Author: Michael Gronager 2013-04-29 16:50:59
Published on: 2013-04-29T16:50:59+00:00
A discussion on the development of a physical Bitcoin wallet took place on the Bitcoin-development mailing list in April 2013. The Crypto Stick, an open-source USB key for encryption and secure authentication, had been accepted as a mentor organization for Google Summer of Code 2013 and one of their project ideas was to develop such a wallet. However, Peter Todd cautioned that hardware Bitcoin wallets need a display so the wallet can show where the coins being signed are being sent. He also noted that support for the upcoming payment protocol would be necessary so the wallet can verify that the address is actually the intended recipient's address. The current Crypto Stick hardware does not have a button for user interaction. Todd further explained that PGP smart cards and USB keys already face this problem, but the consequences of signing the wrong document are usually less severe than sending funds to a thief. He pointed out that hardware security for private keys is important, but its protections are limited. Despite his caution, Todd expressed excitement at the possibility of ECC key support being added to the Crypto Stick in the future.The original post included a link to the opencryptotoken project, which offers ECC capabilities and is based on an Atmel microcontroller. The poster suggested that adding a display to it would be straightforward. The email thread also included a promotion for New Relic, a SaaS-based application performance monitoring service.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T15:59:06.615343+00:00