Re: [Bitcoin-development] Sending Bitcoins using RSA keys

On 4/27/13 10:14 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>
>
>
> On 24 April 2013 16:46, Craig B Agricola <craig@theagricolas.org 
> <mailto:craig@theagricolas.org>> wrote:
>
>     Maybe I'm missing something crucial, but what benefit does this
>     dance give over
>     the slightly more obvious mechanism of simply:
>     1) Alice generates a new address with her bitcoin client and sends
>     the BTC to
>        this new address
>     2) Alice exports the private key for that address (there is a well
>     supported
>        format for that)
>     3) Alice writes a nice email to Bob, including that exported
>     private key
>     4) Alice encrypts the email with Bob's public key using GPG and
>     sends it to him
>        by email
>     5) Bob decrypts the email
>     6) Bob imports the private key into his wallet
>
>
> Yes this works too.

This is exactly what S/MIME, an existing protocol facilitates right now.
A Certificate with a WebID in its SAN enables anyone get this going 
without artificial dependencies on CA networks.

>
> However is it dependent on the bitcoin client address generation 
> algorithm?
>
> I think what I'm trying to describe is something more akin to the way 
> a shared secret is generated by TLS.
>
> Agree, that the wallet is also shared, ive not yet worked out a way to 
> 'blind' one side of the wallet, but nor have a proved it's impossible, 
> so still working onthat :)
>
>
>     There's no need for sending a whole wallet; just the one key is
>     needed.  Every
>     bit of infrastructure needed above already exists.  And of course,
>     the above
>     has the same issue as your proposal; this is a way for two
>     trusting parties to
>     send BTC without using the Bitcoin network, but it's not a payment
>     mechanism.
>     They now share control of an address; whoever spends that BTC
>     first wins, so
>     until Bob uses the Bitcoin network to spend that BTC to another
>     address that
>     only he controls, it's still in joint custody.  And if ensuring
>     that he has
>     control of the BTC is the last (implicit) step in the procedure
>     above, as well
>     as yours, then they might as well have simply used the Bitcoin
>     network to do
>     the transfer in the first place.
>
>     Did I miss the point entirely?
>
>
> Perhaps I've not described the problem statement as clearly as I 
> could, I'll work on it.  Essentially it's an automated way to 
> bootstrap the RSA key community together with bitcoin.  e.g. 99% of 
> GPG users probably dont have a bitcion wallet or address or client.  I 
> think maybe a user story will help.

Not just GPG, remember S/MIME too :-)

Anyway, best to spell out the problem in as simple a manner possible. 
Then align with the solution you are trying to create which (in my eyes) 
boils down to using standards based components that already exist.

Kingsley

>
>      -Craig
>
>     PS. Re-reading, I realize that the above might come off sounding
>     snarky or
>         dismissive; it's not intended that way.  I'm wondering if I'm
>     missing the
>         big picture.
>
>
> Not snarky at all!  Appreciate the feedback...
>
>
>     On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 04:18:38PM +0200, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>     > So there's a slight world divide in digital payments with
>     bitcoin using
>     > ECDSA and GPG, payswarm / webid etc using largely RSA
>     >
>     > Here's how to bring the two worlds together and enable bitcoins
>     be sent
>     > over webid or payswarm
>     >
>     >
>     > Problem: Alice and Bob have RSA key pairs, but no public bitcoin
>     > addresses.  Alice wants to send 1 BTC to Bob.
>     >
>     > 1. Alice takes Bob's WebID and encrpyts it with her private key
>     (to create
>     > entropy) ...
>     >
>     > 2. Alice uses that message as the seed to produce btc address
>     (as per
>     > http://brainwallet.org ) with ECDSA key pair
>     >
>     > 3. Alice sends coins to this address
>     >
>     > 4. Alice and then encrypts the seed again with Bob's public key
>     >
>     > 5. Bob decrypts the seed using his private key
>     >
>     > 6. Bob can now use the seed to recreate the wallet and spend the
>     coins
>     >
>     > Unless I've made an error, I believe this unites the web
>     paradigm and
>     > crypto currency paradigm into one potentially giant eco system ...
>
>     >
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-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
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