How will the future of wallets work?

[CryptAssist]

Serious question: In a world where coins are digital and paper money is a mere novelty, how will exchanges or transactions work? It would have to be faster than a handshake, and yet secure. Would they only be on apps in your phone? Could you hide them in a pendant or perhaps a watch? Thoughts?

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[Xynerise]

Apps and QR codes work well enough already .
Just use your wallet app on your phone, scan the QR code and that's all.

[NeuroticFish]

Serious question: In a world where coins are digital and paper money is a mere novelty, how will exchanges or transactions work? It would have to be faster than a handshake, and yet secure. Would they only be on apps in your phone? Could you hide them in a pendant or perhaps a watch? Thoughts?

They will be automatic, at least in shops. You will not need to do much, since with facial recognition they'll know in shop who you are, what's your (public) wallet and everything you want to share. All you will need to do is to check the amount and approve the transaction with your unique seal/key. The amount will be subtracted and if it's not enough in the wallet of that currency, automated exchange from your other (public) wallets will be made to cover the amount.

In the privacy of your home you may still need some sort of computer for the more specific actions. That will be computer, home entertainment and who knows what else, there's plenty of room for innovation.

Just .. why paper money in all this story? That'll be only at the museum, you know?

[Mister1k]

Serious question: In a world where coins are digital and paper money is a mere novelty, how will exchanges or transactions work? It would have to be faster than a handshake, and yet secure. Would they only be on apps in your phone? Could you hide them in a pendant or perhaps a watch? Thoughts?

Indirectly you are saying the usage of segwit now. When the Segwit is implemented then you can find fees has reduced little and transaction time also goes to less time mate. I advice you to ask whether the transaction time and fees will be redefined in the future or not.
This question will be apt in the subject line mate. Then you do not need to usage of wallet for next 5 years.
Because still many people does not come to use the crypto currency so they should come first then we can look at the update.

[amishmanish]

Serious question: In a world where coins are digital and paper money is a mere novelty, how will exchanges or transactions work? It would have to be faster than a handshake, and yet secure. Would they only be on apps in your phone? Could you hide them in a pendant or perhaps a watch? Thoughts?

Transferring payment methods to any form like NFC, Touch payment etc is not the issue. It can take any form you can think of. Though, for all payments to pass onto a crypto, the first major hurdle would be confirmation time. This sets a bound on how fast the transaction can be.

This is taken care of by the Lightning Network because you don't need confirmations with it to be sure of the transaction. This is one of the reasons that bitcoin with a big enough Lightning Network implemented will be much better for micropayments than any of the other solutions.

[thecodebear]

Serious question: In a world where coins are digital and paper money is a mere novelty, how will exchanges or transactions work? It would have to be faster than a handshake, and yet secure. Would they only be on apps in your phone? Could you hide them in a pendant or perhaps a watch? Thoughts?

Transferring payment methods to any form like NFC, Touch payment etc is not the issue. It can take any form you can think of. Though, for all payments to pass onto a crypto, the first major hurdle would be confirmation time. This sets a bound on how fast the transaction can be.

This is taken care of by the Lightning Network because you don't need confirmations with it to be sure of the transaction. This is one of the reasons that bitcoin with a big enough Lightning Network implemented will be much better for micropayments than any of the other solutions.

Yeah NFC or QR codes would be how it is used. As simple as however Google Pay and Apply Pay work. And of course the LN is what will allow this to actually take place instantaneously which means it can actually be used in brick and mortar stores.

The only thing I don't know about is security. Right now basically hot wallets are very insecure. I have no idea how security will be handled because obviously any money being used needs to be in a hot wallet on your phone.

[squatter]

Serious question: In a world where coins are digital and paper money is a mere novelty, how will exchanges or transactions work? It would have to be faster than a handshake, and yet secure. Would they only be on apps in your phone? Could you hide them in a pendant or perhaps a watch? Thoughts?

They will be automatic, at least in shops. You will not need to do much, since with facial recognition they'll know in shop who you are, what's your (public) wallet and everything you want to share.

That sounds downright terrifying. Do you think biometric authentication is really inevitable for all finance? I can think of a some scary scenarios that could emerge from this.

Transferring payment methods to any form like NFC, Touch payment etc is not the issue. It can take any form you can think of. Though, for all payments to pass onto a crypto, the first major hurdle would be confirmation time. This sets a bound on how fast the transaction can be.

This is taken care of by the Lightning Network because you don't need confirmations with it to be sure of the transaction. This is one of the reasons that bitcoin with a big enough Lightning Network implemented will be much better for micropayments than any of the other solutions.

Even if the Lightning Network is robust, there is still the issue of key security. I think people will need to periodically fund channels from their cold storage -- sort of like transferring from savings to checking -- and those transfers may be subject to high fees and/or long waits.

You don't want to risk holding much value in LN. It's an online wallet.

[thecodebear]

Serious question: In a world where coins are digital and paper money is a mere novelty, how will exchanges or transactions work? It would have to be faster than a handshake, and yet secure. Would they only be on apps in your phone? Could you hide them in a pendant or perhaps a watch? Thoughts?

They will be automatic, at least in shops. You will not need to do much, since with facial recognition they'll know in shop who you are, what's your (public) wallet and everything you want to share.

That sounds downright terrifying. Do you think biometric authentication is really inevitable for all finance? I can think of a some scary scenarios that could emerge from this.

Transferring payment methods to any form like NFC, Touch payment etc is not the issue. It can take any form you can think of. Though, for all payments to pass onto a crypto, the first major hurdle would be confirmation time. This sets a bound on how fast the transaction can be.

This is taken care of by the Lightning Network because you don't need confirmations with it to be sure of the transaction. This is one of the reasons that bitcoin with a big enough Lightning Network implemented will be much better for micropayments than any of the other solutions.

Even if the Lightning Network is robust, there is still the issue of key security. I think people will need to periodically fund channels from their cold storage -- sort of like transferring from savings to checking -- and those transfers may be subject to high fees and/or long waits.

You don't want to risk holding much value in LN. It's an online wallet.

Yeah I think after scaling, key security is the main hurdle down crypto adoption. There needs to be some way that hot wallets are made very secure, or else crypto in general is a store of value and not a means of payment if having anything in a hot wallet means you are putting your funds at risk. I have no idea what kind of solution would allow wallets to be secure to hackers, but crypto will never get adopted if this isn't solved.

Getting a wallet needs to be as easy as downloading an app and hitting a couple buttons and sending some fiat to the wallet and it automatically getting converted immediately to crypto, however that would be done on the backend. Then you hit a button to put some funds in a LN channel (with some sort of easy way to pick an address to open it with). And then like an hour later you've got your LN wallet ready to spend, and the user should never need to worry about their funds being hacked and stolen.

The obvious and unfortunate solution is we'll just end up with crypto banks like Coinbase that have tons of money to spend on high security and hot wallets will just be done through one of these crypto bank services, entrusting our keys with them. Then people can also make cold wallets to store long term funds like retirement accounts or whatever.

[amishmanish]

Yeah I think after scaling, key security is the main hurdle down crypto adoption. There needs to be some way that hot wallets are made very secure

A wallet with minimal funds to meet your daily requirement and operated by, say, a 4-digit PIN to sign transactions will be as safe as any of the banking apps we already carry with us. I don't think we should be too alarmist about "How" secure these day-to-day wallets need to be.

The obvious and unfortunate solution is we'll just end up with crypto banks like Coinbase that have tons of money to spend on high security and hot wallets will just be done through one of these crypto bank services, entrusting our keys with them. Then people can also make cold wallets to store long term funds like retirement accounts or whatever.

Being your own bank means you need to take care of the security too. Cold wallets for your savings will definitely work like they always have. Those who are afraid of keeping things safe themselves, I am sure there are plenty of ways of making a device that would record/ playback 24 words when you unlock them with a face scan and password.
Will that make people more vulnerable to extortion or theft? Not anymore than now i think. Even if you keep your money in a bank, an extortionist will find a way for you to part with it. In case of theft, well, according to the libertarian ethos, you guard your own.

For a LN implementation, surely companies like coinbase can be one of the well connected hubs. But they do not control your keys and have no control over the funds so I think we can live with them being a service provider. The important thing is that when transactions of public money like taxes, budgetary outlays etc make the inevitable switch to bitcoin, this will do wonders for transparency and accountability of taxpayers' money.

[vit05]

I believe that for small payments, you will use LN or something similar. And to access it and transfer funds you will not need anything very complicated. The term wallet sometimes makes the idea of what Bitcoin is quite confusing. Bitcoin has no life outside the blockchain, so what you have are keys to access it.

That is, in the future, for commercial activities like a dinner in a restaurant or movie theater, you could transfer from your cold wallet to your hot wallet enough for these activities. And a password would be enough in the terminal. And some kind of token to serve as proof of access. Maybe your iris, your tongue, your fingerprints, your speech.

[nazaroenko1]

Good afternoon. It seems to me that you can use any digital media. And for the transfer, Apps and QR code is already being used - simply and efficiently.

[NeuroticFish]

That sounds downright terrifying. Do you think biometric authentication is really inevitable for all finance? I can think of a some scary scenarios that could emerge from this.

The world is already full of cameras. China is already using them to catch criminals (how they define criminals is another story).
So face recognition works. There's a lot of public info about you. This is getting regulated and you'll share only what you want to.
However, as I stated, this will not be authentication in the way of spending money; for spending you will have to provide a seal, like today's credit card PIN.

But I agree, it's scary how much info can be gathered about you if somebody wants to do that (and many do).

[Kakmakr]

There are already people that created credit card sized wallets that works with a NFC micro chip and looks like credit card sized notes. Here is a article on the subject : https://bitcoiner.today/en/singapore-is-ahead-with-bitcoin-nfc/

I think the miniaturization technology in the future will improve so much that you would be able to hide this wallet in every day objects, so people will not know where it is. <Shoes / Necklace / Pendants / Key holder / Watch>

[bob123]

Yeah I think after scaling, key security is the main hurdle down crypto adoption. There needs to be some way that hot wallets are made very secure

A wallet with minimal funds to meet your daily requirement and operated by, say, a 4-digit PIN to sign transactions will be as safe as any of the banking apps we already carry with us. I don't think we should be too alarmist about "How" secure these day-to-day wallets need to be.

That's sad, but true.
A major percentage of banking apps available do have security vulnerabilities. Quite a few proof-of-concepts are available to review.
The only thing which keeps them 'somewhat' safe is the "2-FA" (which isn't always a 2FA, with GA on the same mobile thats far away from 2FA). But cloning all the 2FA codes from GA isn't that hard either.

I'd say if you compare banking apps to mobile wallets.. they are almost equally secure.
Crypto wallets are just a more attractive goal for hackers because it is way easier to launder them, compared to dollars on a bank account.

[Theb]

What I am seeing right now is that cryptocurrency wallets that have mobile applications are in a good position right now. Why? A lot of companies such as Apple and Samsung are creating their own payment method in their own mobile devices they created Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay respectively. Virtual credit and debit cards are also existing right now in our mobile phones, banks actually have apps for mobile phones which you can send and receive money from. With the examples I give I think in the future people would only be bringing their cellphones and not their wallets anymore that's if driver's license and other ids have gone digital as well.

[posi]

Serious question: In a world where coins are digital and paper money is a mere novelty, how will exchanges or transactions work? It would have to be faster than a handshake, and yet secure. Would they only be on apps in your phone? Could you hide them in a pendant or perhaps a watch? Thoughts?

As I presume the futures of cryptocurrency wallet will be outstanding because the cryptocurrency developer are working round the clock to find solution to current problem that wallet are facing and we should be expecting a crypto world where we will be using a secure wrist watch wallet along with fast transaction.

[shield132]

Serious question: In a world where coins are digital and paper money is a mere novelty, how will exchanges or transactions work? It would have to be faster than a handshake, and yet secure. Would they only be on apps in your phone? Could you hide them in a pendant or perhaps a watch? Thoughts?

From your post I think you like sci-fi...
Well, coins aren't important but paper money isn't in use, we have money digitally, on bank accounts.
Since we talk about the future, you know that latest phones have fingerprint, facescan, eyescan... It will be developed in future and will turn into one of the most safest way of data protection (you pay with your smartphone by your fingerprint or etc).
If someone stole, they won't be able to pay because it only functions on owner.
Now I'll turn into sci-fi. For better security, it has to understand blood pressure, heat and a lot of details about owner in order to prevent some money extort in street.
Now smartwatches with NFC payments gives you possibility to pay contactless (for example Fitbit).

[Harlot]

The only thing I see cryptocurrencies improve in the future is not about the tools being used in transactions (phone, desktop) but the way how the transaction goes in terms of how fast it is and how low the transaction fees are. Honestly those are the two things it needs to improve right now in order to be future proof, and that is what SegWit is doing for Bitcoin and Altcoins are catching up with their own technology.

[bob123]

The only thing I can think of is developing a device that has its own operating system and dedicated to be a secured wallet.

You can go a step further.
All you need to create an 'air-gapped' hardware wallet is a secure element (e.g. like ledger nano s' dual chip architecture (ST31/STM32)) and an interface to communicate.
It is very well imaginable that in a few years we will have mobile phones with integrated small secure elements which serve as a hardware wallet.
Maybe with an additional small screen at the top or bottom of the smartphone (to ensure a completely secured environment / 2-factor authentication). 

[jak3]

well this is an interesting topic but future of money and wallets is going to be minimal. because you do not even have to worry about your wallet or money because you do not have to carry it anywhere. All you have to do is go out in the world and take anything you want and AI will handle everything for you. Go on a shop and take anything and its price will be deducted from your account. Of course every thing will be smart at that time.