Nice picture!

Yes, the 1 oz. gold coins are in production now.  They are about the same diameter as the "Goldine" coin but are thicker with engraving on the coins edge that states the weight and purity.  The first batch of gold coins will be ready to ship by late January.



   

We've already made the production run of 1,000 for 2013 on the Silver coins.  That die is decommissioned.  We're engraving the dies for the 2014 edition now.  We got a late start on selling the Silver coins and they didn't start shipping until December 6th, so we still have around 750 left in the 2013 edition.  We will sell those until they're gone (Probably February or March if I had to guess).

Each coin comes with a certificate of authenticity that shows its edition number, and we're going to be adding the edition number to the coin ID page shortly.  We'll be publishing a tally of the total number of coins produced for each edition.

In answer to your first question, the short answer is yes we're registered. 

The longer answer is that FinCEN just isn't really sure what to do in our case.  They originally asked us to register as a currency exchange, and then we revised it to a money transmitter.  Because we can clearly show that we're not transferring money from person A to person B, we don't fall under the traditional definition of a money transmitter but it's a bit complex for the average FinCEN employee to understand, so we're erring on the side of compliance for now.  We're registered and complying with AML/KYC policies as needed. 

In answer to your second question, yes we take BTC and first-class shipping is free worldwide.  USPS priority is $25 (select international express for the shipping option at checkout).

Here's a few pictures of a private key coin being redeemed.

https://www.titanbtc.com/how-to-redeem-private-key-titan-bitcoins/

I'm sorry it's not more clear on the website, but we do sell coins with the full 30-digit private key included.  

There's an option to select whether you want a private key version or a 2FA version of the coin on the product page before you add the coin to your cart.  See the product page, right underneath the price.

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

I'll get someone working on making that clearer on the website today.
  

That's tricky but we can probably make it work.  Could you send an email to sales@titanbtc.com and give them the details of what you're looking for?  They can make up a custom invoice for you. 

Fair warning, though.  We had some stolen credit card purchase attempts (as we expected) and as a result, for the next month or so, we'll need to ship to the billing address associated with the credit card. 

Sorry for the inconvenience there.

We're looking at late January for the 1 oz. gold coins.

We track coin ownership for our 2-factor coins as a security/anti-counterfeiting measure.  We're working on making ownership tracking decentralized, but we haven't come up with a good way to make this product "trust-free".  I'm certainly open to suggestions on that topic. We've explored a few ideas, but its likely there will always be some aspect of our products that involve some trust on the part of customers. 

I don't know Trade Fortress, so I can't comment on the inputs.io fiasco.  I'd like to believe he had good intentions to start, but he also had a reason to stay anonymous.  We're definitely NOT anonymous.  If Mike Caldwell stole everyone's BTC, I would expect he would be arrested, tried and jailed for theft, no? 

 

Can you elaborate on how you're thinking this would be implemented? 

We don't currently have need to generate public/private keys from our servers, as we use cold storage for all BTC that is used to fund our coins, so I'm not sure that the secure deterministic public key generation BIPS32 offers would help us, but I'm honestly not up to speed on the latest protocol updates. 

What are the problems you're hoping to address and what are you envisioning the solution to look like?

Credit card ordering is back.  

We battled and negotiated with FIVE different banks/merchant account underwriters before landing on one with the best rates and terms, so please appreciate that the price markup you see at checkout when selecting to pay with a credit/debit card represents the lowest we could find at this time.  

We'll be looking to leverage our good standing to lower the rates in the future.

I'm sorry for the unreliable pricing.  We've been working on coding out an automated pricing script that updates product pricing and buys on the exchanges in real-time when orders are placed, but its a manual process at the moment as that code still needs more work.
 
It's tricky to price things in BTC because we have both fixed costs in USD and fixed costs in BTC for each product.  The official price is $85 over spot for the brass coins and $226 over spot for the silver.  If BTC doubles, then the markup over spot BTC is cut in half (I mean the pirce in BTC drops...does that makes sense?).

If anyone has had problems with price or feels like they got a bad deal, just reach out to sales@titanbtc.com and we'll make it right.  

Gold has its own set of rules.  Dealers still have to report on purchases or sales over a certain amount, but its mainly to prevent gold being used as a tax shelter, from what I've been told. 

It also depends on whether it's bars of gold bullion or coins being sold, as the requirements for reporting sales / purchases of coins is less stringent.

Mike, you may want to look into the laws for selling your Silver coins specifically, because there are specific rules regarding precious metals that might serve as a loophole under which you can clearly operate without doing KYC/AML.

 

I agree completely that FinCEN is barking up the wrong tree.  The ONLY issue they have to stand on is the KYC issue. 

From what I understand, (and maybe you could clarify the justification here, Mike) because the bitcoin address Mike's receiving payment from isn't attached to an identity explicitly, he doesn't necessarily know that he is collecting money from the same person that he is sending money to.

Isn't that the crux of the issue?

You guys make me laugh on a very deep and philosphical level.

In case anyone missed it, here's a cross post from the marketplace regarding our Silver coins:

The Titan One Silver coins are now available. Production is limited to 1,000 coins for the 2013 edition. These are "proof-grade" in their quality, and have a mirror finish in the polished areas.  They're minted from 1 troy ounce of .999 pure silver (31.1 grams).  

Read more at https://www.titanbtc.com/product/titan-one-silver/


Just a reminder, these are available in 2 versions:

"2-factor Authenticated" (Each coin is registered to an email address, which can be changed at anytime.  Access to the email is required to redeem)

-OR-

"Private Key included" (Just like Casascius coins, the only copy of the 30-digit private key is included underneath the hologram)









Credit card payments will be available next week on our site.

Lastly, Thanks for the warm welcome in Vegas this week, guys.  The 1 oz gold versions of this coin will be available soon.  If anyone wants to PM with pre-orders for the gold coins, that will help us gauge how much bullion to buy for the full production run.

I looked into embedding an RFID loop, but I doubt it would survive the minting process. Extremely finely tuned magnetic signatures could work, but its impractical at the minting stage and would need a very sensitive magnetic "reader".  I think this HAS to be done as a post minting process myself, but I like the way you're doing things as well.

By the way, Great talk in Vegas, J.  I was hoping to get a chance to shake hands, but time was tight.  Next time, hopefully.

love it.

I've got a Raspberry Pi sitting on my desk that I purchased for the express purpose of trying out some distributed autonomous mining schemes. (though not for mining bitcoins...cause ASIC)

We're OK jumping through hoops to work with U.S. laws.  FinCEN is an agency whose main purpose is to limit organized crime activity.  I'm not saying they are GOOD necessarily, but there is a kernel in good in their charter.

Laws are always framed in the their own historical context.  The radical innovation of peer-to-peer money transfer that bitcoin represents is a brand new historical context.  Laws need to be changed to adapt to this new environment. 

I'm not angry that the laws are outdated, so much as eager to see them revised.  To each his own, though.




 

 

This is EXACTLY how we feel.  Seriously, we've been working on a solution for a while and that checks these boxes.  The currency needs to be durable and convertable into fungible BTC without relying on any central point.

Durability is an issue, but can be a "hardware" problem.  We'll solve it with materials selection or similar.

Convertibility without relying a central database that tracks ownership probably needs to rely on blockchain info.  The protocol has the capabilities.  We're working on building a custom client (interviewing another programmer this morning hopefully) that will allow redemption and ownership tracking to be done by the blockchain seamlessly.

ON material choice...The cost of the currency production will ALWAYS be a factor.  Ideally I want physical bitcoins that look good but are also obtainable for an extremely low premium over spot value.  There's always room for dual value coins/currency that are minted from precious metals, but less expensive physical currency will have more utility in my opinion. 

Great ideas, Anonymint.  Seriously.

We won't be receiving any letters from FinCEN because we're already registered with them. 

Thank you for your concern though.  It's a complex area because the laws are likely to change shortly in order to adapt to the growing bitcoin economy.

We'll be complying with whatever is required for us to sell to customers in the U.S. and abroad.

That's a great question.  It brings up a point that I don't talk much about (publicly at least) on purpose.

Private Key only coins are relatively easy to counterfeit.  We don't recommend that you buy private key coins from un-trusted individuals and this is one of the biggest reasons why.  I've already seen counterfeit Casascius coins and unfortunately there's not much stopping the activity (except traditional law enforcement of course).  As a result, its likely that the resale value of 2-factor coins will be higher, as the trust in private key coins diminishes.

However, for people that don't want to rely on our company being involved in the redemption of 2-factor coins, private keys make sense.  We're working on a custom client that will allow our future 2-factor coins to be redeemed without the need of our company's involvement, so future coins will have the best of both worlds. 

For now though, 2-factor probably makes sense if you're looking to resell a handful on ebay or through classified ads.  We find that those newer to the bitcoin community prefer 2-factor coins.  However, if you have relationships built up with customers and they will trust your products' authenticity, private keys probably still have a broader appeal.