Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

Hi folks, I’m one of the contributors at Kong — https://kong.cash/. Kong is a physical cryptocurrency that looks, feels and works like traditional cash. You can think of it as an ultra-secure, time locked cryptocurrency wallet with a fixed face value — no one can access the token except for the holder of the note after a period of several years. It consists of a secure element and NFC chips mounted on a flexible PCB with a full color print. There are several gold elements that also serve as direct i2c interfaces to challenge the secure element’s authenticity by signing information with its private key.

Kong is based on two primary observations; (1) it’s really difficult to use and secure cryptocurrency for most people and (2) cryptocurrency has been useful as a means of speculation, but poor for actually buying goods and services. It’s our hypothesis that by making cryptocurrency more like cash it may be possible that people ultimately use it as a means of exchange.

Our background is in secure embedded hardware (Lockitron, YC S09); over the past year we did a deep dive to really consider how cryptocurrency key material is handled today. We found that cryptocurrency has a unique challenge and corresponding opportunity; unlike IoT products where the cost of a breach might be difficult to quantify, breaking a hardware wallet can yield clear rewards to the hacker.

We developed Kong around the notion that security should be isolated to the smallest possible footprint — in the case of Kong, to an individual single purpose secure element chip. Doing so removes additional layers of firmware and software in order to limit the attack surface (it also broadly questions how good are our existing secure chips today).

To date we’ve handed out close to 2,500 Kong notes; we’re now exploring more ways to distribute physical crypto. Take a look at https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks... for an in-depth technical overview.

I fail to see how this solves a usability issue in developed nations. This also reintroduces the portability problems that are present in current fiat.

I'm curious, have you tried passing an airport border security with several of these notes, and have you been asked what they are :)? Do you have to declare them?

If the private key is inside of the note and stays the same when it changes hands, how do I know you did not make a copy of it when you created the note?

Just like cash.

So if you use a 500 Kong note to someone for a 10 Kong item, they will have to make 490 Kong in change. 4x 100 Kong notes, 1x 50 Kong note and 2x 20 Kong notes...etc.