A Sydney-based company has announced plans to establish what it claims as the world's first crypto-currency bank, backed by a reserve of 100,000 bitcoins - worth A$79 million at current exchange rates.At present, however, the bank - dubbed Denariuz Bank in honour of the ancient Roman coin, according to its founder, Dr Craig Steven Wright - has yet to attain an APRA licence.Wright, who is also the head of Denariuz' parent, Hotwire Pre-emptive Intelligence Group, said the company was in the process of securing an APRA licence, although he declined to say whether it had yet formally applied. In the interim, he said, a range of other financial services would be made available by piggy-backing on the Australian financial services licence of a partner. He declined to name the partner involved.He was similarly opaque about the overseas backers of the venture, who, Wright said, had put up the 100,000 bitcoin reserve.Bitcoin is variously described as a virtual or crypto-currency. It emerged in 2009 as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system which allows online transfer of funds. These funds can, if required, be converted through a bitcoin exchange into hard currency, although one of the better known exchanges, Mt Gox, suspended operations this week because of technical difficulties.Undaunted, Wright's Hotwire Pre-emptive Intelligence Group, which was itself only established last June, announced yesterday that it would launch a bitcoin wallet, called Coin-Exch, and establish Denariuz Bank later this year in a bid to legitimise Bitcoin. While Australia is the first cab off the rank, Wright has also established Denariuz Ltd in the UK, using the shell of a Doncaster-based company which had fallen dormant.The news of the planned bitcoin bank was met with scepticism on one internet forum yesterday, which questioned why the virtual currency needed a bank as it was always conceived as a way to allow peer-to-peer transactions to take place securely without intermediaries.Wright told Banking Day that Denariuz was being established to create a "trusted entity" to securely store bitcoins, and to offer new services, such as peer-to--peer loans and investment portfolios, and a mechanism for making digital rights related payments. He said that the company also had plans to operate both a currency exchange and an international clearing house for trusted users of the virtual currency. A relative newcomer to financial services, Wright already boasts an extraordinarily diverse LinkedIn profile. His profile notes that after a stint as a chef, in the early 1990s, Wright studied fuel science, nuclear physics, theology, law and psychology, and is now an adjunct lecturer in computing and maths at Charles Sturt University. This is besides establishing a series of different companies and designing the security architecture for Lasseters online casino.