Why would you need a btc bank, you can just hold the btc yourself? What benefit would they add?

Yes, I believe that's right. For example I think this recent comment has a point:


Securing bitcoins properly is not the easiest thing in the world. That means a market probably exists for doing this reliably, and possibly even with insurance.

You don't need banks to store any of your money. Still, I think bitcoin storage will be big business for banks. I expect most people will leave management of their BTC to a bank at some point. If the price were low enough even I would buy my bitcoins from the bank, store them there, and use their phone app to spend them.

While we have reputable sites like Coinbase.com that will store your Bitcoins for you, we truly need one with actual insurance in case of theft.

Split the private keys of your saving's account with the bank. Requires physical presence to move funds to Hot Wallet. Nobody gets hurt.

How many bitcoins have been lost to house fires or other physical incidents ?

The need for a BTC Vault is the same need for Private Security Boxes nowadays. Precious metals, important documents, or money are safely stored away from immediate access by the owner. There's a demand for it. With the plus side of the bank not being able to open it and sneak inside.

I'd consider a BTC vault/bank for part of my coins, not all of it, if some criteria were met:

- Away from my immediate access;

- Away from bank's immediate access;

- Some clever scheme where we split a private key, or use a M-to-N transaction everytime I want to make a transfer from my savings account;

- The client cannot lose the client-key (or the coins become inaccessible), but several not so secured copies can be made since physical presence is required;

- The bank cannot lose its bank-key, also (reputation, insurance);

- Neither of the parts can move the funds alone. Just the client or heirs, in any physical branch of the bank; (client-key + bank-key released by physical presence = private key)

- If the bank loses the bank-key, the client can prove that still has the client-key with a signature, and the bank would be accounted (reputation);

- If the client loses his key, the bank can prove with a signature that still has the other part of the key, and can't be accounted for the mishappening. Possibility of insurance resides on the bank's ability to safeguard data. In a disaster scenario for the bank (database leak), the losses would be mitigated by orders of magnitude, since the attacker needs the keys of all the clients in order to transfer funds.

If bitcoin becomes too valuable maybe we will see some kind of this proposed scheme.

^ Bingo.

Personally, I'll store mine myself, but I have family members asking me to get them some Casascius coins because they consider that the best way for *them* to store bitcoin (eg, they are not computer people). And I agree - most people are not capable enough to properly store a non-trivial value of bitcoins themselves. A bank for securely storing bitcoin, that insures deposits against theft/loss, would be a great service.