Bitcoin Forum

I anticipate that we will soon see the end of local computer systems. Cloud based computing is coming. I'm concerned about the security of using cloud servers for managing my Bitcoin wallets. Hardware wallets are useful for keeping your keys offline, but at some point you will have to use an online wallet. Even brain wallets will need to be rebuilt online. How will we protect the privacy of our keys when every electronic device is always online?

It's funny that similar statements about "central" computers disappearing with the success of the
PC were being made back in the 70's and 80's yet now we have almost come full circle (the only
difference being that the technology has changed from central "mainframes" to central "datacenters").

Although you could be quite right I tend to think that the move to and from centralisation is one
that is likely to repeat. I have envisioned for many years the concept of the "home server" which
securely holds your private data in the security of your own home allowing secure access from
anywhere you are travelling without having to trust untrustworthy 3rd parties (and this makes
even more sense if you are also storing wealth in the form of digital currency on your server).

The more that companies like Google and Facebook use/invade every users privacy for their own
gain the more likely that the "home server" concept will take off.

Maybe the swing back from centralized cloud services to decentralized ones will result in a Freenet-like infrastructure.

The world-wide cloud storage is partitioned onto users' home servers redundantly (similar to RAIDs), and everything is encrypted. Similarly to the Bitcoin blockchain, everyone has a piece of data on their machine of other people, but cannot decrypt it. They're maybe rewarded the more storage they provide, with bitcoins of course (or maybe free storage space will become its own currency, who knows).

Everyone can access their data from anywhere with their private key, everyone has full control over their data, can set if it's public or private, or can selectively share it with others.

this has been sorta done already. im not exactly sure where... but i think it was through the TOR network. it allowed people to host a website(possibly a hidden tor service) while online, when sites were visited it would increase the amount of caching that site has on the network. similar to torrents, each user has a part of a file thats encrypted and stored. i think they were rewarded with more bandwidth for storing more data(dont quote me). data was moved as needed to ensure it would survive in the network. if it were popular content it was all but guaranteed. but to reiterate, you could still host your own content so it didnt matter if your site wasnt popular enough to be live whether or not you were hosting it.

the more i think about it, the more im sure it was/still is a part of tor. but ill be dammed if i can remember anything else about it. Though it did use public/private keys for editing data. the public key was the sites address. the private key was used to alter it and by extension, update old content.

Sounds like freenet.

-MarkM-

im really not sure :D its been ages since i even thought about it... if someone had a link that would be great(i dont care enough to bother looking).

Well if others are interested then I would be happy to contribute to something like this (haven't looked into freenet yet but will take the time soon).

You mean a Synology product that is 10 -100 x cheaper than cloud!!!!!