Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

by nvk • 3 years ago

34 115 3 years ago

We could print pieces of folded paper containing wallets with a standard amount of satoshi and.... wooops, we just invented cash again

brianf02• 3 years ago

This is reductive. It may bear some resemblance to cash but it's more like a voucher, and the actual value is transferred on an immutable ledger. Wish Hacker News wasn't so curmudgeonly about crypto and actually tried to imagine the multitude of ways it would improve society if adopted.

arcticbull14• 3 years ago

Wish Hacker News wasn't so curmudgeonly about crypto and actually tried to imagine the multitude of ways it would improve society if adopted.

I wish crypto could improve society, but it can't.

That said this is a neat hack. Reminds me of what the Kong folks were doing, I bought a couple of bills as a sousvenir. [1]

[1] https://kong.cash/

V__2• 3 years ago

I'm not going to argue against some benefits' crypto can have. Especially with the under banked. But it had over a decade to improve society and so far the main use case is: Trick people with tech-bro talk and then scam them.

PretzelPirate• 3 years ago

Exactly. The idea of cash is great: we can pay each other without intermediaries and we know that the payment we're receiving has the value it appears to.

Moving to a cashless society has some real drawbacks when it comes to privacy and freedom.

Digital cash that can give us the befits of paper money without the privacy drawbacks of CBDCs or 3rd party middlemen isn't a bad thing at all.

dragonwriter• 3 years ago

Wish Hacker News wasn’t so curmudgeonly about crypto and actually tried to imagine the multitude of ways it would improve society if adopted.

Is it curmudgeonly to be uninterested in searching for problems for an overhyped solution than is sadly lacking in them? Well, fine, then I’m happy to be a curmudgeon.

zinekeller3• 3 years ago

Maybe it's because most of those people have actually sincerely thought about it but saw cryptocurrencies to be a worse solution than the current ones? Most cryptocurrencies are fiat currencies (just not derived from government trust) after all, and most currency problems stems from those questions of trust (so let's assume that everyone adopts one: it won't solve any societal problem).

ElevenLathe2• 3 years ago

I'll bite: What are some of the multitude of ways that cryptocurrency can improve society if adopted?

taeric2• 3 years ago

Stated this way, though, we reinvented credit/gift cards?

onionisafruit• 3 years ago

A lot of us earned our right to be curmudgeons by getting excited about it ten years ago only to see it play out very differently from our expectations.

ufo• 3 years ago

We can also imagine the ways that Bitcoin can make society worse. Satscard already gives some suggestions in their proposed designs, several of which reference El Salvador.

CrampusDestrus3• 3 years ago

it's more like a voucher, and the actual value is transferred on an immutable ledger.

a dollar is a voucher for the US economy and the actual value was transferred on an immutable ledger, i.e. append-only physical reality of the universe

mbesto• 3 years ago

but it's more like a voucher

Vouchers already exist - they're called cashier checks.

transferred on an immutable ledger.

Which isn't universally a good thing. If someone steals your voucher, there is no recourse. If someone steals a cashier's check, I can call the bank (and sovereign authorities).

Said differently, one is not equivocally better than the other. There's a tradeoff.

Wish Hacker News wasn't so curmudgeonly about crypto and actually tried to imagine the multitude of ways it would improve society if adopted.

I wish crypto advocates would stop being such apologists on HN. It's not productive. Make your statement, explain your rationale and defend your position.

Yizahi2• 3 years ago

Which society it would improve? No extradition offshores, with Giancarlo, Czao, Paolo, Machinski, Sun, Bankrun-Fraud and many others? Maybe so. The problem is that I belong to a different society.

tastyfreeze5• 3 years ago

Not the same. A paper wallet has actual value like a metal coin. Now if the paper wallet could not be redeemed for sats you have a pretty piece of paper like cash.

CrampusDestrus3• 3 years ago

What's the value of a bitcoin? The price it took to mine it in dollars?

kube-system4• 3 years ago

Coins of modern currencies have fiat values far beyond their base metals.

tsukikage2• 3 years ago

as actual value like a metal coin

...you mean, the way you can melt a coin down for its metal value? You can use the paper for its value as... paper?

I'm not convinced "you can wipe your butt with it" makes a good case for its value, tbh

lobstrosity420• 3 years ago

Yeah, it’s the same thing as government issued currency the moment you put it in paper. A corollary is that digital dollars on your banking app is just like crypto.

brianf02• 3 years ago

Not the same, BTC can't be created / devalued at will.

amanj414• 3 years ago

I would say this is more analogous to a debit card

agravier• 3 years ago

Could we fix the typo in the title? It almost phisically hurts to read.

nvk2• 3 years ago

Ha! fixed.

psychphysic• 3 years ago

How's it work? Website explains nothing.

amanj414• 3 years ago

There's a video. It would appear there is an app on your phone which contains public wallet information, but then this NFC card contains your wallet private key. The card is encrypted with a short pin code. If you want to make a tx you have to use phone app and tap card to phone to sign the tx (after typing in the PIN to decrypt key)

ada19812• 3 years ago

But can’t I simply clone the signal that the chip emits using flipper or something similar?

amanj414• 3 years ago

I'm assuming based on the demo video that the private key is encrypted via the "CVC" code. Not great security but enough that someone would need at least a little while to brute force. Perhaps a solution where you only load a little cash onto it

nvk2• 3 years ago

No. It's a signed message.

ada19812• 3 years ago

But if I replay the signaled message and have the code? I must be confused how this works.

amanj414• 3 years ago

This is interesting, though ultimately the private key is ostensibly only protected by a pin code of a few digits. At the end of the day that might be ok since no one would reasonably carry a large amount of cash in their wallet. Perhaps one would only load small amounts to their corresponding BTC wallet for the card.

cryptohuney2• 3 years ago

Problem is your parents or anyone else in the mainstream still won't use it. There is no denomination and they don't know that it won't be hacked. There is a reason that physical assets in private vaults are fiat and precious metals... their value is self-evident and therefore completely trusted and fungible by everyone. Once you cloak the value in a card, all bets are off for mainstream adoption.

cryptohuney2• 3 years ago

Problem is your parents or anyone else in the mainstream still won't use it. There is no denomination and they won't have any confidence that it won't be hacked. There is a reason that physical assets in private vaults are fiat and precious metals... their value is self-evident with the printed or forged denomination and therefore these assets are completely trusted and fungible by everyone. Once you cloak the value in a card behind proprietary tech, all bets are off for mainstream adoption.

Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

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