Store of Value

“Store of Value” – A cartoon that illustrates how the vulnerability of digital assets to loss is shifting consumers back towards physical security.

For most of human history, wealth had a weight problem. Gold wasn’t just valuable, it was inconvenient. Women wore it as jewelry to keep it close, while others hid it, melted it down, or buried it in caves, relying on effort and friction for security.

Then humans removed the weight. Fintech has made payments instant, while blockchain went further and made money programmable. Value now moves globally in seconds, governed by code instead of institutions. But, it’s also far easier to lose. According to Chainalysis, crypto theft hit $3.4 BN in 2025. The recent $1.5 BN Bybit hack wasn’t a breakthrough in cryptography, it was attackers compromising a wallet interface, showing a legitimate transaction while redirecting funds underneath. Nothing was physically broken, people just signed the wrong thing.

While the technology has improved, most attacks now target the fragile human layer. AI is accelerating this shift, with impersonation scams up 1,400%. Voice cloning, deepfake video calls, and near-perfect wallet interface spoofing allow attackers to bypass technical defenses entirely, turning user approval into the weakest and most exploitable point in the system.

As a result, some consumers are switching back to physical security. They store keys on hardware wallets like Ledger Nano X, isolating access with air-gapped devices such as Coldcard Mk4, and even back up seed phrases on steel. Others go further, splitting keys across multiple devices or locations, deliberately adding friction to reduce the risk of a single mistake wiping everything out. Turns out the future of securing digital wealth might look a lot like the past.