Bitcoin Forum

So we are developing a hardware wallet in the shape of a mobile case. We need to have the community's opinion whether they like it or not.

It does not matter the size, shape and colour of the hardware wallet. All what is needed is ability to secure our funds without crashing or without being hacked.

Agreed, if the entire wallet exists in this mobile case than it's as easy to lose as a wad of cash. It's like OpenDime, which is the size of a thumb drive and has the purpose of a bearer bond. Anyone in possession of the thumb drive has the possession of the bitcoin. This sounds awfully risky!

Why a Mobile Case? Any object, no matter the shape or size will eventually become easily recognisable and people will target you, because they can see that it is a hardware wallet. When I have a mobile wallet on my phone, it disguises the wallet, until I use it. So in normal circumstances my mobile phone is just like any other mobile phone, until someone see me using it for Crypto payments.

A hardware wallet in my opinion should be small and you should be able to hide it in plain sight. <disguised as every day objects>

We have a few designs in mind. Would love your opinion on that too. Until someone gets hold of the PIN, no one will be able to steal the funds. It will be BIP 32 and 39 compliant so the recovery seed will be all that will be required to recover the funds if the mobile case gets lost. There exists coolwallet which is basically a debit card shaped hardware wallet but I think it has greater chance of getting lost than a mobile phone. Plus we are trying to leverage cold storage to offer a 100% secure solution to your digital assets. The current solutions trezor and ledger we believe lack the design elements to go seamless with the mobile phones.

Here our rough design video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWUUdXPaR6U

Our website - https://cypherock.com

Your website is not loading property and don't think that someone will download your MP4 file as It's impossible to view directly from Google drive. Use Vimeo or YouTube.

Apologies for the video link. Uploaded it on youtube.

On your video: "hardware wallets cannot be used on mobile devices to make day to day transactions". This is incorrect. You can make transactions using your Ledger Nano S on mobile(not sure for Trezor). It's just a hassle due to you needing to use a usb cable to connect the devices.

The concept is nice though, but I wouldn't personally store my sort of "crypto bank" on this device, as I'd definitely prefer my main hardware wallet at home at a safety box rather than on my pocket everytime.

Doesnt really matter

What I meant by day to day transactions was in fact ease of use rather than questioning the ability to make transactions. And the motive is not to be having your entire crypto bank on the case, but rather the amount which you will trade/exchange with daily. This specifically - https://medium.com/@coinomi/90-of-crypto-mobile-apps-in-trouble-9cfdc77dd5fb

We want to replace the secure part of the ecosystem from the insecure part that is the phone in this case.

I know that having the hardware wallet attached to the phone will help the users keep their hardware wallet with them all the time. I guess that this was the main idea.

But:
* I use the mobile case to protect my phone. It has to be some sort of rubber/plastic/silicone combination. My guess is that your "case" will not protect the phone.
* One of the things most often stolen in the cities are the smartphones. Attaching a hardware wallet to that is not the best idea imho.

Unfortunately that is not the idea. The idea is to mitigate mobile software wallets risks which store the private keys on the mobile phone itself. Binance has announced Binance chain. We will have more decentralised exchanges in the few months time. And when we will need a mobile solution for that, that wont be available. The material we believe will work out as the mobile cases currently in the market since we will use flexible PCB boards in our design. And yeah, it will have the dual purpose since we need to protect the hardware wallet also. I get your concern of the smartphone being stolen. That will definitely cause a monetary loss of the hardware wallet only though and not its contained funds. However we found it to be a better solution than coolwallet - hardware wallet in the shape of debit card. Also, due to our portable nature of the device, we are going to offer smart band solution for the same wallet, though we think that is far off till we have more accepted merchants payments in crypto.

MIGHT be a good idea, but I personally don't know anyone who does their trading on a mobile phone honestly. I'm pretty sure there are a few that trade on their phones though, but take note that your target demographic here is very small.

On your website, it clearly says: World’s Safest Mobile Wallet

That's a huge claim to have to be completely honest; also knowing that you're not even selling the device yet. So you're implying that Cypherock(or whatever you will call the item/device) is safer than the Ledger Nano S and the Trezor?

Now imagine it being used for real payments in 5 years' time. Would you trust your mobile wallet with all those transactions that you wish to make? The market is so immature right now that only trading is possible for cryptocurrencies. As far as the claim, we know that if we manage to match their security which we will, we believe our design layer could bet them in the market.

As long as I'm sure my mobile device is safe enough, I'm fine with holding and risking less than $100 of bitcoin on my mobile wallet.


"we know that if we manage to match their security". That's the keyword right there. "IF". So it means you just know that you will match them, but you currently haven't. Hence you're wallet is definitely not the "World’s Safest Mobile Wallet", as of now.

In the future you won't necessarily have 100 dollars only. Secondly, trezor's code is open sourced. So we know we can reach atleast that security. As far as the security of your mobile phone is concerned, check the article posted in my previous comments.

Well, you don't need the hardware wallet to be a phone case to make the transactions from the phone safer. The user can plug in the hardware wallet only in case of transaction - and your hardware wallet can do that anyway, from what I understood.
I also know that losing the hardware wallet doesn't mean the funds getting lost, but it's quite an inconvenient, especially with the high volatility on the crypto currency markets.

All in all, I don't say that your wallet is bad. All I say that the shape of it doesn't look like an advantage from my point of view.

That's the problem. Can you imagine yourself carrying a hardware wallet to pay for your ice - cream in the mall? Do you think that it is a good user experience to take out a hardware everytime you need to transact from your phone and attach an OTG with your trezor? I believe keys (analogous to a separate hardware wallet) are more prone to getting lost than phones.

I think the problem is not the shape, but the security of the hardware. I do not think it's small enough to be easy to carry, because we're not going to take it away because we're afraid of missing and there's no reason to take it.

Let me rephrase what we are trying to build. We are not building just another hardware wallet. We are building the safest solution to your existing mobile crypto wallets like Bread wallet, trust wallet etc. by storing the private key in the hardware walle shaped as mobile case instead of your phones which are highly susceptible to malware atttacks.

Sorry but how did you just simply end up with that conclusion?

Sure, you might reach their level of security. But still, my point still stands. Your product still currently isn't the "World’s Safest Mobile Wallet" like you're claiming to.