Bitcoin Forum

Hey everybody,

My brother and I came up with an interesting idea and wanted to get some feedback.  

Right now, one of the main things holding people back from buying cryptocurrency is the difficulty and complexity of setting up a wallet, transferring money to and from various exchanges and finally purchasing and storing them.  That is why we created Loaded Crypto.

What is Loaded Crypto?  Loaded Crypto is a service that will create a wallet, buy and fill the wallet with your desired token, and provide the customer with a unique metal card with the wallet information on it.  These cards are essentially a physical form of cryptocurrency and make a fantastic gift for friends and family.   It is our hope that these cards will contribute to the mass adoption of cryptocurrency by putting it in the hands of more people around the world.

How do the cards work?  Every card has its own unique wallet address associated with it.  The public key for that wallet is printed on the card and is used in combination with the private key (provided separately) to access the wallet holding the desired token.  Instructions for accessing the wallet come with the card and can be found on our website.  

This idea is still in its early stages but we wanted to reach out to the community and get some thoughts about it.  Take a look at our landing page at loadedcrypto.com (http://loadedcrypto.com) and let us know what you think!

How do you think people who find it difficult to set up a wallet will know what to do with the public key printed on their card? Or do you mean their address will be printed on the card?
Are they supposed to trust you with their private key? How will you ensure the security of their private key?

In my opinion, it is not actually the process of setting up the wallet,etc that keeps the people from using crypto; it might be the volatility and price fluctuations that make it risky for new people to get involved in.
Coming back to your service, how can we trust your service ? You would have control over the private keys. It is much more risky than to use coinbase that also holds your private keys.
What do you have to say about this major issue ?

Yes, the public key (wallet address) will be printed on the card.  Obviously, for security reasons we will not put the private key on the physical card.  Instead, the customer will receive their private key along with simplified directions on how to access their wallet.

We have been considering different options to combat the security issues of housing private keys. We think the best solution is to destroy the private key once it is printed and sent to the customer.  I dont think I mentioned earlier but these are meant to purchase very small amounts of cryptocurrency.  The hope is that these cards will be given as gifts and are not designed to be a hardware wallet.  Obviously, this method us up to a little bit of risk from a customer perspective but at least that eliminates the risk for the customer (in terms of trusting us with their private keys).  Do you think this is a smart way to do it?

Very simply - if you have access to the private key at any time, no one will trust your service.

Yes, of course that is another big reason why people don't get into cryptocurrency.  But we believe that in the long run, for crypto to reach its full potential, it must be in the hands of everyone rather than a few.  This is just our way of creating something simple that we hope can contribute to the mass adoption of cryptto ocurrency.

Now, in terms of our service, we want this to be as safe of a process as possible for the customer.   These cards are not designed to be a hardware wallet, but rather just a physical item that people can give to others as gifts (or keep themselves) that have the information for a wallet.  The private key will not be printed on the card.  They will be given separately along with instructions for how to access the wallet.  We think the best way to combat security issues is to destroy the private key as soon as we ship the card and private key out to the customer.  We know this may open us up as a company to some risk but at least that would greatly reduce the risk to the customer.  Would love to hear your thoughts if you think this is a good idea or not.

You need to remember that these aren't necessarily for people that are concerned about the security of their private key.  Personally, I completely agree with you that if you have a large amount of cryptocurrency you wan't to make sure that you are the only one who knows your private key.  But for small amounts of crypto, especially if you are giving it as a gift, we don't think people will mind us having access to the private key for a matter of hours.  Who knows though, its definitely something to think through.

On another note, do you have any suggestions on the design of the card / website?  The website still is just a landing page of course but would like to get your thoughts on it.

Another flaw I see with this service, apart from the security concern is that you may give the person cryptocurrency using that metal card, but for him to either spend it or either send the funds to another person abroad, he would require to use the private key online and setup wallets,etc in order to perform any transactions which might ultimately defeat your purpose.

---

Apart from this, you should update your website, graphic wise to make it more visually appealing and professional looking.

I have my own project to worry about design on.  :/

Anyway, don't spend any money on anything until you figure out a way to get the customer the private key without you ever seeing it.

What is the international availability status for the physical cards? Are these going to be shipped by you and what are the rates? Also inorder to purchase Ethereum or the ERC-20 tokens are you going to allow users purchase them using their credit cards, that is, in order to load these metal physical cards with those tokens or ETH?

Practically I also think there's going to be some form of delay or time factor involved in receiving these cards if it's to be used "around the world". There's shipping time and probably legal concerns in countries that have made cryptocurrencies illegal. Do you have any sort of business plan to service users living in those countries?

Maybe the idea is good, but there are a lot of questions which are difficult to answer now, maybe you can implement it. yet this project will be unsuccessful, IMHO, but this will be experience.

The idea is good, but I still do not understand with these:

1. What kind of card to be used, is it similar to VISA or Master Card? If yes, how to use it in merchant? seems it will need big infrastructure to be built for using your card, except if you can create interface of your card and available card reader in the merchant currently.

2. You should very consider private key upmost, how to transfer the private key to wallet owner without anyone at all know it. How to create a method of private key transferring to wallet owner and really really ensure the private key to be known just by the wallet owner.

At least above are very important thing to be considered at the moment. 

So it is essentialy a paper wallet but printed on a metal card instead?
I dig this idea, I'm a fan of anything related to cards and your card could be added to my collection :P
From your wording, it seems that the balance of the card can only be accessed from your website, does this mean you will also launch an online wallet as a way to access the coins?
Also, as Vod says, gotta think a way to secure the private key, maybe by using Chip to encrypt to Private Key ?
This Chip method has been widely used and as a standard security for cards nowadays.

I totally agree with you.  The main issue of setting up this project is that all the wallet information of the new wallet is already being viewed prior before it reaches the owners. There is no way he and his brother will create and load the card without viewing the private key which is delicate feature of a secure wallet and it's unfortunate private keys can't be changed easily  because you cannot change one key of an address without changing the other as well.
Besides, creating a wallet is not a hard job it takes up to a minimum of five minutes to ten minutes for a noob to create an online wallet which I believe anyone can do.

My opinion that idea is not demand.
Metal card is cool idea but exist already with wallet paper.
You need more new features.

I don't think getting a wallet is a difficulty process. It's actually transacting from wallets to other wallets or accepted points-of-sale. So with this idea, I will be more interested in how the cards work. I am assuming (if I am it correct, then I am suggesting) that these cards act like debit/credit cards linked to the wallet and and should be easily used on almost any online or physical platform, also bearing in mind that fees don't have to be that expensive to use the card.

If you want us to trust you, you better post your github account and show us the source code like the other services similar to yours.
(for example breadwallet: https://github.com/voisine/breadwallet-ios) Till you do that, nobody will trust their money on your services.

Hi, JDAG,

It sounds good as the concept of a gift, but basically, you are reinventing the paper wallet.

The idea of the crypto is that it is safe and secure and has no middleman in between.

You have said that you came up with the idea. The point of crypto is not the idea that pays off for profit, for this anyone can just start trading crypto, a lot of people succeed in that.

The idea behind the blockchain is the world's improvement that is not about the money. Now there is a "gold rush", but soon the fiat economy will wear off under the crypto economy pressure, so it won't be evaluated against the $ or Euro.

If you have a passion for the world improvement and idea that you truly believe in, and know how it will work, then you will succeed.

Just a friendly advice. The most important is don't stop if you have good intentions.

Best regards,
Dimitri

PS: your website isn't working

Ive been following your questions to be answered since i would like to know on how they would handle such situation on where how they would able to give the keys without their awareness.I cant think off any possible methods on my side and might they have created on their own way. If they can explain this matter then they might able to convince me but if not then this would still remains shady. Private key is the most important thing that no people or other services would able know and also creating wallets and stored up coins is easy as 1,2,3.

I cannot get past the generation of the private key part. This is one of the reasons why I never bought any of these - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins

They used tamper-resistant holograms, but the problem is you never know if the private keys were logged on some server, during the creation and printing of these coins. < or wallets in your case >

How will you address this concern?

Well, the private key generated by you sounds more or less like the pin of the cards delivered in a closed envelop. The point is that a card issuer can rely on a kind of trust of customers as they are well known and established all over the world.

In your case the biggest problem I see is how to create enough trust in your potential customers to solve their concerns about possible abuses or scams. Maybe you could partner with some known and trusted brand, but why they should do that?

That's really good idea to start a new Crypto project right now. I already involved myself in a project like-SciDex. Looks like a promising and results-oriented project. Because a great team is always working on it. They are eager for getting the success. :)