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Re:Coinpunk - Run your own Bitcoin wallet service by GigabyteCoin on Friday May 17, 2013 @11:21AM (#5724862)
This is the last thing we need in the Bitcoin world... online wallet services run by people not even smart enough to roll their own.

Kudos to you and spending time on this project, it looks pretty slick, but it's a horrible thing for Bitcoin in general.

If the only thing it manages to accomplish is accelerate the rejection of online wallet services then I suppose it's a good thing.

Re:Coinpunk - Run your own Bitcoin wallet service by mcantelon on Friday May 17, 2013 @12:47PM (#5725419)
A lot of folks "smart enough to roll their own" have gotten hacked. A common, peer-reviewed implementation could be a long-term win.
Re:Coinpunk - Run your own Bitcoin wallet service by wmf on Friday May 17, 2013 @02:22PM (#5725918)
Unless this provides the entire distro it seems like people are still going to get hacked through vulnerabilities in other software.
Re:Coinpunk - Run your own Bitcoin wallet service by fragsworth on Friday May 17, 2013 @04:31PM (#5726560)
I agree. But I wouldn't use this argument to discount the product - this really should be implemented. It seems like the solution would be to provide a specialized "Coinpunk Ubuntu distribution" that you can install on the cheapest Amazon instance or any other cloud server.

I think this a pretty the ideal way to have a bitcoin wallet. You can probably trust Amazon better than you can trust your own machine at home (Companies with much larger assets than you'll ever have are able to trust Amazon), and you can also count on something like S3 or gmail for backups.

The ability to log in from anywhere without having to install a client is really important for usability.

Re:Coinpunk - Run your own Bitcoin wallet service by tcdent on Friday May 17, 2013 @01:02PM (#5725492)
Definitely. This is one of the largest benefits of open source software to me.
Re:Coinpunk - Run your own Bitcoin wallet service by tlrobinson on Friday May 17, 2013 @09:19PM (#5727527)
I agree, but mostly because it doesn't sound like there's any focus on security, and it's too "high level" to really bake in enough security. By "high level" I mean you bring your own Ubuntu/webserver/bitcoind/database installation.

I wish there were a project that focused on providing an extremely secure platform (Linux/BSD distro + bitcoind securely configured out of the box, if that's even possible, or maybe a Bitcoin PaaS) for Bitcoin applications, then you could layer stuff like Coinpunk on top of that.

Re:Coinpunk - Run your own Bitcoin wallet service by fragsworth on Friday May 17, 2013 @04:39PM (#5726592)
> it's a horrible thing for Bitcoin in general.

Absolute rubbish. Bitcoin needs to become easy to use. This is open-source, so it can eventually be turned into a full linux distribution that you can run on your own cloud server. You don't have to know shit about shit to have one of these.

Once we have that, you'll be able to run your own secure bitcoin wallet online (on a server that you own) and access it from anywhere without having to install any clients. For something like $10/month.

Re:Coinpunk - Run your own Bitcoin wallet service by petermelias on Friday May 17, 2013 @08:00PM (#5727314)
I think the caveat in this discussion is that BTC needs something like this if and only IF it can be done securely.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of networked systems, the odds of that do seem quite low unless connection security gets a massive upgrade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography

Re:Coinpunk - Run your own Bitcoin wallet service by arekanderu on Friday May 17, 2013 @06:08PM (#5726925)
I agree that a project like this will only harm bitcoin.