Hi everybody! I'm going to start doing weekly posts, showcasing one Mycelium feature I find interesting, and updating on what's going on with our team and development. We have tons of awesome stuff being worked on!
So, without further ado, this is the feature that first got me into Mycelium (and impressed the heck out of me at the San Jose conference):
Spending from cold/paper wallet1. Take out printout of private key
2. In Mycelium, go to the Menu is the top right corner (three vertical dots)
3. Select Cold Storage
4. Press QR Code, and scan the private key of your paper wallet.
This loads the private key into your phone's secure memory, but does not save it to your storage.
5. Proceed to spend as normal, entering the Bitcoin address from either the QR code or clipboard, and entering the amount. Note - Mycelium will retrieve the balance of your paper wallet and will show that once you click the Enter Amount keyboard button (I asked the guys if they could make the balance a bit more prominent).
6. Hit send, and Mycelium Wallet will broadcast your transaction, send all the remaining change back to the paper wallet, and wipe the private key from your phone's memory.
This is a pretty great way to spend money from secure cold storage, without relying on a separate computer (as in Armory/Electrum) or a hardware wallet device (Trezzor). It's not as secure as offline signing, but it's much better than a wallet kept on your computer. When Jan first demoed this for me, he whipped out a private key on a folded business card stored in his pocket, spent money from it, and stuck it back into his pocket, with his phone posing no risk to his bitcoins.
In the news, the Mycelium team is traveling to the
Inside Bitcoins conference in Berlin (but I won't be). While there, they will be unveiling a rather exciting and important new service that will be built right into the Mycelium Wallet. I regret not being able to go, because this new thing of theirs is really awesome, is related to a bunch of recent news,
is very important for bitcoin's ecosystem and may help speed up adoption immensely, and I would have been promoting the hell out of it even if I wasn't a part of the team. So if you are going to the conference, make sure to find the Mycelium guys and pester them with questions! (I won't be paid unless you pin them against a wall and ask them all about it
)
And if you can't make it to the conference (It's €445!!!), don't fret. I'll still fill you in on the whole thing right here. I can't wait!