Bitcoin mobile.

[Anonymous]

Will it be possible to get bitcoin working on a mobile phone?As the computing power of mobiles increases at what point will it be practicable?It would be nice to carry a portable version of my bitcoin wallet around with me.Is there an app for that?

[laszlo]

I'm working on something like that, for iPhone, but not really for generating, more for spending.. the problem is it's really hard to type in a bitcoin address on that little thing.

[sirius]

I'm working on something like that, for iPhone, but not really for generating, more for spending.. the problem is it's really hard to type in a bitcoin address on that little thing.

QR codes have been proposed as a solution here.

[Anonymous]

I'm working on something like that, for iPhone, but not really for generating, more for spending.. the problem is it's really hard to type in a bitcoin address on that little thing.

QR codes have been proposed as a solution here.

nice!

[sirius]

You can of course use services like vekja.net or mybitcoin.com on a mobile browser, depositing money there to the extent you trust them. But maybe a mobile wallet would be better in a sense.

[lachesis]

Another option is an mobile-optimized, https-secured web interface on your local computer. That's already possible with something like LigHTTPd and PHP or Python and JSON-RPC. Not quite as good as running Bitcoin on your phone, but better than vekja.net for trustworthiness.

[Anonymous]

Could you build an iphone app that uses bitcoin?

[lachesis]

Sure, but Apple would likely not accept it.

[laszlo]

What do you imagine the iPhone app doing?  Just looking for some ideas on how it should look and what it should do..

[Anonymous]

What do you imagine the iPhone app doing?  Just looking for some ideas on how it should look and what it should do..

It could be useful for many things because your phone is usually carried everywhere unlike a desktop/laptop.
I imagine it would be able to carry your wallet db
Phone banking of some description.
A list of bitcoin sites you could browse.
A push notification for bitcoins received/sent.
Exchange on the go.

If you had an untraceable el cheapo burner phone you might need to purchase
prepaid phone cards using bitcoin- for the paranoid lol


I guess the list would grow as the marketplace expanded and more merchants came on board.

[jago25_98]

I think this idea deserves more recognition.

A phone is much more accessible and widely available than a computer. There are many, many people for whom they only got a phone.

Even some kind of SMS / gateway / key exchange would be something... being able to send a payment by sms to a gateway server with an unsupported phone to a supported phone, for example, or to a trusted third party who can handle the transaction for us.
By rolling passcode perhaps.

That would fantastic, and possibly not too much of a major overhaul needed?

Inspired?

[satoshi]

You can of course use services like vekja.net or mybitcoin.com on a mobile browser, depositing money there to the extent you trust them.

I think that's the best option right now.  Like cash, you don't keep your entire net worth in your pocket, just walking around money for incidental expenses.

They could make a smaller version of the site optimized for mobile.  If there was an app, it could be a front end to one of those, with the main feature being QR-code reader, or maybe there's already a universal QR-code reading app that web sites can be designed to accept scans from.

If there was an iPhone app that was just a front end for vekja or mybitcoin, not a big involved P2P, would apple approve it and if not, on what basis?  It could always be an Android app instead.  An app is not really necessary though, just a mobile sized website.

A web interface to your own Bitcoin server at home wouldn't be a solution for everyone.  Most users don't have a static IP, and it's too much trouble to set up port forwarding.

[llama]

Apple would approve it.  It's only a simple front-end for a website.  Unless it was horribly buggy, they will accept it.

[teff]

I'm working on something like that, for iPhone, but not really for generating, more for spending.. the problem is it's really hard to type in a bitcoin address on that little thing.

QR codes have been proposed as a solution here.

This was my first though too, it would be nice if someone was able to do this for the android as well, especially when it should be very easy for the QR integration with the zxing library.

I dislike the idea of using a third party site myself, at least at the moment. I would much rather carry around a wallet on my mobile device.

A mobile client would really be a great bump to bitcoin overall, been able to go to large group events (LUG event, Con's etc) where there may be opportunity to make real world transactions in front of people who might otherwise be unaware of bitcoin, especially if they could download a app there and then and get involved.

[mizerydearia]

I think this idea deserves more recognition.

A phone is much more accessible and widely available than a computer. There are many, many people for whom they only got a phone.

Even some kind of SMS / gateway / key exchange would be something... being able to send a payment by sms to a gateway server with an unsupported phone to a supported phone, for example, or to a trusted third party who can handle the transaction for us.
By rolling passcode perhaps.

That would fantastic, and possibly not too much of a major overhaul needed?

Inspired?

I am working on an open source SMS project that may be capable of providing this capability.  However, I am not so familiar with how payment would be handled by text messages.

[hugolp]

What do you imagine the iPhone app doing?  Just looking for some ideas on how it should look and what it should do..

For what I have seen everybody agrees that a full bitcoin server for mobiles is not the way to go, since it would be draining the battery with the processing (even if its not generating coins). Also, the mobile internet connection is expensive in a lot of places and is payed by how much information you transmit.

So the obvious solution is a frontend to a bitcoin server. I think limiting the frontend to a bitcoin web service is bad because you are loosing the de-centralized nature of bitcoin. This has the problem typical problems of centralization, but also its worth noting that governments arround the world impose a monopoly on money in their territory and bitcoin is going to compite against it. So giving a central location or company to attack is making things easier for governments to attack bitcoin and defend their money monopoly. Also, a lot of us run our home servers with bitcoin and it would be great if the phone can directly connect to our servers.

I am thinking the easiest and most practical solution would be a frontend that connects to the server through a encrypted, password protected, json-rpc connection. That way the frontend could be configured to connect to both a private server in the home or to a bitcoin webservice. This would require also changes in the server to allow those kind of connections obviously.

PS: Adding the scanning feature to be able to pay automatically is the perfect extra.

[teff]

The biggest problem I foresee with a mobile client having thought about it, is that you could loose a certain amount of anonymity.

If the carrier knows your location and can recognise or at least guess at certain traffic been bitcoin, then when you start the app to make a transaction to another mobile user in the same location it may be possible to tie the two together.

The same even goes for using a mobile website. I think ideally you need something like Tor running on the device to avoid the such a problem, and it needs to be running all the time really or your internet activity when you fire it up for a transaction will be a dead giveaway.

Of course this is only a significant problem when bitcoin gains enough of a foothold to cause governments to take notice, and hopefully by that time it will already be to late 

[hugolp]

The biggest problem I foresee with a mobile client having thought about it, is that you could loose a certain amount of anonymity.

If the carrier knows your location and can recognise or at least guess at certain traffic been bitcoin, then when you start the app to make a transaction to another mobile user in the same location it may be possible to tie the two together.

The same even goes for using a mobile website. I think ideally you need something like Tor running on the device to avoid the such a problem, and it needs to be running all the time really or your internet activity when you fire it up for a transaction will be a dead giveaway.

Of course this is only a significant problem when bitcoin gains enough of a foothold to cause governments to take notice, and hopefully by that time it will already be to late 

Or the region that starts using bitcoin can use something like this: http://guifi.net

[Traktion]

May I suggest 'bump'?

If it's good enough for PayPal, then it should be good enough for Bitcoins. You just bump (well, wiggle) you phone near another and it can start a transfer process.

It works on the iPhone and Android, currently.

[ByteCoin]

For what I have seen everybody agrees that a full bitcoin server for mobiles is not the way to go, since it would be draining the battery with the processing (even if its not generating coins). Also, the mobile internet connection is expensive in a lot of places and is payed by how much information you transmit.

I'd like to draw your attention to

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=505.0

in which I outline a scheme which allows a mobile phone to set up as a full bitcoin server with the smallest possible amount of network traffic and computation. Setting up could be made so fast that you'd essentially set up the hash block state from new every time you wanted to check a balance or make a transaction. After you'd done what you wanted to do, you'd delete all the data again.

ByteCoin