I have a question to people who think these are a winner.
The issue seems to be a social issue not a technological one. Do people prefer a secure dedicated device over a less secure mobile phone which offers a far superior featureset?
Random thoughts here:
- Devices are so low spec that it makes it difficult to implement any of the blockchain scalability optimisations that can be used for Electrum. Much of the processing is moved server side which assuming it ever did the volume that is mass usage, would be a serious problem.
It's not a problem for bitcoinspinner, which pretty much does the same thing for an android smartphone. It would take some significant adoption rates before the server side was heavily loaded even for a low end server instance, and it's not like that can't be scaled up if the market is there. I wouldn't expect that transfers from a bitcoincard are going to be free, they aren't for bitcoinspinner.
- I’m not sure that the hardware on these devices can generate enough entropy. A friend (niekt0) told me that ECDSA (unlike other encryption schemes) requires entropy for each signing, not only for generating keys.
Not quite correct, as all signing is a reproducable process by necessity. Also, any amount of entrophy can be aquired early, over a period of time, or by the wireless radio receiver by tuning to an off channel and digitizing the background noise. There is no need for a radndome number generator because the digital receiver acrtually is one.
- I’ve seen an addon device for mobile phones that allows secure key signing to be possible via an attached USB or similar device. The functionality for a mobile phone is far more advanced that these low spec devices.
I'm sure that some future users will go that route, or simply buy smartphones with this kind of hardware included in the phone.
- Even if dedicated devices are more secure, mobile phones have more popular adoption. For small amounts of spending cash, their security is adequate. For larger amounts, larger devices or services are fine.
Mobile phones do, but smartphone not so much. Not yet anyway. Still, I want a dozen even though I have a smartphone. I use my smartphones for a great many things, many of which are terriblely insecure. Hardening my smartphone so that it could do any kind of mobile payments secure enough to keep any significant balance would be an inconvience in so many other ways. If the devices are cheap enough, they have value as a secondary value storage device, even if they spend most of their time in my safe. The mesh texting functions also make them independently valuable to myself to keep in touch with my kids when we are in public but separated from line of sight. I could put some without any balance in the back pockets of my toddlers, so that I could vector track them with a smartphone app should they get loose in a crowd. I could give one to each of my older kids so that I could keep tabs on them while they wander the Mall or the craft fair, and do so far cheaper than it would cost me to pay for a cell phone & service. Cheaper even than a set of Family Radio Service handsets, and less publicly annoying. I could give them away to my pre-teen daughter's click of friends as a texting toy, if they are cheap enough.
That's just my own, very real, use case. I can think of a dozen other use cases off the top of my head, not the least of which is as an actual payments device for people who are 1) to poor or 2) too cheap to buy a smartphone (such as the third world bitcoin user model mentioned by others) or 3) those who actually
do own a smartphone but are either beyond their effective 3G service range or 4) desire to have a backup method should their smartphone be physically stolen or 5) pwned or 6) busted or 7) simply a dead battery. And then there are those who like to go camping beyond the range of their cell service and
the camp store accepts bitcoins but doesn't have wifi.
Again, it depends upon the cost of the device. If they cost under $2 each to procure, I'll buy a dozen & one or two hardware gateway dongles jsut for the location & texting features. The bitcoin fuctions are just a bonus.
