It seems that a major obstacle to widespread adoption of Bitcoin is the issue of security. When I first started using Bitcoin my main concern was the possibility of losing my coins by having my wallet stolen. I therefore downloaded armory and started using my old laptop as cold storage (great bit of software btw, my thanks to the developers. Sending a donation your way
). It didn't take me too long to get to grips with using armory, but having recently had to explain it to somebody else, it occurred to me that for many people cold storage is still a complicated process. This got me thinking and I came up with and idea, although I have no idea of the feasibility. I just thought I'd post it here to get some feedback. So...
When you use armory for cold storage, the job of the offline computer is incredibly simple: 1) Store private keys, 2) Use said keys to sign transactions
I had to wonder whether this job couldn't be done by a much simpler device than a laptop (albeit an old and crappy one).
My question is this: Would it be possible to create a USB device which performs this task? The device would have the capacity to sign transactions (what would this require? A small processor?). It would be configured to receive an input in the form of an unsigned transaction, process this by signing it, and then output the signed transaction which could then be broadcast. This would hopefully mean private keys are never exposed to the possibility of theft (right?)
As I said, I have no idea if this would be possible, or whether I've missed something really obvious. I just wanted to see if anyone can suggest a way of making this (or something similar) work. Also if anyone has any better ideas, post them here.
(Apologies if this topic has already been covered elsewhere.)
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