Some inventions come around precisely when they can make the biggest impact. The tank, for example, made its debut during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Windows 95 arrived in our homes just as the internet was looking for its breakout event. Swiss luxury watchmaker A. Favre & Fils would appear to have taken this rule and turned it on its head by announcing, in the depths of a bear market, a $100,000 watch that contains a cryptocurrency wallet.
A. Favre et Fils – #what_is_the_missing_link from afavrefils on Vimeo.
Big on Price, Short on Details
A. Favre & Fils announced the creation of their watch (sorry, timepiece) on their website last week with the following description:
The new watch incorporates Blockchain technology and proprietary state-of-the-art security expertise to guarantee ultimate in-data security and privacy protection. The base of the device is a very fine watchmaking timepiece, hand-finished and equipped with an in-house manually wound mechanical movement.
What are these security measures? We aren’t told. That’s fine though, because if there’s something that 300-year-old watchmakers are known for its crypto security. The prototype is due for release in the second quarter of 2019, presumably when we will find out more details on small matters such as this.
There’s no doubt that the watch itself will be another fine example of the artistry that goes into mechanical watchmaking, but whether it will satisfy the crypto crowd is another. In the current market there is only one kind of clientele that this new watch will be likely to attract, whereas a year ago they might have had a surprisingly large number of pre-orders (followed by an equally large number of cancellations).
In the meantime, even those able to afford the world’s most expensive cryptocurrency wallet will be slumming it with the rest of us among the Ledgers and the Trezors. Shame.
