Earlier this year, Bojan Simic, the founder of the Bitcoin Security Project and Aegis Wallet, released a new, free, and open source bitcoin wallet. He has recently implemented Android Wear support onto the wallet, it's called Aegis Wallet Wear. This is the first ever of its kind. Its features include a new watch face that shows you your current Aegis Wallet balance and the current price of bitcoin, and it also allows you to pull up a QR code from a watch for receiving bitcoin payments. The watch app notifies you of transactions occurring on your Aegis Wallet. This pioneering idea is sure to catch on as smart watches and other wearable technology gain popularity. "I came up with the idea for a wearable Bitcoin app when I saw the new Android watches coming out over the last month or so," says Bojan. "I got tired of checking the bitcoin price and my wallet balance on my phone so I decided to add the wearable feature to Aegis Wallet."
I asked Bojan about his thoughts on the future of wearable tech. "I think wearables and the concept of the "Internet of Things" is going to be huge over the next few years. We are already seeing watches, bracelets, and even devices put inside humans! For example, there is a device that is the size of a grain of rice that fits under a diabetes patient's skin that monitors their blood sugar levels 24/7. For Bitcoin in particular, I think that wearable devices are going to be used as a 2 factor method of authentication rather than an insecure password or PIN."
I asked Bojan if there were any other interesting projects he was working on. I'm currently busy with HyprKey, a Bitcoin startup I co-founded with a great team here in NYC. Of course my passion always includes working on open source projects like Bitcoin and wallet technologies like Aegis Bitcoin Wallet so I make sure to find the time to participate in those as much as I can. Besides that I'm always trying to spread cyber security awareness with the Bitcoin Security Project throughout the development and Bitcoin communities. I think that as we become more connected with technologies such as wearables and mobile devices, our information will be more and more public and security will be more important than ever.
Bojan has also recently added a new SMS feature to the Aegis Wallet.
"Now if you don't know a person's Bitcoin address," says Bojan, "you can just put in their mobile number and they will receive an SMS telling them to reply with their Bitcoin address. Once they reply, Aegis will take the address and ask you to confirm. The Aegis Wallet app does not read your SMS messages or send them to any place." "The Aegis Bitcoin Wallet and the Bitcoin Security Project are both open source and free forever," concludes Bojan. "I would like to invite developers and anyone else who would be interested in contributing to making these projects better to do so."