Coinpunk - Run your own Bitcoin wallet service

http://coinpunk.org

by kyledrake • 13 years ago

125 37 13 years ago

coinpunk.org

f055• 13 years ago

Sweet, exactly what I was looking for.

ianpurton• 13 years ago

Is this storing the private keys on the server ?

nwh5• 13 years ago

Probably, and you can't really get around that.

Client side encryption in JavaScript isn't at all secure either, no matter how much Blockchain.info would like you to think otherwise.

alptrv• 13 years ago

can you elaborate why is client side encryption isn't secure at all?

flatfilefan2• 13 years ago

Can somebody please describe the most basic use case for this server?

Anderkent2• 13 years ago

Accessing bitcoins from your smartphone, I guess? Assuming you don't want to host your wallet with someone else.

flatfilefan2• 13 years ago

There is the android wallet app already. I wonder why would one want to keep his wallet on a server?

drivebyacct22• 13 years ago

I find Bitcoin cool. I love open source and I love web services. That having been said, I will very happily use an offline client for my Bitcoin needs. Not one that connects to the Internet and not one that primarily or even secondarily works via it.

(Yes, I'm more paranoid than most, I do keep them on an "offline" jump drive and sign transactions offline. But at the very least, I'd use Bitcoin-Qt, or Armory with encryption. I'll give this a closer look but it gives me the heebie-jeebies, maybe I'm wrong for feeling that.)

It certainly looks nice and usable, though!

Mahn• 13 years ago

I don't think this is paranoid at all, so far all the online hosted wallet services, including exchanges, are young companies run by few people with usually questionable technical competence, and hence are very prone to being hacked every now and then. There's no "Google" of Bitcoin yet that you could to some extent trust.

NoahTheDuke• 13 years ago

How do you send/receive transactions to/from the blockchain, then?

npongratz• 13 years ago

Amory's tutorial explains transacting using an offline wallet:

https://bitcoinarmory.com/using-offline-wallets-in-armory/

drivebyacct22• 13 years ago

Note that I sign transaction offline. To put it simply your address is a private key, from which a public key (the public address) is derived. You can have one client, synced to the Blockchain, displaying your balanced, able to make transactions.

Then you take that transaction to an offline computer or source and sign it, take it back to the online computer and transmit it to the network. /roughly, see the other link for better information

jere• 13 years ago

>Help me buy cheap beer and fixed gear bikes

I think the name you were looking for is "Coin Hipster"

stcredzero• 13 years ago

"Coinster?" "Coin Hipster" just seems too tautological as two words. Coinster wold be no less so, but just seems less that way because it's "one word."

brennannovak• 13 years ago

I think the author meant that part as a joke- he's my friend and not actually a PBR drinking fixed gear riding hipster.

GigabyteCoin• 13 years ago

This is the last thing we need in the Bitcoin world... online wallet services run by people not even smart enough to roll their own.

Kudos to you and spending time on this project, it looks pretty slick, but it's a horrible thing for Bitcoin in general.

If the only thing it manages to accomplish is accelerate the rejection of online wallet services then I suppose it's a good thing.

mcantelon• 13 years ago

A lot of folks "smart enough to roll their own" have gotten hacked. A common, peer-reviewed implementation could be a long-term win.

tcdent• 13 years ago

Definitely. This is one of the largest benefits of open source software to me.

wmf• 13 years ago

Unless this provides the entire distro it seems like people are still going to get hacked through vulnerabilities in other software.

fragsworth2• 13 years ago

> it's a horrible thing for Bitcoin in general.

Absolute rubbish. Bitcoin needs to become easy to use. This is open-source, so it can eventually be turned into a full linux distribution that you can run on your own cloud server. You don't have to know shit about shit to have one of these.

Once we have that, you'll be able to run your own secure bitcoin wallet online (on a server that you own) and access it from anywhere without having to install any clients. For something like $10/month.

arekanderu• 13 years ago

I agree that a project like this will only harm bitcoin.

petermelias• 13 years ago

I think the caveat in this discussion is that BTC needs something like this if and only IF it can be done securely.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of networked systems, the odds of that do seem quite low unless connection security gets a massive upgrade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography

tlrobinson• 13 years ago

I agree, but mostly because it doesn't sound like there's any focus on security, and it's too "high level" to really bake in enough security. By "high level" I mean you bring your own Ubuntu/webserver/bitcoind/database installation.

I wish there were a project that focused on providing an extremely secure platform (Linux/BSD distro + bitcoind securely configured out of the box, if that's even possible, or maybe a Bitcoin PaaS) for Bitcoin applications, then you could layer stuff like Coinpunk on top of that.

rdl• 13 years ago

I wonder how many people from hn will be at the Bitcoin 2013 conference this weekend. The Thursday meetup thing was pretty cool, standing in the conference reg line right now.

Coinpunk - Run your own Bitcoin wallet service

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