Sending Bitcoin through SMS/Text Messaging?

[Abiky]

I'm looking for a way to send Bitcoin to people in countries which lack Internet access. After all, being able to send Bitcoin in a safe and secure way over SMS/Text messaging would prove to be extremely convenient for "offline" transactions. For once, I've heard about a crypto service which allowed people to send Bitcoin over SMS/Text messaging. But I can't recall its name. Still though, it relies on a central operator/middleman. I'd prefer a solution that would allow me to send BTC though SMS/Text messaging in the most decentralized way possible.

Do you think it's possible to do this? Are you aware of any methods to sent BTC through SMS/Text messaging without relying on third parties? If it cannot be done in a decentralized manner, I'd still like to know if there are mainstream companies offering such possibility to Bitcoin users. Thanks in advance.

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[fiulpro]

Well I do think that you are already aware of the fact that bitcoins were already being used by people over the radio with the help of ionospheric transmission.
There are many people who have done that and many researchers have even worked towards that .
So I do think you can actually try that if you want to avoid the internet.
I am not aware of any service which is sending and receiving BTC through text messages but if you are focusing on decentralized sending and receiving try finding stuff about sending bitcoins through radio.

[MysteryMiner]

Depends on trust level. Raw transactions or sending private keys is two options that come to my dumb mind at the moment.

SMS is plaintext and insecure by default, so sending private key is idiotic idea from beginning that just might work.

[livingfree]

I still can't look for a service like this. Honestly, this is a good idea and might be useful in the future when everyone can easily send bitcoin through sms.

The manual method that I can think of is by sending the qr code to the sender and have him scan it. The thing here is that the sender is the only one that needs to have access on the internet.

And the other way around was mentioned by MysteryMiner.

[Kelvinid]

As we look into Bitcoin's feature, it is only applicable to online transactions. I don't think that it works like this knowing that a certain place hasn't an internet connection. I'd find that hopeless of having crypto, having a key or anything that could give them away to access our wallet cause it still doesn't have a chance to open it. A thousand people having this case and it seems to be impossible that crypto will work with them and could adopt the technology as well.

Depends on trust level. Raw transactions or sending private keys is two options that come to my dumb mind at the moment.

SMS is plaintext and insecure by default, so sending private key is idiotic idea from beginning that just might work.

Unless if that person allowing his friends or relatives to control over his/her wallet. But I don't think it was possible.

 

[LoyceMobile]

Did you mean sat2.io ?
I haven't tested it by myself, so obviously use at your own risk.

[20kevin20]

IIRC, a few years ago there was this way people could steal your identity and your most important & valuable accounts by calling AT&T or whoever you've got your SIM card from and telling them you'd like to swap sims. I believe there are also other methods to do this that do not imply calling the mobile company you're working with.

Therefore, launching a service that lets people use BTC through SMS would make scammers turn their focus over this new crypto sending method and vulnerabilities will more than sure be found one way or another.

One idea I think of, although I'm not a programmer so it could sound stupid as well, is there could be an open-source app like Signal created specifically for purpose where these transactions or private keys could possibly be encrypted and compressed and somehow all parties transferring money to you and receiving from you via SMS would have the secret keys to decrypt these messages. The app could serve as a "secret key storage" in order to decrypt the transactions and make them readable.

However, I'm not sure how reliable this kind of app would be. Signal relies on a centralized server AFAIK, so unless there's a way an app serving this purpose could be created and be open-source & completely decentralized, there's probably no way you can send a transaction or basically any sensitive information through SMS in a trustless and secure manner.

[bL4nkcode]

I guess it's cointext doing this but you need to trust them first (never used them so do it with risk), and having said that without relying on third parties is a different thing.

[Thekool1s]

You are trying to connect an offline world into an online one... You need a medium to do it. The whole point of bitcoin is to have a synchronized ledger which is distributed around the globe on different nodes, which at the end of the day you are trusting because the bitcoin's code says so, you are not just trusting the middle man but the middlemen while you use the Bitcoin network, Middlemen aren't necessarily always evil...  I don't think it can happen without us achieving quantum entanglement of sorts and rewriting the bitcoin code...

However, this can be done on an individual scale without much hassle... All you need to do is set up a server which will check for incoming messages on a sim ^{( you can find plenty of guides around on how you can receive SMS on your PC by connecting your sim )} and then broadcast it for you... All you need is to have a basic knowledge of python. You can simply run a coroutine which checks for received messages every minute, an hour or whatever you want the duration to be and broadcasts the signed transaction in the SMS via an API. You can find plenty of APIs which you can use to broadcast Signed Bitcoin Transactions, Basically eliminating the middleman in this case. however, I don't see how it can harm someone even if it's being run centrally... This doesn't need to be a centralized service where you let an X organization share your private keys or own them all together but simply a service which pushes your signed transactions...

[Lakshman15]

This idea is really good. Hear is a chance to reduce transactions fee of Bitcoin. It's helps lot for so many members. Who have not aware in exchanges their coins, this type of service really helpful to them. Hear we can do peer to peer transactions very easily when we need.

But now this type is service not available, in fiat currency we can transfer, but in crypto it take time to get this service. Because lot of countries not accepting cryptocurrency.

[Pffrt]

I don't know how much decentralized Bitbucks is, you can send receive BTC with your mobile number through Bitbucks. It works same as any other custodial wallet service. There's no fee other than while loading your wallet. A lot of good features are there which I personally liked.
https://www.bitbucks.io

[nicecrypto]

If btc is not design to send an offline transaction how you think this would be possible? Because if it were am sure lots of people would have been using that feature by now instead of paying high transaction fees to send,
I only know of one coin who support and have display this feature which i have seen, although i haven't try it out but from the video tutorial everything went smoothly from one device to another and the transaction was found on the block explorer, it was pretty cool.

[joniboini]

This idea is really good. Hear is a chance to reduce transactions fee of Bitcoin. It's helps lot for so many members. Who have not aware in exchanges their coins, this type of service really helpful to them. Hear we can do peer to peer transactions very easily when we need.

The transaction may happen but the bitcoin is not moving at all on the blockchain, so what you're trading is mostly private key or a raw transaction as mentioned above. It is a bad idea as the sender can easily create a copy of the private key and then move the money first when he get internet access. You need something like opendime if you want to be safe, but obviously you can't do it through sms.

[Furious 7]

Sending bitcoin to a friend via SMS while offline I have never heard of it because I know that every time a bitcoin transaction has to be connected to the internet, we can send bitcoin to our friends.
I don't think we can do it because I never know what happens if via SMS, all digital currencies must still be connected to the internet to do whatever you want.

[dothebeats]

There was one service that existed like this way way back, I believe, though it did not see any full recognition from the community as there were several vulnerabilities in doing such. It was aimed mostly on African countries, similar to the M-pesa system they had there but it never really got any real traction and development main concerns include easy MITM attacks among others, though to our present technology that vector of attack can now be prevented.

[Youghoor]

It would have been a great and helpful idea but looking at the nature and design of bitcoin i don't think this is possible. How would the transaction even be sent to the network for miners to work on? There are so many questions that would come off with regard to this use case and i don't think most of them can be answered.

If your intention is to make transaction faster then people should learn how to save wallet address the very first time they use them in transactions so that in subsequent cases he/she would not have to copy the address all over again. i have heard cases where a copied address can be changed by hackers and if care is not taken you will end up sending the money to the wrong person.

[butcherme]

I don't know if it would be great but isn't Blockchain holds the record of every transaction.
And it would be hard to verify if the transaction has been confirmed if it would just be an offline transaction.

[pooya87]

you can't not need a third party in such a design. lets take a look at two situations:
1. sender doesn't have internet but receiver does
this is a much safer situation. all sender has to do is receive his transaction history from a third party using any other method like on a floppy disk! then he creates a new transaction sending bitcoin to the receiver, all offline and signs it. then sends the signed raw tx using SMS. then the receiver (having internet) broadcasts it to be mined, he can continue monitoring the situation with his tx and know when it confirms, if it is valid,...
worst case scenario in this case is if in first step the sender doesn't receive all his UTXOs or receives wrong ones. in any case he won't lose any money.

2. sender has internet but receiver doesn't
this case is very different from the last one. the sender has a much easier time since he has access to internet and can create the tx and broadcast and monitor it. but there is no need for him to send the raw tx through SMS to the receiver since he doesn't have internet and won't do him any good. all he needs to do is to send them the txid (hash) and maybe the block height.
now the receiver has a much harder time because he has to find a way to verify if the txid is real. what they can do in order not to rely heavily on third party is to receive block headers and the merkle root of the same block height that the txid is in. they can receive it through snail mail in a USB disk or burnt on a CD/DVD. since block headers can't be faked without spending billions of dollars worth of hashrate and merkle root can't be faked thanks to SHA256 they can be more sure about honestly of the transaction they received.

[Assface16678]

It would have been a great and helpful idea but looking at the nature and design of bitcoin i don't think this is possible. How would the transaction even be sent to the network for miners to work on? There are so many questions that would come off with regard to this use case and i don't think most of them can be answered.

If your intention is to make transaction faster then people should learn how to save wallet address the very first time they use them in transactions so that in subsequent cases he/she would not have to copy the address all over again. i have heard cases where a copied address can be changed by hackers and if care is not taken you will end up sending the money to the wrong person.

That was a great idea that makes process of sending bitcoin through sms/text message, but I think it is not possible because if we are talking about cryptocurrency it is talking about online process and all of the transactions are connected into each other like we have known it is blockchain that every purchase is collected and we called those as a block and chain because it is connected. In sms, it is an offline method of sending through other services with the use of frequency to receive into other party. If we are trying to connect those kinds of action, it is not suitable, but we can use the SMS to make a message like sending of address into other parties to make it secured.

[Debonaire217]

The only way I could see this possible is when you completely trust the third party whom you will send the SMS to send the bitcoins you have over a transaction. In addition, it is unsecured when it comes to mass transactions as they need to expose their account or even their private key to the third in case, they could use a local application that is regulated and allows authorization through Mobile simcard. This will enable small scale transaction to be processed when really needed, though, it isn't secured.

So far, the invention of a better internet facilities and structures should be implemented to support easier connection to internet and transact using it in the very best possible way.