Re: Interview: Kipochi founder Pelle Braendgaard

On Aug 8, 2013, at 6:17 PM, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com> wrote:

> On 8/8/13 7:03 PM, Kumar McMillan wrote:
>>> We are not accepting payment orders via SMS. We only authenticate users via incoming SMS. There is no need to trust SMS messages received from them.
>> 
>> ok, thanks, I understand it better. The bitcoin wallet is not *on* the phone, it's stored on a web server like other online wallets.
> Storage on the Web is not implicitly safe. Today, you have a third party (aka. Bank) holding on to you coins, look at what's happened there.
> 
> The safest best is storage on a device you control. The allure of perceived convenience re. online solutions is the shortest route to compromise.

I think that's an interesting model but I have yet to see a secure way to do that. I think M-Pesa requires you to use a SIM kit that has a keystore chip in it (something like that) but there aren't many standard ways to do it that I know of. If anyone knows of ways to do it I'm curious to learn about them. The challenge is how to keep private keys on a device without *any* other part of the system being able to access that. Anyway, there are lots of complications, like, what happens when you lose your phone? It's like losing a wallet with all your cash (all of it), not good. Centralized web services have their advantages.

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> 
> Kingsley Idehen	
> Founder & CEO
> OpenLink Software
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Received on Friday, 9 August 2013 02:14:04 UTC