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Bug confirmed. Investigating.
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I am afraid that this thread no longer has anything to do with the magazine.
I wonder if it ever comes out. It's really a pity, the magazine looked very promising.
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Using a 3rd party to dynamically generate Bitcoin QR codes is dangerous. They could redirect the funds to their own address. Or, they could be compromised by someone who dirverts the funds. Right. So let that site be a source of inspiration. Generating a QR-code is pretty straightforward, and there are many tools out there to create them. However, the point still stands. The easier it is to fund your account the more likely people are going to use it. It is all about removing a barrier of entry. Since I am using my Android device for sending/receiving BTC it is quite cumbersome for me to grab the Bitcoin address and send to it. Adding a QR code allows all Android Bitcoin Wallet users, BitcoinSpinner users and BitPak users to fund their accounts with a click on their phone. |
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This is an excellent development! I tried it yesterday, sent some coins from my Schildbach wallet to spinner, sent coins from spinner to my friend's spinner, everything worked perfectly. It's clearly a work in progress though. There is no way to create a new Bitcoin address, no address book, no way to see sent and received transactions etc. But the core functionality is solid and the idea is excellent. It's very fast to use. Please keep developing it. I'd be happy to donate something to the developer if there is a donation address.  ... The latest BitcoinSpinner update is announced here, and includes the address book feature that you requested. Transaction history has been there for a while. Did I mention the in-app donation option? |
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Cool! I note that you didn't include my update for the Danish translation which I submitted to Google Code. How come? Oh, sorry about that. I haven't been using the issue tracking system till now. It will be added in the next update. |
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BitcoinSpinner version 0.5.0b is now available on the Android Market. Major Feature: Added the highly anticipated Added address book- add addresses to your address book from recent transactions.
- choose an address from your address book when sending coins.
- show the QR code of any address in your address book.
- even more fun stuff with Bitcoin addresses.
Major Feature: BitcoinSpinner now recognizes Bitcoin address URLs on the form: " bitcoin:14VWYvbHd4R7oTFS8kEfoWZFTzbedDgwKg" or " bitcoin:14VWYvbHd4R7oTFS8kEfoWZFTzbedDgwKg?amount=1.00" This means that if you embed an URL like this on your web-page: <a href="bitcoin:14VWYvbHd4R7oTFS8kEfoWZFTzbedDgwKg?amount=1.00">Donate</a>
You can click it to send coins when you browse using your android phone. This also means that another Android App can launch the Send Bitcoins page of BitcoinSpinner, which is a cool move in the direction of in-app payments. Also in this version: Minor UI fixes and tweaks. If you like this app then please rate it on the Android Market while upgrading. |
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This sounds great. - Customers can pay in BTC from their Bitcoin program (6 confirmations)
- Mt.Gox account holders can pay from their Mt.Gox accounts, allowing for instant checkout (and impulse buys, oh my’s)
I wonder what the '6 confirmations' means. Will it take 6 confirmations until my purchase goes through if I use Bitcoin? If this is the case the video is not a good use-case for buying a map to the nearest Starbucks. Is this to avoid double spends or is this to promote Mt.Gox accounts? |
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BitcoinSpinner uses private app storage, which is wiped at uninstall. However, this also has the nice feature that other apps cannot get to it, which is paramount. Another nice thing is that BitcoinSpinner only needs network access privileges. This lets you know that it does not try to snag your address book or keys from other apps using SD card storage.
In the Linode security breach trust given to their proprietary infrastructure was violated and bitcoins were stolen. I'm wondering if there is a similar vulnerability with a mobile platform. I read in the Android how-to for publishing an app that only an app signed with your private release key will get pushed out as an update. What if, however, your system used for building was compromised and an attacker were to get your private release keys to build a rogue update (that stole bitcoin private keys). If that roge release were published to the marketplace nobody would likely notice a problem until after the attacker already would have a lot of private keys! If I were storing an amount of bitcoins worth worrying about, I might then want a way to disable the automatic update of this app. Is that possible? Also, might there be an announcement here for when you publish, maybe signed with your PGP key, which includes a signature for the release to be published to the Android Market? I know this sounds paranoid, but crazier things have happened before, right? These are all valid concerns. Hacking bitcoin related services has turned out to be quite profitable. Android apps are not automatically updated by default. This is an option that you can enable on your device, but I recommend that you don't. Whenever I update BitcoinSpinner I announce it in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53353.0However publishing a signature on the APK with a different key doesn't give you much, as you (as far as I know) cannot retrieve a hash of the application from the Android Market. If you are really paranoid you should download the sources and roll your own. This also allows you to review any changes that have been added since last release. (By the way, there is an update in the pipe which adds an address book and launching the send page from a Bitcoin URL) |
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Check out BitcoinSpinner.
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Paper is cheap, easy to store, and visually verifiable: if you can read the letters on the piece of paper, your backup is safe.
The one problem with this is, if someone obtains the paper, they have your savings. Multi-sig paper back ups stored at several physical locations would be fantastic. You are correct. Most of my focus in Armory development has been online threats, not physical threats. But that doesn't mean I've ignored it: I just think that having someone break into your house and going through your bookshelf to find the paper backup is 100x less likely than the random online attacker scanning millions of computers looking for open ports/vulnerabilities and getting access to your system. In the future, I can add a feature in Armory to allow you to add a passphrase/encryption to your paper backup, but I honestly think that just adds more risk than it adds value: your paper backup will likely not be used for years, and you're bound to forget the passphrase by then. If you're really concerned, put your paper backup in a safe-deposit box. Or back it up to 5 different USB keys and put them all in your safe-deposit box. Again, for the average user, I am most concerned about online threats, especially since a highly-targeted physical attack against your wallet will likely not be stopped by anything anyone can put in a Bitcoin client (keyloggers, especially). Storing your private key on paper is IMO the way to go for long term storage. However if I were to store my life savings I would not trust just one piece of paper. There are elegant solutions to this. Shamir's Secret SharingShamir's Secret Sharing is a mechanism where you split a secret into N pieces and decide for a number K which is less than N. If you have K different pieces of the original N it is trivial to calculate the secret. If you have K-1 pieces the secret is completely undetermined, meaning that any possible value is likely. Details here: Shamir's Secret SharingExample Choosing N=3 and K=2: You split your secret into 3 pieces. You then store those pieces in three different secure locations. You delete any other trace of the secret. If you ever want to recreate the secret you can do so by retrieving any 2 of the 3 pieces. If an attacker gets hold of one of your pieces he will not be able to determine the secret. Or if one of the pieces are lost you can still rebuild the secret from the other two. You may also want to choose N=5 and K=3 or whatever makes you feel safe. This could be an awesome addition to the paper backups of Armory, or even better, a small standalone tool that spits out: N pieces of paper each containing its share of the private key as a QR-code and in HEX plus a description of the math on how to combine the shares One piece of paper with the Bitcoin address as a QR code and in base58. Believe it or not. I was once a consultant on a project where a similar procedure was done (paper shares, stored in various banks in different locations), where as a safety procedure the printer used had to be blown to pieces by the military afterwards. This was a backup for the root key of a CA. I guess they were paranoid of what you can get off a printer roller. |
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I paid my 9 year old nephew one Bitcoin today to install BitcoinSpinner on his phone and learn to receive and send coins. =)
BTW Jan, if you use IRC, I invite you to visit #bitcoin-dk on Freenode.
Awesome. Now imagine what it would be like if we had this kind of technology when we were kids. BTW, I an pretty far with the BitcoinSpinner address book. It should hit the android market within a week.  |
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If they had to have the level of security a site needs to have to exist safely in the bitcoin world, maybe they wouldn't even have a site at all, or their meals would be more expensive just to account for that.
Thats why we have Bit-Pay. |
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Jan,
I am talking to a mobile app developer that wants to enable in-app payments using our API. when we generate a bitcoin: URI is your app set in Android to open from that link? Forgive my lack of technical experience in this area, I'm not sure exactly what to ask for. I want to generate an in-app link that will launch the customers bitcoin wallet, goes to the send page, and fills in the address and amount. Are you able to do this?
Tony
This should be doable, but I haven't implemented this feature yet. This would also allow you to trigger a send by clicking on a link in a text message. This could be really really cool! I'll look into this going forward. |
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BitcoinSpinner for Android is free, plus you are up and running in seconds.
You pay 0.0005 BTC to the miners of the bitcoin network when sending a transaction.
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I sent a few btc from bitcoinspinner to my desktop wallet 40 minutes ago, it still shows as unconfirmed in the spinner, doesn't show up in the desktop client at all. I am pretty sure my desktop client is connected to the network.
Any ideas?
Due to the upcoming network change an alert has been sent on the network, which the server side didn't handle gracefully. Alerts are very rare (I don't think that there been one during my time in Bitcoin) and have to be signed with the famous Satoshi key. The issue should be solved now, and everything back to normal. |
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Erik, I am speachless. Glad to have you on board!
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hello Jan,
can you please add to the app that the amount of bitcoins are shown in EUR also ?
thank you
may be as an option ?
greetings
pazor
Hi pazor, It is on my list, but it may take some time before I get there. 1. Bug fixing 2. Address book 3. Transaction history improvements 4. EUR and other currencies 5. Relax and drink beer  Cheers, Jan |
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After updating to the latest version, when I start spinner it just sits there with a black screen and a bar that says BitcoinSpinner at the top. It will stay like this as long as I let it. When I hit the back arrow (HTC Evo) it will finally show the app.
There is a known initialization issue which kicks in when leaving the app running in the background on low end devices. I am traveling this week, but have a fix which i will submit once properly tested. Sorry for the inconvenience. This just happened on my Galaxy S2, so it's not limited to low end devices That said, I am running a modded ROM for ICS, so that's probably not helping  I am not able to reproduce this myself. Help me fix it by answering the questions in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53353.msg747989#msg747989 |
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Now I don't get the bug anymore, so I can't help troubleshooting.
Can you confirm that when you experienced the bug it was with the current version (0.4.6b)? So, is anyone using this for their main (or savings) wallet, with any substantial amounts of BTC in there? I'm sick of having to keep a super secure USB key with some funky version of Linux on it to keep my wallet safe Multi-sig can't come soon enough for that reason, but this seems fairly safe in the mean time. Keen for some opinions (just thread through the other thread, I'm starting on this one now). I would probably never store large amounts on my phone because I could lose my phone or I could be robbed in the street. Were you planning to use it on an Android device which you keep secured at home, never carry it in the streets? Also, note this is still in beta, which is also true for the Satoshi client, but the Satoshi client has had much more testing. If you want to use this as a secure Bitcoin storage I suggest that you 1. Buy a brand new cheap low-end android device (Android 2.2 or later) without a SIM-card (you don't need it) 2. Enable PIN locking 3. Install BitcoinSpinner and nothing else 4. Export the private key as a QR-code (take a picture, and print it out, store securely) 5. Don't carry it around (as fimp suggests) Even though BitcoinSpinner is in beta and there might be bugs that may cause it to fail you can always validate your BTC holdings using block explorer or similar services. The block-chain is the source of truth. Even if I (along with the server) should pass away, you still have your private key on paper, which you can import into another wallet. For daily usage keep a few BTC on your normal phone, and recharge it from your secure device as needed (this is really simple with BitcoinSpinner). |
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