The specie market · cold storage
Specie.
Cover for high-value, hard-to-replace assets held in secured locations — and, for digital-asset firms, for the assets that sit offline in cold storage.
Specie is a market originally built for bullion, fine art and jewellery — irreplaceable value held in vaults and moved under guard. It has been extended to digital assets in cold, offline storage, where the largest balances of a custodian or exchange typically sit.
Because cold-stored assets are air-gapped, they attract the broadest available capacity and the most favourable treatment — provided the controls around key generation, storage and signing stand up to underwriting scrutiny.
What it responds to
- Physical theft of storage devices, hardware or media
- Theft or copying of private-key data in storage or in transit
- Physical destruction — fire, flood and natural perils at the vault
- Dishonest acts of employees responsible for the assets
What's typically excluded
- Market loss, depreciation and fluctuation in asset value
- Smart-contract or protocol failure (a separate, data-deficit line)
- Fraud by controlling principals, once proven
- War, state-actor acts and sanctioned counterparties
Who it's for
Custodians, exchanges and funds holding meaningful balances in cold, offline storage who need their largest, most static exposure properly covered.
The other lines
Crime
Cover for assets exposed in motion or online — warm and hot wallets, transfers and the operational float that has to stay live.
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Directors' & Officers'
Cover for the personal liability of founders, directors and officers — the people running a digital-asset firm under evolving regulation.
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See how specie, crime and D&O fit together across the custody chain.
OverviewGet indicative terms for your digital-asset firm.
Tell us how you operate. We'll return a structured view of what's coverable — in plain language, same business day.