Topic: Any trustable e-wallet services? (Read 3256 times)

I often use online wallets to do local face-to-face exchanges. I have seen transactions as large as 750 BTC sit in an InstaWallet for several hours (confirming, waiting for the meeting, etc).. Then we just exchange the cash and wallet URL.. there's no waiting around for confirmiing. Point is, for short term storage of Bitcoins, it seems a reasonable risk.

I don't see any problem trusting e-wallet services with small amounts of bitcoins. For larger amounts, I recommend to use more elaborate setup.

Logical! 

Yeah Bitcoin is somewhat unique in that you don't need access to the wallet in order to receive money.  You only need access to send.

So it is pretty easy to setup an online wallet for day to day stuff and then include your offline wallet address in the addressbook to "sweep" funds to the offline wallet.  I would still recommend something like blockchain.info or strongcoin where the operator doesn't have access to the keys.

I guess offline storage for the 'bulk' of your stuff, and online wallets for day-to-day operations would be a reasonable way of going about this... 

Maybe you are correct. I, however, prefer to have my bitcoins safe and sound and to "trust nobody". For me it is better for Bitcoin to take twice that long to get mass adoption, then to get myself a X kBTC MyBitcoin moment.

So far my approach worked for me just fine. I bet many fans of "trusted" 3rd parties cannot say so.

Also you have conveniently forgot to quote this:

This kind of mindset ("one cannot trust anyone in the bitcoin community") is exactly what can delay a broader adoption of bitcoin.

IMHO, Bitcoin is not about removing the need for trusted third party (they will be needed for as long as there are dishonest counterparties in electronic transactions):
its about giving people the freedom to chose between transacting directly or transacting through a trusted third party.

Ahaaah! Ok thanks!

I like their wallet service very much, but it would be even better if it transformed into an actual icon, once added to the home screen on iOS devices... Kind of like Google Reader does...

Well, the point was that you don't need to trust Blockchain.info because the service does not hold your private keys, they are encrypted/decrypted in the browser locally. Blockchain.info also provides a validator to check that the Javascript from Blockchain.info has not been compromised.

It's also true that piuk, the guy who runs Blockchain.info, is respected in this community. He is doing a good job with Blockchain.info.

How so? Do these guys have a special status in the BitCoin community?

(Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I'm still learning about who is who!  )

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: Depends on the amount. For large amounts, no; for small amoutns see the rest of this thread. Also depends on amount of time you intend to save your bitcoins in e-wallets. the longer you keep it in there the more money you keep in there the more risks you take.

it's like a password card, with a pseudo-random distribution of numbers. Each time you want to spend, you must provide a unique sequence of numbers. If you sign up, you'll see how it works in the dashboard.

Ok I'll bite what is the secure card?  I went to the site expecting some hardware crypto type solution an I see a normal "trust me" e-wallet.  Am I missing something?

Just checked it out... Novel secure card is novelty!  

Oh another possibility to blatantly advertise eWallets. I'll bite.



Just because of the Secure Card.

Oh I should make that a trademark...

"Just because Secure Card(tm)"

How awesome is that?

Did ya'll know InstaWallet is now owned by Paytunia? I had a support question and the return email address from from that domain.

I trust InstaWallet/Paytunia and use them all the time. However, I'm starting to use EasyWallet a lot more now simply because I give noobs free bitcents through them so they can see a dollar value.

Don't forget Strongcoin.

I think that it's good that we have different types of e-wallets. The e-wallets that hold private keys might actually be more safe for some people, Mt. Gox for example takes security really seriously these days and is also a real company. Same goes for Paytunia I guess.

I think that there are three types of e-wallets, we have Blockchain.info/Strongcoin where you basically have to rely on your own memory. Then we have robust e-wallets with real companies behind them like Mt. Gox and Paytunia, these are probably very safe also but you're relying on them. Then we have wallets like Easywallet and Instawallet that are super easy to use and rely on URL-addresses, not the safest wallets out there but clearly the most convenient for light usage.

I don't know about you guys, but services like Mt. Gox and Paytunia fall in the middle for me when I recommend people to use Bitcoin. I primarily recommend Easywallet for new users because it's just the best for someone just trying Bitcoin out. Then when a person starts using Bitcoin more and really gets it, he should take care of his own coins in the spirit of Bitcoin, not hand them out to 3rd parties. That's where Blockchain.info comes in.

Not that I have anything against Gox or Paytunia, definitely not. I hold some coins at Gox myself, in fact I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket whatever that basket happens to be. It might be healthy to have some coins taken care by yourself and some by a reputable e-wallet, especially if you have a lot of them.

I'm certainly not arguing that it is.  But the debate is about e-wallets; limiting ourselves to those only, then wallet-in-browser gives you more flexibility than hosted-bitcoind.


I'm not sure I've understood what you're saying here (there is ambiguity) because non-hosted could refer to multiple categories.  To my mind there are three key types of wallet:

• Hosted bitcoind -- the private key is entirely accessibly by the provider, and the web page is merely an interface to a few bitcoind command line/rpc commands.  Instawallet, easywallet, Mt.Gox, pretty much every website that uses bitcoin-funded accounts are all in this category.
• Proxied bitcoind -- the signing and management of the wallet is done entirely in the browser (or I suppose in a customised app), the web service is simply providing an online interface to the blockchain to allow querying of balances, etc.  As a convenience these services also provide the ability to store your encrypted wallet with them too, but that is entirely orthogonal to the point -- you could keep that encrypted block entirely on your own device and this principle would still work.  One might reasonably refer to this as a "non-hosted" service.  I believe electrum is working on making such a service easily deployable, so that you would have a choice of servers, and each would be as good as another provided you have your keys locally.
• A self-hosted bitcoind -- run your own client.  This might also reasonably described as non-hosted.  We're ignoring this class in this discussion, since we're talking online-wallets.

Lumping blockchain/strongcoin/electrum into the "hosted wallet" category does them a disservice.


More importantly they are hosted separately from the wallet service.  It's not very likely that your wallet website and your email service go down at the same time.  Plus, there is nothing to stop you saving that emailed backup anywhere you like while you do have access.  Personally, I have all my email forwarded from gmail as well so there is a copy on my own IMAP server, which is then cached by kmail to every computer I use.  That setup might not be typical, but it isn't even possible with a hosted-wallet.  (Blockchain also offers dropbox backup, so you could in principle have your backup available from blockchain, email and dropbox -- all three would then have to fail for you to lose access to your funds; unlike instawallet/easywallet)

I'm not trying to argue that one of these is better or worse than any of the others, it's horses for courses here.  I'm arguing that there is more to "online wallet" than just picking among basically-identical services, and people should be aware of the danger of services that don't leave you in control of your own keys.

You sound like you belong to the group "I 'd rather trust my memory" and this is a large, healthy group.

Another group of people might decide to trust us with whatever bitcoin amount they feel comfortable with.
Unlike traditional banks, a bitcoin bank like paytunia does not impose high entry/exit costs.
With instawallet even, we are only one click away from our competition and that's fine.
We believe that is the kind of freedom we want our customers to enjoy, that they did not have before bitcoin.


You could be coerced into revealing your keys, just like the owners of paymium or anybody else.
A paper wallet can be compromised without its owner knowing it until the coins are gone.
That's also why we believe we provide a useful service.
We have thought and we keep thinking about security.