So far we've been discussing about buying and selling bitcoins that are stored electronically in your wallet. They are secured by a digital private key which is encrypted by wallet software. Being completely digital, these coins are only available and managed online.

Physical Bitcoins is a concept that allows us to hold a bitcoin in our hand by embedding the private key into a precious object. The objects openly display the public address that can be used to verify that the funds are in fact available. This makes it convenient to exchange Bitcoin, hand to hand, by not having to involve a software wallet. In addition, since the private key is never stored online, it makes hacking very difficult.

As a collector's item, physical Bitcoins often have a numismatic value placed above the actual value of the electronic Bitcoin. In addition, the physical object is often a precious metal, such as gold or silver. The combined values of all these aspects are used in estimating the full...