For those who are thinking about dipping their toes into the cryptocurrency boom but are afraid of being duped, leading antivirus and identity theft protection company Norton Lifelock is offering a possible solution.

Norton Crypto is "a new feature designed to help consumers securely and easily mine cryptocurrency through the trusted Norton 360 platform," the company said in a press release today (June 2).

Norton 360 already offers identity theft protection services through its core anti-virus program, password manager, cloud backup service, VPN, and LifeLock add-on. The Norton Crypto feature includes both a coin miner and a cryptocurrency wallet.

"Customers can track and transfer earnings to a Norton Crypto wallet stored in the cloud so that they cannot be lost due to hard drive failure," the press release states.

"Some Norton 360 customers participating in Norton's Early Adopter Program will be invited to mine Ethereum starting tomorrow (June 3)," the press release added.

"Norton Crypto is expected to be available to all Norton 360 customers in the coming months.

While Ethereum is great, the cryptocurrency will likely stop mining Ether tokens by the end of 2021 as it migrates to the new "Ethereum 2.0" platform. So we asked if Norton Crypto would allow its customers to mine other types of tokens.

Gagan Singh, NortonLifeLock's Chief Product Officer, didn't really give us an answer, but did provide this statement:

"There is a lot of innovation happening in the crypto economy and we continue to monitor it. Initially, Norton Lifelock will focus on top-tier crypto where our members can get the best rewards for their computing power. This is a very dynamic space that changes weekly, and we are open to the possibility of adding other currencies in the future.

In other words, bitcoin, which has reached the point where it takes an enormous amount of computing power to mine a single coin, may be gone; Dogecoin?

It seems a bit odd that an antivirus and identity theft protection company would jump in with both feet on cryptocurrencies. Ethereum is highly regarded, and several Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, have invested in ethereum.

When will Norton and other antivirus companies offer software that mines coins as well?

"Since crypto mining is already a big part of our customers' digital lives, Norton Lifelock has accelerated the pace of innovation to ensure a safe and easy way for customers to mine crypto," a Norton Lifelock spokesperson told us.

"The company will start slowly, focusing on allowing customers to securely mine Ethereum, but NortonLifeLock is considering adding reputable cryptocurrencies in the future.