Locking your crypto-currency in a USB stick is so yesterday.

Cold storage is about to get a major shakeup in the cryptocurrency markets.

A new avenue has opened for alternative investing. It’s the marriage of digital currency with tangible and valuable assets. There already is a designer watch that acts as deep cold storage for crypto wealth.

In the future, this trend may extend to art, luxury accessories and fine jewelry.

What is deep, cold storage?

Investors often hold crypto assets offline to safeguard from hacking and system failures. This is easily done by saving the crypto-currency wallet on a USB stick that is never plugged into an online machine or system.

Deep, cold storage goes a step further by adding another layer of physical security. For example, you might want to deposit the USB stick in a safe deposit box.

Instead of a safe, use an alternative physical asset

The new deal is to tie the USB stick to a wearable such as jewelry or accessory through an unhackable private key generated offline using random numbers.

Today you can buy limited edition art prints that function as deep cold storage wallets with QR codes and private keys. Future art collections could be the ‘avatars’ of today’s USB wallets.

These investors could gain from both appreciation in the wallet value and the value of the contents.