Topic: Bitcoin via Txt: PhoneACoin! (Read 1645 times)

There's also http://bitcoinmkt.com/. I'm not sure which one is the largest.

I think that would be http://bitcoinplus.mx/, but I haven't bought from them yet. I got my first Bitcoins from a local seller.

I added support for all of the currencies published by Gox.  Your profile indicates you're from Mexico.  What's the largest exchange for MXN-BTC, or is there one?  Googling "largest mexican peso to bitcoin exchange" and "buy bitcoin with mxn" didn't find anything conclusive.

Actually, using two factor auth would help a lot, TOTP is trivial to implement, and Google Auth is broadly available.  I'll update the SEND command to support this syntax:

send (amount) (destination) (authcode)

If I only allow an authcode to be used once, this should satisfy all but a realtime message-editing proxy.  I'll add 2FA to the security tab.

I'll add a bunch of countries and currencies tonight, based on what rates I can pull from Gox.  Really it's just a matter of adding rows to those tables, everything else is already ready.  I'll also add support for setting/changing one's default FX currency.

It looks interesting, but I would really like to see international support.

Good question. Sniffing and spoofing separately aren't dangers because of the auth code required to send funds, but a true read/write man-in-the-middle is something that's not easy to mitigate.  That being said, the site strongly cautions you not to put a lot of BTC in the wallet.  And those network engineers have jobs and lives I'd hope they wouldn't risk for someone's $20.  If it were a sizable amount, there wouldn't be enough funds in the hot wallet to cover it anyway, and we'd want to know "why" before moving funds out of cold storage.

I've been looking at integrating with TextSecure but that integration is not ready for testing yet, and it requires a smartphone to use.

No, you most definitely did not waste your time.

There is one risk though.  What if an evil network engineer for the mobile carrier is sniffing and/or intercepting the SMS traffic.  What risk of loss occurs?

I've been involved in Bitcoin for almost two years, but was not aware of Coinapult.  That being said, they don't provide an easy way to do currency conversion, and I don't see a business model, so the more successful they are, the more it costs the owner to run, which is not infinitely sustainable.  Plus, they don't have a way (unless I'm missing something) of recovering coins immediately after a phone theft.  And the owners of the service have gone out of their way to be anonymous, which to me doesn't inspire a lot of trust.

Looks like Blockchain has something similar too.  Huh.

...I may have wasted my time, unless people find the services like automatic FX rate conversion and the ability to pull the prevailing exchange rate via SMS useful.  I also intend to add services like FX rate and GoxLag notifications, should interest present itself.

Most of the coins I've made are through mining, and most of the ones I've bought are through exchanges.  I did do one small trade via this forum not that long ago, but wound up doing the rest via an exchange, because this forum is even more inefficient than the exchanges, and if you'll pardon my saying so, bitcoin-otc seems sketchy as hell.

That being said, my service is a business registered in the US, so there's an entity to go after if things go wrong.  Plus, I'm doing nothing to hide my identity: I've been around in this world for a good long while, and have no criminal history outside of a few speeding tickets.  I even had a top secret clearance (with a special background investigation) back when I was in the Army.  (One of those that involved MiB knocking on my neighbors' doors.)

Google "TCP/IP", and you'll usually find "Daryl's TCP/IP Primer" on page 1.  It's available for free, and has been for 10+ years.  The ads on the site net me maybe $100 a year, far less than what it costs me to host it.

I'm here to improve the world, not steal money I really don't need.

Good question.  Any #bitcoin-otc trust history?

http://coinapult.com/ ?

Very interesting idea that shows quite a bit of promise.

Good luck to you!

Wow, looks powerful.

Kids are gonna have a field day with this one ....  

Edit: wanted to ask how do we know you won't just run off with the coinz ?

If I get any ROI on the Bitcoin side I have no problems with adding Litecoin or other systems.  Let's see how this goes, first.

Can you add support for Litecoin and PPcoin in the near future? It wouldn't take much effort for the ROI.

Incidentally, this system has (so far) only been tested in the US.  I don't know exactly which countries will work with the SMS service I've contracted, though they list a large number.  If your cell phone doesn't txt to US phone numbers, it may not work for you.

I'll add support for other countries (and conversion to other currencies) should interest present itself.

A while ago, I saw a news item about cell phone minutes being used as currency in some African nations, because the local currency was either nonexistent or more suitable as kindling for firewood.

It occurred to me that Bitcoin would be a superior substitute.

I've been a Bitcoin evangelist in my own way for some time, but it's difficult to get people to care about something they have to use specialized software to interact with.  Additionally, a good friend of mine, also a programmer, didn't happen to own a "smart" phone capable of directly interacting with the Bitcoin network.

Which limits utility-- if I run Bitcoin at home, and he runs Bitcoin at home, how do we settle the lunch/bar tab, if one of us is buying and the other wants to pay the difference via BTC?  He could give me an awkward 34-digit alphanumeric code, ...

Or... he could give me a phone number.

I've built a Bitcoin wallet I've called PhoneACoin that uses phone numbers as a proxy for Bitcoin addresses.  Once you transfer funds into PhoneACoin, you can send Bitcoin to phone numbers via SMS (text message) commands.  The recipients can then turn around and do the same, or withdraw funds to their personal wallets.  It charges a small fee for in-network transaction, but that fee is typically less than the current Bitcoin network fee.  (Until recently, it would have been less than half the Bitcoin network fee; now it's comparable.)

Transfers are validated by asking the sender to confirm transfers via 6-digit code.

I've put a lot of thought into the security of this system, and done a lot of defense-in-depth of the systems I've created.

I understand that SMS isn't 110% secure, but I expect people to put relatively small amounts into a wallet system, and will detect scatter/gather extraction systems.  I also understand that phones can be lost or stolen, but have allowed for people to withdraw funds to their (preconfigured) Bitcoin wallet addresses using only their website password.

So my question is, what have I missed?  Why hasn't someone else built this?

While this may sound like a bit of a shameless plug (and perhaps it is), I mostly just want feedback before I attempt to publicly launch.  The website is up and functional at https://phoneacoin.com/, and the system is online.  (Deposits require three confirmations.)

It is my fondest hope that this system will help bring Bitcoin to the world.

Thanks in advance for any/all feedback, positive or negative.