Today, Mycelium has announced the launch of an
Indiegogo project for its Mycelium Entropy device. Mycelium Entropy is the newest addition to the Mycelium Bitcoin Wallet ecosystem, first announced at the Bitcoin2014 Conference in Amsterdam, and demonstrated at the Central Europe Bitcoin Expo in Vienna, as well as the recent Bitcoin in the Beltway conference in Washington DC. The project fundraiser was initially delayed when Kickstarter decided to deny it on the grounds that "Kickstarter's guidelines do not allow for offering money processing services." Attempts to explain that a hardware random number generator is not in any way a "money processing service" has failed, but the Mycelium team was not deterred, and we found a new place to host the fundraiser.
Mycelium Entropy is a small, simple USB device that is designed specifically to generate paper wallets. All you do is plug it into a printer's USB port, and the device uses specialized hardware to create a random number with 256-bits of entropy. It then uses that number to generate a paper wallet with public and private keys, which your printer sees as a JPG photo that it can print directly from the device. This is currently the most secure way to create paper wallets, since the keys are never exposed to the web, use true high level entropy, and only exist on paper. For extra security, Mycelium Entropy can also create M-of-N split keys, where the private key is split up in such a way that you need two out of three parts to spend from an address. In this way, if one of your paper backups is lost or stolen, the thief still can't steal your coins, and you can still access them using the remaining 2 paper backups. Since the Mycelium Bitcoin Wallet has full support for spending from paper wallets, using Mycelium Entropy in combination with the Mycelium Bitcoin Wallet can be a very safe and easy way to store and protect your savings. Think of it as being able to create your own bank deposit certificates that you can keep in a safe, while keeping only a bit of spending cash on your Android wallet. With this combination, the idea of "Be Your Own Bank" comes much closer to reality, and becomes much easier as well.
At this stage, the devices are fully functional, and need just a few minor software tweaks, such as fixing issues of incompatibility between US and European sized paper standards causing the headings on the paper wallet image to be cut off. Mostly minor things that will be resolved by the time we are ready to launch. Although the device hardware is open source, we need to raise money to be able to order them in sufficient enough quantities to make them cheaper for everyone, since mass production is much cheaper than ordering them one at a time. Also, about $1,500 of the money raised will go towards testing and compliance for these types of devices, like CE marks, FCC part 15 approvals, etc. While the devices are being developed, we will spend time testing printers and putting together a list of recommended printers to use with these, just to make sure that yours can handle this, or if it can't, to help you find the cheapest (and most secure) option you can get.
You can read many more details, and see examples, on our
Indiegogo page.
