a new system, and a little different than what Casascius has done, so please ask anything you like here.

To answer the question publicly, yes it fine to PM me for sales instead of going through the website.

You can pay with 1.45BTC per coin to the address below:

1PEsVxSS27aLgM25wwWwhTTfWZT9EjR7ca

Escrow is fine for larger transactions.  Just PM me or email sales@titanbtc.com.

Interested in a couple for the museum. PM me if you're interested in sending a couple of unloaded ones

How does the authentication work?  Beautiful coin!

Each coin is registered to an email address and password.  You need access that that info to redeem the coin, so its serves as a second form of authentication.  You can change the registration info at any time if needed.  For example, if the coin changes hands privately, the new owner will want to register the coin with an email address and password that only he or she has access to.

It's protection against the hacking and counterfeiting that has been done to Casascius coins.  

I've seen this on eBay a couple of times, a very nice looking coin  ;D

Wow, looks great, although the price is a bit steep for a hunk of metal.

I think these are cheaper than Casascius coins, for the moment at least.  The price probably will go up tomorrow, unfortunately, as we buy the bitcoins to load onto these coins at current market prices.  BTC is going up.

For people just getting started with Bitcoin, the ease of just buying one of these versus having to learn about the technology and install a wallet is worth the price premium.  Its a quick way to bring them into the community.

Oddly, I've actually heard from a few people that think we should be charging more.  Go figure.

They look pretty sweet.

Explained here:

The design of the coin is sweet, but if the material could be gold (maybe 5 or 10 version), this would be better seller imo

Thanks!  Silver and Gold are coming shortly.  We have 6 different denominations that we'll be releasing and the higher denominations (5 and 10) will be offered in Silver and Gold.

 

Chaang Noi, we created a closed system to address the security concerns with buying other physical bitcoins like Casascius coins from private parties.  Because it's relatively easy to both hack and counterfeit, there's no good way to know if the private key has been compromised on standard Casascius coins.  Our solution for now is to offer Coin registration.  The coin can't be redeemed without access to the email address that is currently tied to the coin.  When a coin is sold, the new owner can change the email address to one they have exclusive access to, and the coin's value is protected.

This is a service for those that want it or who don't necessarily know enough about bitcoins to understand how to keep their wallet truly secure.  I fight for decentralization myself, and we'll be offering coins with the private key included shortly.  We're also working on other solutions to the two-factor authentication issue and I'd love to have input from valued members of the community like yourself.

Both the coins that have a private key under the hologram and the ones that use our 2-factor authentication system have BTC stored at an address, waiting to be redeemed.  For coins with 2 Factor Authentication, they are redeemed through our website.

There was some confusion in the other thread.  We're NOT operating a fractional reserve as some have asked or suggested.  At any time, you can verify that your coin has its BTC backing by looking at its address on the blockchain.  Just scan the QR code on the back of the coin to view its status page.

This is not cupronickel. Titan stated this was "Goldline" which is a proprietary brass alloy. Also, cupronickel resembles silver, not gold.

Anyway, very nice coin Titan.

The material is Goldine.  It has a distinctly different appearance from the brass coins that we have here, but it may be closer to brass than it is to cupronickel.  The phrase cupronickel apparently covers a range of alloys that can have varying appearances.  It's likely that Goldine has both zinc and nickel in the alloy, but I honestly hadn't looked for the specific composition breakdown until this conversation.  

The foundry that is supplying the blanks described this alloy as a "copper-nickel alloy" and it may have been designed specifically for coin production.  It was marked as a 230 alloy on some of the documentation we received.  If this is referring to the 230 alloy range for brass, then it may mean that it has a much higher copper content (85%+).  The next time I talk to the supplier, I will make sure we get this clarified.  

We chose this particular material both because of its superior appearance and its resistance to "dulling" over time.  However, the other denominations are different alloys.  

Update: We'll be offering coins with the private key included early next week. 

A few of you have PM'ed me about quantity discounts.  We're talking to a few resellers currently.  If you want to be reseller, we'll make a discount available for you.  The best way to move forward with that is to PM me or email me at Tim@titanbtc.com.

if you send me one of these i will make a video to determine if my cat prefers these over cass coins

Does the cat have good taste?  You're going to have be OK with a coin that smells strongly of tuna if this is how it's going to be.

https://i.imgur.com/QTw8Mbl.jpg
yes he is an excellent cat. Smelling strongly of tuna is fine, however the other coin might also smell of tuna from last years unrelated tuna salad incident

I just ordered some catnip off of Amazon to give us the edge.  We'll be in touch.

ok let me know

Update: Coins with private keys included (same as Casascius) are now available for those that want them.  For those that bought via PM, your coins are shipping out either today or tomorrow morning and you'll get an email when its marked as shipped in our system.

http://www.titanbtc.com/product/titan-one/

Thanks!   

P.S.  I don't recommend coins with private keys if you intend to resell, due to the ease of counterfeiting/hacking, but you wanted them so here they are...:)

http://makezine.com/2007/06/04/how-to-make-super-catnip/

Walter White would be proud.

Update:   For those paying direct with bitcoins, the price has dropped to 1.39BTC.

Thanks.

Sweet. I'm just waiting for the non 2 factor coins.

Those are on the website.  Select Private Key Included in the model dropdown on the ordering page.

Nice looking coins. I just don't like that qr-code with the website over it. When will you have the coins similar to casascius?

Read through the posts. He did mention minting gold and silver coins.

We won't be copying Mike's design for the Casascius coins' holograms as the QR code is necessary for now, but we're looking at implementing NFC chips on the coins which would let us have a nicer design on the holograms.  We'll bump that one in the list of future improvements.

Thanks for the feedback, 4ner.

That sounds awesome! No problem.

Price fluctuations have been a bit crazy the last few days!  We price the coins based on fixed margin above the spot value of BTC, so if you're sending us payment directly for an order you PM'ed to me...please contact me beforehand to make sure you're not paying too much.  Thanks!

Ordered 3 of these (order # 480,481,485) excited to see them in person .


Steven

#

Got 2 in. Love em. Great customer service guys!

I'm happy to give an update. 

We'll be officially listing the Titan One silver edition on our website November 30th.  We've sent the final design revisions off to the engraver and purchased 1,000 ounces of silver today (prices were down a few percent so we took advantage).  We have some resellers that are pre-purchasing now to get lower edition numbers so I'll go ahead and open up pre-sales to forum members here as well.  I don't have pictures yet, but those of you that know how we operate will trust me when I say that we won't deliver anything short of exceptional.  The 2013 silver edition of the Titan One is limited to just a single production run of 1,000 pieces and they will be selling for 1.85 BTC per coin.

The silver Titan One coins are slightly larger (39mm diameter).  We felt that a 1 oz coin at the current diameter looked just a little too thick.  These coins are going to be minted at a "proof" grade quality.  The dies have to be re-polished often to maintain a high mirror finish and the coins are individually pressed so it does take a bit more time.  It's worth it though, as they come out looking absolutely spectacular.

Emailing sales@titanbtc.com is best, as I've already botched one order that was placed here (sorry Phil), but if you don't mind working with me directly, feel free to PM. 

Thanks Chaang!

Great to hear, btway!

You're awesome, Steven.

i already Order my first Titan Coin, Love it.
The customer service guy was really patience with me. Helping me getting all of my Question Answer.

i got this Coin with 2-Factor Auth. Planning to get Order 9 more before 2015.

Scenario Case #01
let say 20 years from now i lost The physical Coin from some tragic but i know the COIN ID, my email address and password that i register the coin with, would i still be able to redeem the value of the Coin?

Scenario Case #02
lets say the person who operate the Titan die from a misfortunate event, what would happen to my BTC in Cold Storage? or the Cold storages was Sabotage somehow? 

Scenario Case #03
lets say its year 2045, now the value of BTC is insanely high. unbelievable and unpredictable from anyone wildest dream. and the person who have access to the Cold storage decided to cash out the all the Coin for himself?
me and everyone else who brought Titan Coin, just got rob. :(

sorry for being Paranoid, $$$$ doesnt grow on Trees

Hi Cnblue,

Glad you like the coin!

In Scenario #1, If I understand correctly, you're describing a case where you only have the coin ID and registration info but not the redemption code underneath the hologram.  This is information that could be gotten by an identity thief who had access to your email as a result of a compromised password.  You will need the redemption code underneath the hologram in order to redeem the coin (it's one of the two forms of authentication). 

In scenario #2 and 3, you bring up a number of questions that involve a failure on our end.  While we have done a lot to ensure that our system has redundant backups and fail-safe contingencies, there will always be some trust required on the part of our customers with the current setup.  We don't intend to keep it this way.

The simplest answer to your questions is that in the near future we will be updating the way we handle 2-factor authentication to address your concerns.  The current website is a stepping stone to a larger, fully decentralized solution in which the bitcoin network itself will track ownership of coins. 

There's no reason to apologize for being paranoid.  Bitcoin has seen plenty of scams and failures so we appreciate customers like you bringing up important issues.  We did consider these issues when starting out and chose our current solution very deliberately after weighing the pros and cons.  We really, really like bitcoin and we're working to perfect our physical bitcoins and better address the issues you mentioned for the sake of a stronger bitcoin ecosystem.

this is beyond too beautiful! i wish the price was back when btc rate is US$100  ::)

The price of bitcoin was just about $100 when we first started selling these.  Don't forget that you can pay in bitcoins too, so if you have around 1.35 BTC, you can trade that in and get a coin ;)   We've got a really nice design for the 0.1 BTC coin that will be coming out soon which will be in the $50 range.  I can't rush the artists and engravers, but we're really looking forward to offering some less expensive coins.

We won't be selling the unloaded coins ourselves, but a number of them have been redeemed so I wouldn't be surprised if you see unloaded coins on eBay soon.

Quick update and an apology

I just wanted to apologize to anyone that made a purchase on our site this morning that was subsequently cancelled.  One of developers updated the code to our website late last night (2:00 am here in California) while the rest of us were sleeping.  It wasn't until this morning that we realized he had enabled an automatic pricing feature that wasn't fully tested yet.  As a result, we were offering to sell bitcoins at a loss this morning for about 4 hours.

I would love to have fulfilled those orders, and it would have been a customer service win of the first order, but it also would have meant that we took a loss of about $2,000.  Honestly it was a tough choice, and our customer service rep really resisted when I told her that we would have to cancel those orders.  I hope the members of this community can sympathize with the challenges of pricing our products in dollars, in an environment where the selling price of bitcoins varies by as much as $100 depending on where you buy. 

We're interested in making things right with our customers, so feel free to shoot me a PM if you got stung by this error on our part and I'll happily send you a discount code for future purchases.   

Thanks

I would be interested in a sign up list with regards to the sale of other denominations.

You're on the list, Michail1.  

I'll have our developers add that to the website as well.

Is your company registered? What is your company registered number?

I purchased 20 and sold them.  They were great (and simply beautiful)!

Time for more.

I'm sorry I don't know what registration number you're looking for.  Can you be more specific?

Titan Bitcoins are produced by the Titan Mint Inc., which is a corporation registered in the state of California, USA.  Does that help?

He was just looking for a incorporation ID number I imagine which is typically found with companies outside the U.S.

That should be sufficient though for a U.S. based company, name and state.

Love the design and look of your coins. Any updates on the other denominations?

Also, what are yours plans for the "Goldine" Titan One once the silver edition is out?

Has anyone picked up the Titan Tenth? The coin looks beautiful and I was wondering what peoples thoughts were regarding it. Probably will place an order tonight. Thanks.

I have 5 of them, and they look really nice.

Good to know. I will order some tonight. Thanks for the reply!

i got 2. sharp and awesome!

I got a bunch of them.  VERY Happy with my collection.

Thanks for the input guys! Order placed.

Just wanted to say that I received the coin very fast! It's a beautiful coin, but I think I was more impressed by their customer service. Very fast response to a question that I had in regards to the authentication process. Will definitely pick up some more when I get some cash!  ;)

I got one of your coins at the conference in Austin. I'd like to convert this coin into a cold-wallet with my own generated private key. Can I just buy one of your holograms?

Heh,
That would really enable the use of scams if people could simply buy the stickers and put on any coin.  Not saying you would, but....
Scammer would love to put his own stickers on and sell them.  Then sweep all the keys he sold at a later date only to make Titan look bad.

Why not simply use the serial on the site to get the public key and put as many bitcoins on to the coin that you want?

If someone gives you a physical coin loaded with bitcoin, there will always be an issue of trusting the giver. What I want to do is remove the layer of trust, but still have a nice physical coin for my cold-storage.

Ummm, I would hope that Titan would NOT sell the stickers, just like Mike Chadwell (Casascius) will not sell the stickers.

You can buy a WALLET coin, instead of running off the Titan name using one of their coins with one of their stickers.

If you want a wallet coin, then it might be best to buy exactly that....

Something like:  
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=525756.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=525756.0)

I don't see the problem with selling stickers. Those silver qallets are priced at 3x or 4x spot value of silver, not a very good deal.

The problem is that a scammer could open up the coin, take out the value, and then use a sticker to reseal the coin.  So, an unsuspecting person might buy a coin only later to find out it has been emptied of its value (which could also happen at a future date.  If Titan starts selling their stickers, I would no longer want anything to do with them UNLESS it is a completely different sticker (Color and Text).

So, it would be possible if they produced a completely new coin - COIN WALLET or TITAN WALLET with completely different stickers that state COIN WALLET   (Open so you could use it for any coins).  This would change the entire topic as well.  I disagree with the silver wallets.  For Titan and any other kind of Silver wallet, the premium is already at or above what the Silver wallets are at.

Michail explained the problem perfectly.  The holograms are a security feature, as they are destroyed when removed and it is important that we're the only ones with the ability to apply them, as we're certifying their authenticity and value by putting that seal in place.

We do OFTEN get requests for DIY coin kits and I'd love to accommodate.  We may put together a non-denominated coin design with a completely different hologram design later this year.

WOw! That's so cool ! From first look I am in love with these coins

There is no issue with selling stickers and this is why:

You have to trust the person you get a physical bitcoin from, sticker or not. These things *cannot* be used as a regular currency or exchange mechanism, there will ALWAYS be a factor of trust required when transferring them, and there is no way to get around it. The utility of physical bitcoins is as a cold-storage wallet, and little else.

Anyhow, I'm redeeming mine and putting a sticker from a different company on it, because I don't trust Titan to hold the bitcoins, or anyone for that matter.

I agree that there is a factor of trust.  At this point, I only need to trust one company - Titan.
If they sold stickers, then I would have to trust everyone else with regards to the face value of the coin.

Your choice to redeem your coin is yours to make.  Why not post pictures and video on youtube so that people can see it being done.
I do wonder why you even bought a Titan if you don't trust them - Seems like a troll post to me.

I did notice you ignored the prior post about people making wallet coins in which they sell their own version of stickers so that you can seal anything you want.  It's the perfect answer to your idea of what you're trying to accomplish.

Good luck with your project.

Can't wait to get my .5's to add to the collection!  Nice looking coins just like the rest  ;D. I have at least 1 of every Titan so far and will keep collecting them... Excellent work guys.

This would be great if u guys did litecoin version

Yeah that new .5 coin is nice! Maybe my next purchase.  8)

Hey guys I noticed this up on Flea-Bay
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-Pcs-Titans-Bitcoin-Collectible-Coin-Silver-plate-2014-Weight-1-oz-/111298352313?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19e9e614b9

is this a fake? or a already spent coin?

looks fake. multiple reasons:
1) no hologram, the qr looks stamped in
2) silver PLATED = cheap

YES

I agree..If you sold LTC I would be buying everyone of those also!

Yeah.  Those are Chinese "look-alikes". 

I thought they had gone away but apparently they're back.  We're trying to get them banned from eBay as a counterfeit/copyright violators.   Apparently they are sneakier then we gave them credit for?

LTC is in the pipeline. 

Any plans on starting a twitter a blog or news page? I would love to know what you are up to and when or what conferences/shows you are heading to. What coins are currently in the 2014 press? Do you have any 2013 press's left? Thanks!

I want to purchase more of your coins but I cant see paying over 20 spot for the non silver and more then 40 over spot for the silver or gold ones. Right now the Titan 1 silver is approximately $200 over spot. I just cant figure out how I can justify that price. Nothing costs that much over spot. I saw on ebay there is a guy selling your coins unloaded, his name is thecryptostore2013 or  cflow01 is he a reseller? If so how to we get unloaded coins?

Thanks for your interest.  I'm glad you like the coins!

I'll admit that we haven't done a great job keeping the community informed, and that's on me and my time constraints.   We're putting out at least one update on Facebook a day now and twitter will be following soon. 

Making any product WELL necessitates a decision to target a particular market.   Titan Bitcoins are made by fine artists that were selectively recruited and paid to design, hand sculpt and engrave the tooling for these coins.  The coins themselves are made to exacting quality standards and on top of that, we often cull more than 75% of a given production run because of small defects.  The goal is to make physical bitcoins that look and feel like real currency and have an unspoken impression of value.  This costs much more than merely stamping out tokens, and I realize that added cost makes the price prohibitive for many.   While we're working on new products that have a lower barrier to entry...I hope you understand that owning these coins comes with a modicum of exclusivity that we hope elevates Titan Bitcoins to the level of "investment" for serious coin collectors. 

The bigger picture is hard to articulate in forum posts, but I will tell you that ALL of the profits from our sales are being reinvested into making more cool stuff that gets people excited about digital currency and grows the bitcoin community, so every coin you buy is an investment in mainstream bitcoin adoption. 

We're still selling the 2013 edition of the Titan One coins in both brass and silver and we'll be transitioning those to the 2014 editions in late Spring.  All other coins are currently in the 2014 edition, with the quarter and the 5 BTC coin coming out in the next couple months.  We're really close to having the Titan One 1 oz. Gold coin in stock as well.

We don't sell any unfunded coins right now.  Anyone selling coins unfunded has either purchased them from us at full price and redeemed them, or is selling one of the odd coins that was lost or stolen in the mail.  If you see an unfunded coin with the hologram intact, its a good idea to steer clear as it may not be legit. 

Thank you so much for your response. I understand where you are coming from.

I forgot my last question. When will you be supporting BIP-38 so I know my investment is secure. I'm having trouble jumping in on those full bitcoin coins until I can 100% guarantee my key will be safe.

Kinda similar to

http://www.crypto-cards.com/products/coldcards-black
or
http://cointalk.ca/cryptocards/

TitanBTC, very beautiful coins indeed. But are you even just a little worried that you'll get a letter from FINCEN, just like what happened to Mike making the Casascius physical coins?

We were actually registered with FinCen before they ever bothered Mike and we're going through the process of determining our state by state registration requirements.

So that means if I order from you, my personal info is kept in case you need to hand them over to FINCEN? If you comply with the KYC and AML laws, that's what you must do, no?

These coins look great, my friend sent me a picture of them while he was at the NYC Bitcoin convention a week or so again and I've been mulling over picking up a tenth, half and one BTC coin in silver.  Does anyone know if there are any coupon codes floating around?  ;D

Edit:  Just read the thread, any news on the possible implementation of your 2FA scheme on the block chain itself?  I've got my order sitting in the cart, but I'm worried that what if something happens and Titan has to shutdown. What would be the protocol for making sure everyone with 2FA gets their private keys?

@bmoconno,

I've actually thought the same thing when it comes to the coins but if your really concerned about it you could always empty the value into your personal wallet. Anyway, the coin itself is worth the purchase imo! Great looking coins!

Has anyone redeemed any of these coins? Can anyone verify that they are actually funded?

Also wanting to know if anybody has redeemed yet.

Great looking coin...hats off.

I have redeemed a few of them...bought them when BTC was $400ish and then we spiked to 1k+ so I cashed some out.  The coins were funded with no issues when I redeemed them.  I only purchase the private key versions...not tried the 2 factor.

Thanks for the info.

I redeemed about 6 Titan coins recently so I could jump into the Litecoin / Bitcoin low ratio. All 6 of my coins were private key versions and all were fully funded as expected. I used blockchain.info to import and transfer to btce.

I acquired one of these coins and I will not buy another one.  There is no way to reference the public key on the coin itself.  There is a code on the coin that is associated in their proprietary database using their website.  I have a private key version and the only way I can confirm the funds is to look up a code on the coin itself using their website and by doing that, I can get the public key.  The whole reason to order a private key version is to not have to rely on titanbtc.com.  If they go out of business, there is no way to reference the coin on the blockchain unless you saved the information previously.
  
This makes it sketchy as hell to sell since it introduces more need to trust than is usually there with other physical coins.  Total deal breaker.

Bad news indeed. Private keys will last forever, but no business or website will last FOREVER, and once that goes down, your coins go down with them. Or if you're in a pinch and need to access the keys during the small chance their servers are offline or their hosting is down, you're shit out of luck too.

That's quite a shame, otherwise the coin/design is beautiful.

The private keys are underneath the holograms so even if the site goes down you can access the information nessessary to import the BTC directly but I get the concern becasue one would essentially have to crack the coin in order to do this.

I have a private key version, so theoretically, I can claim the funds at any time.  It's not being able to reference the coin on the blockchain using the information on the coin itself that kills me.  With any other physical coin I've purchased, I can derive the public key using the first bits on my own.
 
You're right though, if they go out of business, their 2 Factor coins are useless.

Thats why I never bought any 2 factor coins , just private key versions, but I get the concerns here . Im sure TitanBTC will think of somthing different for the LTC versions (hopefully)

There's lots of reasons why we chose to centralize the coin database and use our own coin ID, but I think they're probably all in the thread above.  Having fewer steps to verify that the coin's address is funded is the big one.  Anyone can pick up one of our coins and scan the back with a smartphone, regardless of whether they know what a bitcoin is or not. 

The 2-factor coins have less of a learning curve for people who are just getting into bitcoins.  They typically like the fact that they can redeem them on our website.  For people that understand bitcoins, we proudly sell the exact same coins with private keys.  We're not running any kind of fractional reserve, so if we need to shut down the business, we'll be emailing out links to download an encrypted version of the private keys for all our 2FA coins.  We'll also be keeping the site running for many years after we shut down.  The hosting and maintenance is already bought and paid for.  Nobody is getting screwed when we shut down. 

For those that were waiting for it, Here's the thread for our 1 oz. gold coins.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=675359.0

I need your help. I have a 2013 Titan Bitcoin, fully funded. I can look it up on the site and it confirms the value. I cannot move it to a wallet and I cannot find Tim Fillmore. He does not answer LinkedIn messages and did not respond to a certified letter asking for his help. Apparently he sent some sort of email confirmation that I need, but I never got it or it was lost en route. Do you have any suggestions?
My email is ted_mudge@yahoo.com

It would be worth your while looking at this thread

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5369583.0

There certainly appears to have been issues - hopefully Tim from Titan will sort things out ???

:)