Topic: [ANN] The world's first handheld Bitcoin device, the Ellet! - page 19. (Read 45664 times)

The "having another device" issue is the main reason why I am looking forward to a card that fits in my wallet.

Unfortunately software alone will never be secure enough to protect the private keys of non-tech people. No matter how much you invest in your software, it cannot be more secure than the environment it runs at. And if the environment is "generic", it is not secure.
A dedicated device is needed for security purposes.


That said, I also wonder if people would like to carry another device around. Maybe for daily spends, smartphone apps are the way to go. Devices like this would be kept home, to access your savings account.
Don't know, let's see how it goes.

That's a very good point, thanks for bringing that up. Now I can explain why this device should be open source with justification but I can't declare I have any control to make that decision for this product but someone else had to bring it up(besides me) to make it real.

Why do I need to be suspicious? I have a balance sheet with hard numbers on it. Are you going to argue with math and hard numbers?

As for the opportunity cost, well there is no cost if it isn't any worse than the other options, in terms of features and rates.

And I really don't know how the heck you got to the conclusion that anything was "perpetual". Just because one service pays out doesn't mean that there isn't another that sucks it right back in again. I just don't happen to use the credit services that charge 25% APR just because they can. So sue me for not using credit in the way that a bank would like me to, and leaching off of the non-credit, paying services.

Why should the average consumer trust this new device any more than existing devices? Because Bitcoin!   

I personally think there is some fallacy in thinking "Why would someone carry another electronic device when their are smartphones that already facilitate Bitcoin transactions?"

Wish i could remember which one it was called tho.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies


Seriously tho if you really trust that all smartphone manufactures are not hiding packets of data that send statistical usage and data behind your back(without your consent) then please continue to use the smartphones to trust your money with it.

 I know for a fact that after seeing all these hackings with Bitcoins I guarantee their will be businesses(more like scammers) in the future that their sole purposes is to sell cheap smartphones with some (mischievously-altered) open source operating system preloaded on it that will send your private keys to the server and the worst part of it all is that they will encrypt the data so you don't even know what they are sending and those businesses will succeed from selling private keys to other companies and of course on top of selling smart phones to all those who think that fallacy above is true. -- That is all.

Ps. Heck in the future when Bitcoins hits masspopulation/mainstream their will be college kids saying "Hey bro you wanna make some money?", "Sure how?", "lets sell our (altered)phones to innocent people and when they receive Bitcoins on their smartphone they will be automatically sent to us instead"

So what you are counting on is becoming a greater huckster than Apple?  You certainly do need to raise many more millions of dollars in funds... or maybe you can choose a larger font for your announcements. ( and you didn't answer BadBear's question, "What is coming next week?" )
I can't see the market deciding for this over an app they can put on their phone.

Nothing is free. I'm not going to try to force you to understand the mechanisms by which you pay for the services you receive from your bank; but if you're old enough to to be posting on an online forum you really should have figured out by now that perpetual motion doesn't exist anywhere in the universe and so should already be suspicious about any claim of "free".

ipod sales have been declining for years my friend.  phones are the trend.

I'm not so sure this will fly as a consumer device, but if it has good POS functionality it might be just the thing to get retail operations on board with bitcoin. Imagine a small shop with a couple teenagers as cashiers. You don't want them using their own smartphones or the store owner's to do POS transactions, but having a small and cheap device next to the cash register would be easy to integrate into your regular operations.

Having some way for it to be integrated into an existing POS system would be very helpful (at least for those businesses that care about accurate accounting).

Tony, thanks for the comment. I've heard this argument before even with other projects like Yifu's tablet but ultimately all that matters is what consumers want and what the product can do.

All obvious security benefits aside, I don't think the argument of consumers not wanting multiple devices has ever had any merit. One need look no further than iPod to see that. Mobile phones have the same mp3 playing functionality, but proper branding, marketing and a feature list made it a household device all across the world.

Let the free market decide!

"Ellet" sounds awful 

I like Matthew and he's done a bang-up job with the magazine, but I have to agree here.  The key to getting wider adoption is absolutely, positively in making better software, not hardware.  

I'm sure over the years, dozens of aspiring Facebook employees wanted to make a portable "facebook device", and every one of them got shot down in flames.  The same reason why Palm Pilot went bust as soon as phones became small enough.

The proper way to make bitcoin usable is add it onto the devices people carry around with them already, mainly a mobile phone.  I have an ipod, but I never use it anymore, now that I can put my music on my phone.  I have stacks of CDs that are collecting dust, I never use them anymore, I just plug my phone into the car AUX jack.

My wallet I would love to consolidate.  it's full of paper money, receipts, credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, a whole bunch of crap that needs to be consolidated and digitized.  I feel like its the equivalent of carrying around a case of CDs.  

I'm hoping that YC will get a great product out of piuk to solve this problem.

Exactly this.
And seeing with how much fear MWN started to attack this bitcoincard thing (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoincardorg-78171), I cannot resist feeling that this bitcoin card is indeed the future.

This is something ive been looking forward to. Phones are hard to secure - with a mish-mash of closed source programs its hard to keep track of whats going on. In this sense iphone is very failed. Android is failed in this sense a little less but has other problems. In particular i saw an exploit where permissions where broken and also every app has read/write to the sdcard.
Even blackberry isnt great especially the newer blackberries. Having a separate device, whether its this or another phone ( i.e replicant android with no binary blob dmodem drivers) is the only pragmatic way to go at the moment.

Certainly id buy one, especially if hackable and able to repurpose. Would buy one anyway at that price just for curiosities sake or give out as presents. Would make IOUs for family members a lot more efficient, if those family members need help with tech ewpecially.


Once again, comparing to fiat and credit is silly. Bitcoin is CASH. Thats the whole point. You dont carry round your savings in a duffle bag. Here you have to do the same.
Having lived in a cash society this is a culture change. When you go out for the day you have to guess how much cash to take with you. Its a bit inconvenient at first but youre so much more in control and you know exactly what you have.  Unlike cash fiat though its yours.

Cash societies would understand this better. People used to debit and credit cards wont understabd until they go to pay and cant. Those are the people who need to be given these for christmas and birthdays.

I would wear a device on my wrist that doubles as a watch and lets me do all the things the ellet is claimed to do

I generally try not to post negative commentary, but I think there's an obvious point being missed.  Even assuming this device is made perfectly, no bugs, ships on time, performs better then expected, is cheaper than projected, and looks cooler then cool... It's still going to fail.

Purchasing a separate device to use for payments (in addition to smartphone, WALLET/PURSE, ipad/tablet, etc...) is a D.O.A. concept for all but a few of us nerds.

Why would I carry around ANOTHER single-purpose device?  The money/time/energy would be better spent integrating this concept into NFC/Bluetooth smartphone transactions.  See how many smartphones around the world are already being used for micropayments.  If you could one-up them by adding paypal, dwolla, btc, etc, you might have a viable business model.

I do think its a cool idea in a geek-cred sort of way - but global adoption? C'mon.  Even if BTC became the dominant worldwide currency, you could still make a P.O.S. purchase with a QR code of your BTC address using your smartphone; or some other method using existing tech.

'Who is picking up the check for lunch today?'
'Not me, I forgot to charge my wallet!'

Sorry, but -1.

That is an excellent suggestion, some merchants offer this now on usd transactions i see no reason why out wouldn't be standard for all bitcoin merchant transactions much less transactions to a merchant from an ellet.

I wish there were more informed and constructively critical consumers like yourself. This is how to give proper feedback on a product.

Your points are well received. I hesitate to list technical specifications at this point because although the feature set is highly unlikely to change, the hardware behind it may directly relative to manufacturing costs and difficulties, licensing, better solutions making themselves known, etc.

-I dont like the name, I guess its hard to settle on ellet when bitdex was so good. bitlet didnt seem so bad either.
-I dont like that it supports other currencies I only care about bitcoins as a digital currency and credit cards for USD but I understand why this is done, it is impressive if it can really support all of those especially dwolla and paypal.
-I dont like the reddit page that is a really stupid.

-good news? I love everything else about the device especially the 40hour battery life and all the ways to back up your wallet!

will it work off wifi?