Hello all,
I'm a programmer proficient in LAMP setups. Having built websites for large and small customers. I have always been facinated by Bitcoin and everytime I think up a new business venture for Bitcoin, one thing stops me. My lack of understanding for handling bitcoin and the server infastructure required. Obviously I dont want to be making any mistakes and the trouble is most my ideas result in me holding money is some sort of hot wallet. So what can you the bitcoin community suggest to me? I've learnt from the mistakes of others and I don't want to repeat history, so is there any direction I can go?
Regards
I guess it depends on the idea you want to implement, but most of the time, you can do away with hot wallets altogether.
A good way to get started is; to print out a huge list of paper wallets (on an offline computer) and process any withdraw request from user manually. you can process deposits automatically with a third party tool ("bitcoin Notify" ? not sure of the name)that send a HTTP POST to your specified script when ever one of your wallets gets a deposit.
this way you can be sure as long as the paper wallets are safe, your safe, even if your site gets hacked to shit.
you can automate everything expect for withdraws request. this way you can make sure your system hasn't been comprised (should be as easy as checking that your books are balanced) and then process the withdraw in a batch once a week or something...
bitfenix works this way, and i like that they do because everyone can be sure their funds their are safe!
hackers will not care to hack you even if your system can easily be compromised, because they know even if they do, they wont get any coins out of it.