Another crap Amazon wallet find: Material Bitcoin

[Pmalek]

Hell, I'd buy one just as a collectible if it wasn't so goddamn overpriced.  Not even Ballet wallets are as pricey as $96 except for bundle packs or that 24k gold plated one they have.

Take a look at my previous post in this thread. If you want to add one to your collection, buy the DYI plate (the one in the middle on their website). It doesn't come with a pre-generated address and private key, but has 12 empty lines where you can record your own 12-word seed. At one point in the future, you could even use it as a backup. It's still quite pricey at $59.

Rough translation:

Do you know what would happen if the company that runs Twitter disappeared for any reason? The social network would also stop working and would vanish

That would also happen with Ledger and Trezor but, guess what, if Material Bitcoin (the company) disappeared, the wallet would still continue to work without any problem

I don't know what is worse - Misleading their clients into buying their products by making unreal comparisons or not fully understanding how their competitors (in this case Ledger and Trezor) hardware wallets work.

What a load of bullshit! I am pretty sure they know what they are saying is pure crap but they are targeting the naive that don't know any better. One more time, it's not a wallet, so there is nothing there that can stop working with the downfall of the company. It uses no software and doesn't communicate with company servers. You have the address and private key, but so do the creators of the seed plates.

[RickDeckard]

What a load of bullshit! I am pretty sure they know what they are saying is pure crap but they are targeting the naive that don't know any better. One more time, it's not a wallet, so there is nothing there that can stop working with the downfall of the company. It uses no software and doesn't communicate with company servers. You have the address and private key, but so do the creators of the seed plates.

Whats shocks me the most is that they actually got registered within the Bank of Spain! How can an entity like this could support a company with such void claims? I think that this only demonstrates that Banks have no idea what Bitcoin actually is.
To add insult to the injury they also were featured in El Pais[1], one of the biggest journals in Spain. According to the interview (and their CEO) they are already present in 28 countries and they are also having a good reception in the United States, Italy and Chile (their next market is Japan). They are just taking advantage of less informed people with the support of the government and other entities that have supported them financially...
[1]https://www.pressreader.com/spain/el-pais-pais-vasco-1244/20220927/281857237409627

[Pmalek]

Whats shocks me the most is that they actually got registered within the Bank of Spain! How can an entity like this could support a company with such void claims? I think that this only demonstrates that Banks have no idea what Bitcoin actually is.

Got registered in what sense? That's the Central Bank of Spain if I am not mistaken. Is it their banking partner?
I wouldn't be surprised if the bank has no idea of the dangers this company puts its clients in nor do I think they care. If the project fails miserably, it would cause bad press on the whole crypto ecosystem, and the banks look like the winners in those cases.   

[RickDeckard]

Got registered in what sense? That's the Central Bank of Spain if I am not mistaken. Is it their banking partner?
I wouldn't be surprised if the bank has no idea of the dangers this company puts its clients in nor do I think they care. If the project fails miserably, it would cause bad press on the whole crypto ecosystem, and the banks look like the winners in those cases.   

It means that they now hold the same kind of registration (within the main governance body that is the Bank of Spain) that CEXs need in order to operate in certain countries. It mostly certifies the following:

In this regard, these providers shall be obliged to comply with the requirements set out in the regulations on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing.

The registration requires that the providers comply with the following requirements: (i) adequate internal procedures and units for the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, and (ii) proper commercial and professional reputation.

On this[1] page of the website from the Bank of Spain you'll find this[2] spreadsheet that holds all the entities that were granted this registration (you'll find in there Binance, Revolut, Bitstamp amongst others). Material Bitcoin is registered as "MIOLO DESARROLLOS, S.L." and was granted a license on 09/2022.
They are not their banking partner but they basically said "Yes, you can operate in our country". Only in here[1] you'll find a warning that states that the Bank of Spain doesn't keep a tab on the daily operations of the service and can't be hold guilty if the service ends up a scam at some point:

Therefore, registration does not entail approval or verification of the activity carried out by the providers engaged in exchange services between virtual currencies and fiat currencies and custodian wallet providers by the Banco de España.

[1]https://www.bde.es/wbe/en/entidades-profesionales/operativa-gestiones/registros/proveedores-moneda-virtual-monederos-electronicos/
[2]https://www.bde.es/f/webbde/SGE/regis/registro_CMV_SCMV_CMC_SCMC.xlsx

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Hell, I'd buy one just as a collectible if it wasn't so goddamn overpriced.  Not even Ballet wallets are as pricey as $96 except for bundle packs or that 24k gold plated one they have.

Take a look at my previous post in this thread. If you want to add one to your collection, buy the DYI plate (the one in the middle on their website). It doesn't come with a pre-generated address and private key, but has 12 empty lines where you can record your own 12-word seed. At one point in the future, you could even use it as a backup. It's still quite pricey at $59.

Yes, I see that one and I know it's cheaper (but it's still way too fucking expensive), but I don't collect blank seed phrase backup plates, like ColdTi and the like.  I do have some Ballet wallets in my collection, and a couple Arculus wallets, and if you're looking for a rational explanation of why that is....lol, it's just a quirk of mine.  If I was going to buy a Material Bitcoin product for the collection, it'd have to be one the peel-off type.

Fortunately I've got no funds in my collecting stash to blow on anything right now, so there's no dilemma as to whether to buy one of these things.  Nor would I buy one unless it came down to the price of a standard Ballet wallet.

<snip>

Thanks, bro.  I still haven't browsed their website as I intended to do from the get-go.  My impression is that these guys are trying to fill a need for this junk in the Spanish market, and they just happened to list their wallets on Amazon where US residents could see them.  I don't know.  They could be true to their word and have all of those security features, but to people who know better than to trust a new company with promises that have been broken so many times already in the world of crypto, they're obviously targeting people who don't know better--and that's worrisome. 

[The Sceptical Chymist]

From a collectibles perspective, I reckon that some bitcointalk users will probably appreciate having this item in their collections.

I agree, because I see bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general as having a very long life, and at some point in their existence a comprehensive history will be written, and I believe hardware wallets will be more than a footnote.  In other words--and I've said this a number of times before--HW wallets are pieces of crypto history, no matter how shitty or scammy or un-secure they are.  They're sort of like what postage stamps are to the global mail delivery system.

And hey, I heard Coldkey mentioned and don't know much about its history other than it was the vector for a scam.  I'm curious, because I have a Coldkey Genesis Edition which apparently was produced in a run of 250 cards and I'm wondering what its collector's value is.  There's really no way of knowing any info like that, because HW wallet collecting (if it even becomes a thing) is in its infancy.

That's off-topic, but fuck it.  It's my thread and I'll jump naked out of a cake if I want to.  I did a search for Coldkey here but only got two results.

Edit:  Oh Jesus, I really should've tried to search specifically in the Collectibles section for the Coldkey, because I got tons of results (all out of chronological order of course) and also saw a couple auctions for other cards in the series I have.

AND when you've got people like MoparMiningLLC busting out threads like this one, it erases a lot of doubt about HW wallet collecting catching on.  Whew!

[Pmalek]

I'm curious, because I have a Coldkey Genesis Edition which apparently was produced in a run of 250 cards and I'm wondering what its collector's value is.

Did you get the wallet directly from yogg or purchased it from a third party? I don't remember the specifics of the Coldkey scam and if yogg saved the private keys of all released series or only some. Is the wallet still funded? If the scam didn't happen and yogg didn't steal the coins, the value of those wallets would obviously be higher. But now it's associated with negative connotations and scams.

[DIY-HWW]

The curious thing is that they are not scammers, they are a Spanish startup. I imagine they must believe in their product, and apparently, thousands of people believe in them. I've seen this many times before; there are many entrepreneurs who live in a chaotic mistake, but people knows nothing and what matters is the confidence you show. We live in a strange world!

[Hispo]

I have seen this garbage product before, actually several months ago in the Spanish section of the forum.
We used to talk about it on this thread opened by DdmrDdmr: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5388131.0

I have personally reached the conclusion this project is either some startup done with the aim to deceive potential clients for the sake of selling an way overpriced product or a very elaborate scam in potential; because as others have pointed out, there is no way to be sure they handle the private keys properly.

The fact this only-one address scrap metal wallet is more expensive than a Trezor or a ledger is an actual insult to the intelligence of the Bitcoin community, in my opinion. Back then I could not even verify the existence of their business address.