The benefit of an online wallet is that they can act as a payment processor offering "Instant" transactions. Real Bitcoin transactions are not generally fully trusted for 120 blocks, or about 20 hours on average. Even if the transaction is conditionally accepted after 1 block, you still have to wait about 10 minutes.
Topic: Why store Bitcoins remotely? - page 2. (Read 1887 times)
It's a very risky move for sure, the risk doesn't outweigh the security that they promise -- infact i think the security is even worse than just using your wallet file
^^^ yes completely agreed. Keeping a small amount on an internet and then the rest on a secure platform would be the best option. In order to limit the amount of viable assets that could be stolen.
All true about trust. However I think these services are going to take off anyway. Imaging the ability to pay for things with your phone or from any computer. That is their best application. Maybe in the future people will keep a few coins in an online wallet and their main bitwealth on a USB drive?
I refuse to use such services due to the facts that you just pointed out. Also to the fact that they could just *disappear* one day with all of the bitcoins with the wallet files.
I keep my wallet file encrypted on a flash drive. however i also have a second wallet for my trading. I wouldn't trust these sites as far as i can throw them.
I keep my wallet file encrypted on a flash drive. however i also have a second wallet for my trading. I wouldn't trust these sites as far as i can throw them.
Very happy to see so many people trying to create new services out there. This is what will establish the Bitcoin economy. I was wondering about Instawallet type services. What benefit is there to storing Bitcoins on someone else's server that could potentially be hacked. The benefit of accessing your wallet from anywhere seems negated by the fact that the security is based on a unique URL which would be potentially saved in any computer you use.
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