Topic: Finger print alternative way to private keys for Bitcoin Wallet recovery. (Read 278 times)

But not all are familiar with the seed phrases because it's only being used on cryptocurrencies but for finger print, it's being used anywhere and people are familiar with it. When they see that it only needs a fingerprint to access the wallet they can just wait for the target to fall asleep and then grab his finger to open the wallet.

A Fingerprint is easy for a crypto owner to access their accounts but it's also easy for the criminals to steal your wallet. For me I will still prefer the old way of accessing and recovering our wallets. It's not that hard but as long as you will keep your private keys on a place that you can remember for years.

The answer is yes since the fault is on user's inability to maintain the safety to his keys, remember not your keys is equivalent to not your coins, take a look at the scenario even in dealing with fiat, if you're unable to give an accurate signature to your bank account you can't claim anything being there, there are many ways one can secure the keys without having any controversial issue, firstly, have a duplicate copy of your keys in such away that only you can have access to it, one can as well store on a metalic sheet encrypted and encoded, we have other online means such as "Shamir keep my keys" tutorials and follow their procedures as well.

I see to advise in the use of an offline Hardware wallets, this gives you total control over your coins because its an open source and you stand in gap to be fully responsible for your wallet security.


I will recommend you with this Securing Your Seed Phrase with Washers i think you will have a good encounter on it.

Reading at the many responses to this post and having weigh the whole idea, I think this is just adding another clutter and would not be serving us well. I am inclined to say that if we can safeguard the seed phrase then there is nothing really to worry - except, of course, if it is true that Quantum Computing can break the code successfully then maybe we need an alternative but for now I don't see the need to add fingerprints for security purposes.

I thought at first it was a good idea, but when reading the replies on the thread, it is another problem. As you can see in movies, anything you touch can be duplicated your fingerprint. It is now more prone to being hacked because you are always touching things. The other problem was the device. I am sure that this would cost more, so you'll need to buy and upgrade your device. As others stated, the best solution is to keep it secure and be very cautious. That alone can solve the problem of being hacked.

A properly made wallet take security serious. This means that having seed based on biometric is not an option. (Fingerprint can be copied from any surface he touched; wallet access can be lost if one gets his finger cut, burned or even wet! That's not security.)
I don't see any good reason to make the wallet less safe for everybody just because a few people don't think far enough to secure properly their wallet seed.

So I agree with the rest. Bad idea. Sorry.

Like most members who have expressed their opinion, I also think that fingerprinting as a backup is a bad idea because it can be misused in many ways. When I bought my first smartphone that had the option to lock/unlock with a fingerprint, then one of the warnings of the manufacturers was to turn off this method while we sleep or when we expect to be able to go into any unconscious state. So I think it’s a very bad security method, although it’s definitely quick compared to entering a PIN or scanning a face when it comes to smartphones.

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You can't look at Bitcoin from the perspective of banks and all the insurance that such institutions have because you have a completely wrong picture of what Bitcoin really is. Accepting the responsibility of being your own bank is not easy, and it is even worse to reduce the security of your bank in a way that you want your fingerprint to be a key factor in that security.

If someone gets the phrase, nothing will stop this person from getting the money, I believe. Because one can just go with the seed phrase to Electrum, and recover the wallet. So additional measures are not very helpful this way. It's possible to set a password, set a 2FA, etc., but I don't think it helps, ultimately. Moreover, if someone did make such measures unavoidable, it can lock one out of one's own wallet because of not having access to a phone with which the 2FA was set or forgetting the password. As for a fingerprint, not all devices allow this identification yet, so it can limit access to one's coins, but overall it might not be a bad idea. Then again, some here say fingerprint ID isn't as safe as it seems, so I'm not sure.

I think the same, besides our fingerprints cannot be changed so by associating a biometric like that to our private keys we lose any sense of privacy that bitcoin is supposed to give, and when we add that fingerprint readers can be easily fooled then this compromises our coins even further.

So what the OP is proposing does not really make a lot of sense, and if people want to secure their coins then they need to use the established practices, and if they do not, then they are to blame for those coins they lost.

Not a good idea. I think it's possible only through wallet providers, not possible to interrogate with the Bitcoin network directly or have to fork. Though I am not a tech guy, just imagine we are using multiple wallets, then you can't open multiple wallets/private keys/seeds with your fingerprint. Also, it's possible to copy your fingerprint as well you can see the above discussion. I think most wallets are required to repeat the seed phrase and do not allow copying. Means you have to write it somewhere. Simple logic, if you can't save & secure your seed means you will be lost your funds. Because Bitcoin is decentralized and no one stores your seed phrase in case of using non-custodial wallets. That's why learning about Bitcoin before using it is quite important.

Why do you exclude this option? If there is a wrench that helps you recall the passphrase, why can't there be a wallet opening with someone else's finger?
No matter how hard it is said, this is life, and it exists. Therefore, everyone teaches the truth that money loves silence, and the fewer people know about your property, the fewer options criminals will have to get to it.

First, I'm not sure during 2017 the bitcoin price ever traded at $750 per bitcoin because based on CMC data the lowest price was still above $800 per btc during 2017. Am I missing something?

Bitcoin is growing day by day and so is the demand for more and more adequate security to minimize unforeseen losses like losing access to wallets. Basically it is a risky asset ^{[you know that]} and only people who are able to accept this risk can use it.

Security needs to be improved especially on how to secure your wallet and assets, but you can't always rely on the security offered by third party services like fingerprint scanner because satoshi has offered you to be an independent person to own, secure and use bitcoins at your own will . So while we care about security, we also need to know that only we can manage it no matter how reliably you do it. This is important but you can use certain wallet if you want to have fingerprint security such as trustwallet and others. But the question is, how safe are you with it?

In securing a personal wallet such as a trustwallet, I usually use 3 alternatives, namely fingerprints, patterns and pins, but I think in this case fingerprints are the safest alternative, indeed fingerprints can be faked or our fingers are cut by thieves (I hope that's not happen), but I think we need advanced technology as well as extraordinary skill at fingerprinting fraud and of course for traditional thieves it would just be a waste of their time.
Securing the phrase in an offline place, separate from the device and also keeping it secret is one of the safest alternatives in my opinion.

In the case where it's possible, You can activate using both factors for more security in order to make it difficult to gaining access your wallet.
Secondly,  the possibility of people (Hackers) getting access to the picture of your finger print would be rare.
Though this article is to suggest alternative way, whether it will help to solving the challenges we all face with keys.

Before you create a wallet, you know the condition and your friend is aware of how important a seed phrase/recovery phrase is to access your funds. To spend any bitcoin locked on any public key, you need the private key to authorised the transaction, now tell me the alternative you are talking about, this is the security measure of bitcoin and there is no any alternative to this unless you have a backup of your p.keys from the beginning of wallet set up.


There is one alternative to access your private key as I have replied above, properly backup your seed phrase at the initial set-up of your wallet, and inscribe them on a metal plate for maximum security against fire disaster.


Biometric is just an extra layer of security more like password, it doesn't have anything to do with seed phrase. infact most wallet allow you to encrypt your wallet with a password so that any bad actor wouldn't have access to your seed phrase or when someone try to export your private keys but the password encryption is not enough. This is where a passphrase come into play, it helps you to secure your funds incase when someone get your seed phrase, without it, the wallet will be empty.

 

I think there are certain wallets/exchanges that integrated biometric finger print/face ID scanner before you can access your funds. In addition, there is also this personal password that must be inputted in order to send your BTCs to another wallet, so I guess this kind of idea has been introduced already.


I personally think that paying the extra money is better long-term in order to maximize security of your BTCs in your hardware wallets. The cost of purchasing these wallets is so much better than losing all of your funds secured in a given exchange, as the latter is prone to scams in the internet.

When I said alternative way, it simply means that this suggestion is a second option in absence of private keys, it's just like putting two factor Authentication, for example using phone number authentication and google authenticator as well.  so this would serve as last option to helping people who lost their keys by scanning their fingers.
so in case of a dead person, if the private keys were given to them by the diseased they will still gain access to the wallet.

It is possible. See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj2Ty7WkGqk

The guy is even saying that it's possible to fake your fingerprints by using a picture of them.

I don't think so , throw more lights if you have seen such a senario where someone's finger print is faked ,
If such is possible,  except in a situation whereby the person's hand is being cut off.
Remember that finger print involves a scanning process which would be done using your phone or any other scanning device.

Well it's a good idea but I will throw little light into what you just said now, for instance. If biometric is being activated and the real owner of the wallet is dead how do you think they will bycut his or her finger print to access the bitcoin. Or do we say it's a Will for you children and such person wishes to will them out and later run found out is on biometric and he is no longer existing at this point what would be your fate as the Son or relatives to the own..
That's why they have seed phrase maybe can be willed and sent to bank or his layer and after all every the rightfully person which is willed to will have it without stress.

Another again; what if your device is being stolen or misplaced what do you do?? Or let say biometric can be activated only on your device but seed phrase remains untouched.

Absolutely not recommendable, not even advisable for password alternative not to talk of seed phrase or private key recovery.

Backup your seed phrase in different locations and keep it safe. If you think you are not secure enough with your seed phrase, then you can add passphrase while generating the wallet. Then backup your seed phrase and passphrase differently in different locations.

With passphrase added, new keys and addresses are generated instead of the one that would have been generated with only the use of seed phrase. Note that you need passphrase along with seed phrase for recovery if you add passphrase while generating the wallet.

The idea of using fingerprint to access private key is highly not a good idea.

Well, shouldn't he?

If you have the seed phrase, you can restore the private keys. That's the purpose of it after all. If you don't have the required passphrase/key/phrase to restore your coins, they're simply gone.

Try thinking this in real life. If you lost access to your dollar bill, say it fell in an open sewer and got destroyed; would you be able to restore it? No, it's gone, removed from circulation. Period.

This could be used as a password to access the wallet, but not to restore keys with it. Keys have accuracy. The machine that scans your finger doesn't have to detect the same result, it just has to approach it.

Adding biometrics as a means to access your private keys is a very bad idea. We literally leave our finger prints on thousands of surfaces regularly and these could be scanned and extracted.
When you consider that crypto is designed to be pseudo anonymous, linking your biometric data is counter productive.

There is; Backing up your private keys in multiple safe locations, so you have more than one point of security.

They are not. Biometrics are simply convenient, reason why they are so popular.
Most secure means of identification? Not at all.

Don't you think that this would make things worst and not better since it would allow other people to fake your fingerprint and steal your funds? Fingerprint readers are not as secure as you think they are.

And to answer your first question, I think people should become better at taking the necessary precautions (keep the seed offline, use steel instead of paper, keep multiple copies, etc.)

Adding finger print as alternative way to private keys or
seed phrase for Bitcoin Wallet recovery is something to consider.

During 2020 I have a  friend who had 1.372 BTC he purchased in 2017 at the price of $750 per btc
 in  a wallet he lost access to the keys during 2020 ATH.and he was unable to recover the funds.

This senario brought me two to questions?

1 • Are we going to live with such condition that whomever lost access to his keys has forever loose the wallet?

2 • Isn't there gonna be alternative way to restoring our private keys?

Too, The fact that if someone gets access to these private keys or seed phrases has gained total control to that wallet is also worrisome,

So I suggest that adding a layer two security in the BTC wallet by integrating biometric finger print as alternative way to gaining access to every Bitcoin wallet is an Ideal one .
This will save people the stress or risk involved when trying to secure their keys ,because some people spend money to protect and secure their funds for instance....

 By using various types cold storage wallet like, Trezor, ledger Nano wallet or other types of vault storage wallets which cost them some amount of money to purchase.


Nowadays, Biometric finger print  has been seen as one of the most secured and trusted means of identitification and security,
Since no one's finger print is identical.

To conclude.
I  think  that with the integration of biometric finger print as  two layer security and alternative means for Bitcoin wallet recovery,
will help people and save us the risk involved with loosing our keys.