Kickstarter is shortly to host the campaign for a unique Bitcoin innovation: a 3-tier wallet system called Bitstash.
Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising product to appear on a crowdfunding site for a while, Bitstash “uses entropy created by atmospheric noise” to create three types of wallet, each with a specific purpose. The campaign is due to launch October 22, and will feature the opportunity to preorder Bitstash along with a funding goal of US$50,000.
“What we’ve created is a new, easy-to-use global solution that involves absolutely no third parties with government-grade security features like tamper detection and self-destruct circuitry,” CTO Trevor Murphy said in a recently-issued press release.
Bitstash aims to deliver wallet solutions with two major selling points. As well as flawless security, ease of use is a key feature, being designed for the lay consumer.
“It is for a world where shopping on overstock.com with your iPad is simple to do from your couch, but totally secure,” Murphy told Cointelegraph via email.
The product itself consists of a mobile wallet, a device wallet for daily trading an online purchases and a cold storage wallet. “BIP70 payment protocol support and easy-to-use wallet software deliver unprecedented usability and simplicity,” the press release continues, while automatic balancing feature will ensure the correct amount of Bitcoin is always present in each wallet.
“Existing best practices for Bitcoin are too complicated for mass user adoption, and online storage solutions have too many risks,” Murphy adds.
Asked about similarities Bitstash has with Trezor, a USB Bitcoin safe which also has security as a priority, Murphy was quick to point out the different classes of the two products:
“Trezor is single tier of storage. BitStash is 3 tiers of BIP32 storage accessible over hardened Bluetooth from your mobile and desktop devices. There is a mobile wallet, whose keys reside on your mobile device, for small sums. A home wallet whose keys reside in BitStash (the most like Trezor) but which is… accessible from all authorized mobile and desktop devices. And, a TRUE cold storage tier which resides only on LUKS encrypted USB drives, which normally reside in your SAFE [and which] needs to be plugged into BitStash to access its balances.”
Bitstash is being spearheaded by eCoinConcepts, a joint venture between Murphy and Steve Swanson, former Global Head of Electronic Trading at Citigroup as well as co-founder of ATD. Both are Wall Street veterans and hope crowdfunding will provide vital publicity to communicate Bitstash’s potential to a wider audience.
Proceeds from the campaign will go towards an initial manufacturing round and the completion of FCC and FIPS 140-2 level 3 certifications.