Wallets

Coinbase Wallet Adds Support for Short and ‘Human-Friendly’ Cryptocurrency Addresses

26/02/2020 by Idelto Editor

One of the scariest features of transacting with cryptocurrency, for many new users, is correctly inputting the long hexadecimal addresses involved. Various individual projects and larger collaborations have tried to tackle this anxiety-inducing issue in different ways, so that bitcoin adoption can grow. The latest venture to try and take on this challenge is Coinbase.

Also Read: Coinbase Wallet Removing Mobile Dapp Browser to Comply With Apple

Send Crypto Directly to @Username on Coinbase Wallet

San Francisco-based cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase has introduced a new way for its wallet app users to send each other crypto using short, human-friendly addresses. Every Coinbase Wallet user has an associated username (like @example), that can now serve as an address so they can easily receive transfers from other users of the app instead of their full-length crypto address.

This new feature is compatible with all the currencies already supported by Coinbase Wallet, including bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin, ethereum, ethereum classic, ripple’s XRP, stellar lumens, dogecoin, and all ERC20 tokens. For anyone with privacy concerns, the wallet app has been upgraded with a new privacy toggle in the settings menu so you can keep your username private and prevent other users from searching for it.

“Wallet users often tell us how cumbersome it is to deal with long and nonsensical crypto addresses like 0x89136a83664fa0673930be34463e444260775dc or 3GVBSgLLLjAoNRKxw5hm7kANN2P2mEQJy. They also tell us how stressful it is to send money with the fear of having copied and pasted addresses incorrectly,” explained Sid Coelho-Prabhu, Product Lead for Coinbase Wallet. “Human readable addresses help fix these problems.”

Ethereum Name Service With Multi-Currency Support

The Coinbase Wallet is also integrating the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), which means users can now send crypto to .eth addresses. ENS supports not only payments of ETH but also BTC, BCH, LTC, and many others including all the currencies currently supported by Coinbase Wallet.

ENS is an open source project managed by a non-profit organization, supported mostly by grants from the Ethereum Foundation as it didn’t hold an ICO and has no investors. Its developers see it as a key component of the emerging decentralized web. Over 50 wallet teams have expressed support for integrating ENS into their apps.

The developers of the Coinbase Wallet app believe that these improvements will make cryptocurrency much easier to use and thus help drive adoption by a more mainstream audience. Coelho-Prabhu added: “There are now services that let you associate a short human readable name with your crypto addresses. We’re pleased to integrate them into the Coinbase Wallet experience. Users can now easily send money to friends and business partners like they do with traditional payment apps, albeit globally and in crypto.”

What do you think about the Coinbase Wallet adding support for short and human-friendly addresses? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Coinbase Wallet.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Bitcoin.com Markets, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

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How to Recover Your Funds If You Lose Your Bitcoin Wallet

13/02/2020 by Idelto Editor

Losing a phone or hardware wallet containing cryptocurrency is inconvenient, but it shouldn’t be fatal. Provided you’ve backed up your private key, recovering your coins is a simple exercise. Should you find yourself in such a predicament, however, there’s a few things you should know before reaching for your wallet recovery phrase.

Also read: Zengo Is a Keyless Yet Noncustodial Bitcoin Wallet

Recover Your Wallet the Right Way

If you’re smart enough to store your bitcoin in a noncustodial wallet, you’re smart enough to make a backup. Whether you’re using a desktop, mobile, or hardware wallet, the process is much the same: look out the seed phrase you’ve stashed in a safe place for this very scenario and enter it into your replacement wallet. All going to plan, you’ll see your balance restored and your coins reappear in your wallet within seconds of importing your seed.

There are a few exceptions to this rule, however, as not all wallets rely on a seed phrase to restore access. Hashwallet generates a unique recovery key and recovery seed during setup of the smartcard device. When combined, these components can be used to regain access to the funds stored on the wallet, and must be stored separately for security reasons. Once the recovery key and recovery seed have been securely stored, they are permanently deleted from the smartcard.

In the event of wallet loss, the user can retrieve and combine these security elements, whereupon their new Hashwallet will generate the keys required to access the funds. Zengo is another wallet that deploys a keyless design. For the remainder of this guide, though, we’ll focus on conventional noncustodial wallets that utilize a seed phrase.

Sweeping vs Importing – What’s the Difference?

If your phone or hardware wallet have been lost or stolen, a third party may be able to access the private key. If so, importing it into your new wallet won’t prevent them from draining it at the earliest opportunity using the original device. To prevent that from happening, you’ll want to sweep your private key.

A private key is mathematically related to all public keys (i.e. addresses) generated for a particular bitcoin wallet and can be represented as a string of letters and numbers like the following example:

5Kb8kLf9zgWQnogidDA76MzPL6TsZZY36hWXMssSzNydYXYB9KF

It can also be represented as a seed phrase like the following example:

witch collapse practice feed shame open despair creek road again ice least.

When you import a private key into a new wallet, it’s usually done by entering the more memorable seed phrase. All previous versions of that wallet – such as on a lost mobile, hardware, or paper wallet – still exist however. This presents a risk of the older wallet being discovered by a third party and the funds drained.

To prevent this, it is safer to sweep your private key into a new public address in your newly created wallet. This entails creating a transaction that empties the balance of the old wallet and sends the funds to a newly created private/public key pair that is known only to you. Most noncustodial wallets, including Ledger, Trezor, Exodus, Electrum, Samourai, and Metamask enable you to sweep a wallet, draining it and aggregating its balance into a new one.

How to Import Your Private Key Into a New Wallet

If you’re certain that your old wallet isn’t recoverable by a third party (the software has been deleted, for example, or your paper wallet has been destroyed), you can simply import your private key into your new wallet. When you do so using the Bitcoin.com Wallet, you’ll see the following option:

If you’re importing a private key into a hardware wallet such as a Ledger, there’s an additional step involved. First, you’ll need to import the private key into a wallet such as Electrum, after which you can send the coins to your Ledger address.

Finally, if you’re importing your seed phrase into a different brand of wallet – say, from Exodus to BRD – there’s one final thing to be aware of: derivation path. HD wallets create a master seed based on BIP 32, from which all subsequent keys are derived. The derivation path used can differ between wallets, and must be set correctly when importing. Walletsrecovery.org, which is still in beta, provides information on the derivation paths used by the main hardware and software wallet developers.

To summarize, then, if you lose your bitcoin wallet, sweep your private key into a new wallet, if possible, and check the derivation path if you’re switching to a different brand of wallet. The cost of replacing a lost hardware wallet or smartphone is considerable, but the main thing is that your funds are safe. Keep your wallet seed in a safe place and you’ll be protected in the event of acts of god, man, and unfortunate boating accidents.

What bitcoin wallet do you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, services, or companies. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Did you know you can verify any unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction with our Bitcoin Block Explorer tool? Simply complete a Bitcoin address search to view it on the blockchain. Plus, visit our Bitcoin Charts to see what’s happening in the industry.

The post How to Recover Your Funds If You Lose Your Bitcoin Wallet appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin.Com Releases Fastest Ever Wallet App, With Built-In Support for Bitcoin Cash-Powered Tokens

04/02/2020 by Idelto Editor

Bitcoin.com has developed its fastest ever wallet app with an improved design and a new focus on user experience. The Bitcoin.com Wallet also now offers full support for SLP tokens, opening a whole new universe of digital assets for millions of users around the globe.

Also Read: Bitcoin.com Wallet App Marks Over Five Million Wallets Created

New Lightning-Fast Crypto Wallet App

A new Bitcoin.com Wallet app has begun rolling out to iOS and Android mobile users, bringing millions of people the fastest client ever. Among the new updates included in the mobile app focused on speed is Instant Pay, a feature which completes bitcoin cash payments in less than a second, making it faster than traditional payment methods and other existing wallets. It delivers a seamless payment experience through the app, allowing users to complete transactions instantly at online and physical retailers that accept bitcoin cash.

To use this new feature, you simply need to set up a spending threshold in the app before performing a transaction and then the BCH payment can be completed instantly once the recipient’s QR code has been scanned. The increased speed should result in more customers choosing BCH as their preferred choice of payment.

“Censorship-resistant peer-to-peer cash is now lightning fast through our wallet app. Instant Pay, an all-new wallet feature which is exclusive to Bitcoin Cash, lets you make payments in a split second,” stated Stefan Rust, CEO of Bitcoin.com. “These payments outpace Visa and Mastercard, making our wallet app faster than any other.”

In addition to speed, the new wallet app feature other new and improved functions including letting users manage BCH and BTC in one secure integrated platform, as well as allowing them to purchase BCH and BTC using a credit card. The app also focuses on personal customization, letting users tweak their accounts to their liking with new options. The developers have even introduced a personal notes mechanism, which allows users to append data to individual transactions.

On the privacy and security side, fingerprint identification and facial recognition are also now available to ensure that only the owner can access the account. And customizable transaction speed settings have been introduced, which can be used to delay payment confirmation. The app also features a Discover section – a new maps interface that allows users to locate nearby merchants that accept bitcoin cash for payments, ensuring you can always find a place to spend BCH and encouraging more businesses to adopt the cryptocurrency.

“The new design of the Bitcoin.com Wallet makes the entire experience easier for new users,” commented Corbin Fraser, the Head of Product at Bitcoin.com. “Our design team spent a lot of time considering how to create the most beautiful Bitcoin wallet available on the market today.”

Your Key to the SLP Token Ecosystem

Our development team has also been working around the clock to bring a completely re-imagined app experience that includes SLP tokens, so that the Bitcoin Cash powered tokens are now available in every wallet. With built-in token management support, users can send, receive, and store a variety of tokens that represent anything from dollar-pegged stablecoins to virtual gaming assets and company loyalty points, with the private keys held only by the user.

“With the addition of SLP token support, the Bitcoin.com Wallet app has become more than a place to store bitcoin,” added Fraser. “You can now manage thousands of diverse digital assets on the app alongside your cryptocurrency. Stay tuned for more game-changing features which are coming soon, too.”

Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP) is an easy to use, robust and extensible token management system that allows anyone to create tokens on the Bitcoin Cash network in a permissionless way. It has helped the development of an ecosystem for BCH that replicates the variety of ERC20 tokens on the ETH network. SLP tokens can easily be created, traded, and managed on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain within seconds, while costing users only fractions of a penny for each transaction. All transactions are recorded onchain, and custom token behavior can be defined using a bitcoin Script developing language.

SLP token adoption has grown rapidly since being introduced in August 2018. This is in part thanks to Bitcoin.com Exchange which has started listing SLP tokens for trading on its platform. These include assets such as Gocrypto’s GOC, a token that enables merchants to accept crypto payments and receive settlement in their local fiat currency, as well as ACD, a token issued by the Tokyo-based ANA Holdings subsidiary Alliance Cargo Direct. Another recently released SLP token is Lead, an exclusive reward token you can earn by growing the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. SLP support has also been added by Cybavo, a cybersecurity firm providing private key management services to some of the biggest exchanges in the world. In total more than 6,000 tokens have been created using the SLP framework so far.

Last month, Bitcoin.com released the open source SLP Indexer Server for validating tokens and to make SLP transactions perform as fast as BCH, empowering developers to create even greater projects on the Bitcoin Cash network.

The Bitcoin.com Wallet app is free to download now for Android and iOS.

What do you think about the lightning fast new Bitcoin.com Wallet? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Bitcoin.Com Releases Fastest Ever Wallet App, With Built-In Support for Bitcoin Cash-Powered Tokens appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Zengo Is a Keyless Yet Noncustodial Bitcoin Wallet

03/02/2020 by Idelto Editor

Zengo is a non-custodial mobile wallet that dispenses with private keys in favor of threshold signatures to create two ‘mathematical secret shares’ – one stored on your mobile device, the other on their servers. In other words, there’s no single point of failure and no risk of irretrievably losing your coins in the event of hacking or wallet loss. It’s a novel means of dispensing with seed phrases, but there are some trade-offs to consider.

Also read: Bitcoin Verde’s New Project Aims to Promote Bitcoin Cash Node Diversity

‘Safer Than a Seed Phrase’

That’s the elevator pitch of Zengo, who want users to quit entrusting exchanges with their funds and favor a safer option than custodial wallets. They’ve got a point, and judging by the $4 million in seed funding they received last year, others think so too. Incidentally, the mobile wallet is headed up by former Techcrunch editor Ouriel Ohayon.

I decided to check Zengo out for myself – the app is free from the App Store and Google Play, although the company plans to introduce a small monthly subscription fee further down the road. Zengo allows you to store bitcoin core (BTC), ethereum (ETH), Binance coin (BNB), dai (DAI), maker (MKR), USD coin (USDC), tether (USDT), and paxos standard (PAX), with the promise of more coins to come.

After downloading the app and creating an account, I was prompted to back up my wallet to the cloud using face ID. A few seconds later I was cheerily advised that if the app were to get deleted or I switched devices, all that would be required to gain access is my email, iCloud, and face. “Welcome to keyless :).”

Zengo isn’t storing these authentication details, incidentally – Apple and Google are, just as they have been all along. They have no access to the funds stored on your Zengo wallet, however. Nevertheless, it’s evident that Zengo isn’t as private as using a fully noncustodial wallet, which requires the support of no third party – merely the ability to store your seed phrase offline.

Biometrics and Buying Bitcoin

Can face biometrics really be trusted for securing a bitcoin wallet? Wouldn’t it be possible for someone to use a photograph of your face – or even a sophisticated 3D mask – to break into your account? According to Zengo, the answer is no. To prove it, there’s a Test My Face Map feature in the app, with users encouraged to replicate their real face map. Zengo, who rely on face scanning tech from Zoom, insist that only your real phiz will fit. No need to create a seed phrase for account restoration here – just smile and you’re in.

There’s no money in developing crypto wallets, which is why they’re either run by ideologically motivated volunteers or there are revenue-generating services inserted – like the ability to buy cryptocurrency. With the Zengo app, you can purchase BTC, ETH and USDC with credit card. For purchases less than €150 per month you won’t be asked to provide identification or documentation – at least if you’re outside the U.S. For €150 up to €10,000, and for all U.S. transactions, you’ll have to complete verification.

Do You Trust the Cloud?

Regarding the ‘mathematical secret shares’ that replace a seed phrase with Zengo, one resides on your smartphone, an encrypted copy sits on the Zengo servers, and the decryption code is separately stored in your iCloud or Google Drive account. That last part could be a bone of contention for some users. While Zengo undoubtedly provides a slick, user-friendly onboarding experience, particularly for newbies, not everyone will feel comfortable uploading their mathematical shares to the cloud, even though they’re encrypted, in the face of law enforcement dipping into iCloud accounts whenever they get the urge.

Last year, Zengo challenged hackers to break into a Zengo wallet and claim 1 BTC. At the time, bitcoin had just broken $11,000 so it was a fair old bounty. Anyway, the booty went unclaimed and the reputation of the wallet’s open-sourced security model (and that of third-party auditors Kudelski and Appsec) was reinforced. As well as promising “unbreakable security,” Zengo states that users can retrieve their funds even if the company shuts down, thanks to an escrow mechanism.

Zengo Works Like Any Other Wallet

BTC and ETH appear as default options in the main dashboard during initial setup, while other supported cryptos are accessible from the Asset Manager in the top left-hand corner. In the opposite corner, you can click a smiley icon to initiate a conversation with the support team if you come unstuck.

The Zengo app is incredibly easy to navigate and the UX every bit as smooth as advertised. In testing, I sent some BTC to Zengo and saw the transaction appear as pending in the app, with all the requisite details summarized. In the main bitcoin window, there’s also a nice at-a-glance view of the price change over the last hour, day and week.

All told, Zengo is a solid non-custodial wallet for those who don’t want the faff of private keys. It occupies a sort of halfway house between custodial and noncustodial, providing greater protection than leaving your coins on an exchange, but with less privacy than using a noncustodial wallet in which keys are generated and stored client-side. Zengo won’t be for everyone, but it might be for grandma – and mom and dad and uncle too.

What are your thoughts on wallets like Zengo that dispense with the need to store a seed phrase? Let us know in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, services, or companies. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Zengo Is a Keyless Yet Noncustodial Bitcoin Wallet appeared first on Bitcoin News.

How to Obscure Bitcoin Cash Transaction Data by Leveraging Cashfusion

24/01/2020 by Idelto Editor

Bitcoin Cash developers recently released the alpha software for Cashfusion, a privacy-preserving feature added to the Electron Cash wallet. During the last week, crypto proponents and developers have been testing the protocol regularly in order to find issues and provide the Cashfusion team with feedback. News.Bitcoin.com tested the alpha version of Cashfusion so readers can get a glimpse at how the feature works and how you can fuse transactions on your own.

Also read: How to Create Custom SLP Tokens With the Bitcoin.com Mint

Cashfusion Privacy: A New Realm of Transaction Anonymization

BCH privacy is of great importance to Bitcoin Cash proponents and the Cashshuffle platform gathered a lot of traction since its inception. Following the Cashshuffle release, developers started working on a project that would greatly improve coinjoin-based transactions making them more private. With Cashshuffle, blockchain analysis could possibly uncover clues to where shuffled funds originally derived from when users consolidate shuffled funds. The BCH supporter “Bigblockiftrue” wrote a comprehensive report on the issue with Cashshuffle when he tracked the shuffled 300 BCH donation to Bitcoin Unlimited. “To get better Cashshuffle privacy yourself, you can avoid combining inputs into a single transaction. For a long-term user-friendly solution,” Bigblockiftrue noted at the time. “We will likely need some extension of the Cashshuffle concept to allow private consolidation of multiple inputs, for example, Cashfusion,” he added.

The difference between Cashfusion and traditional coinjoin schemes is how Cashfusion does not have equal amount requirements for shuffling. “Cashfusion is actually the fusion of two powerful ideas,” Cashfusion developer Jonald Fyookball stressed. “One is a contribution from myself, which is (in a nutshell): enable trustless, private, multi-input coinjoins with blame capabilities by using a commitment-based multiparty computation scheme.” Fyookball emphasized that the second part of the fusion stems from the software engineer Mark Lundeberg’s innovation.

“In Cashfusion, we have opted to abandon the equal-amount concept altogether. While this is at first glance no different than the old naive schemes, mathematical analysis shows it, in fact, becomes highly private by simply increasing the numbers of inputs and outputs,” Lundeberg underscores in the Cashfusion specifications. “For example, with hundreds of inputs and outputs, it is not just computationally impractical to iterate through all partitions, but even with infinite computing power, one would find a large number of valid partitions.”

How to Leverage Cashfusion: A Step-by-Step Guide Using the Electron Cash Wallet

Since Cashfusion’s alpha was released, a number of crypto supporters and developers have experimented with the application. In order to obtain a copy of the Cashfusion alpha release, individuals need to join the Cashfusion Telegram chat group to find the software for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. The following is a step-by-step walkthrough for people interested in testing the Cashfusion platform and fusing their own BCH transactions.

After obtaining the link to a specific copy of Electron Cash with Cashfusion support, you need to install the application which is around 40MB in size. For this specific walkthrough, we downloaded the Mac OS version of Cashfusion developed by Electron Cash programmer Calin Culianu. After the installation completes, you need to start a new wallet or use an existing Electron Cash wallet (New/Restore).

If you choose to create a new wallet, you also have to deposit some BCH into the wallet in order to fuse some UTXOs. When you have the alpha version of Electron Cash running with funds deposited, the next step is to turn on the Cashfusion feature. In order to do so, simply select the “tools” window and select “optional features.” At this point, you will see the option to toggle Cashfusion on or off at any point in time.

Once you turn Cashfusion on, at the bottom right side of the wallet window will be a green or red network circle. If the circle is red then you are not connected to the internet and may need to connect. After the wallet is online, simply double click the network circle which will reveal another network settings window. From here, you want to select the proxy settings and you will want to turn on Tor. The Cashfusion version of the Electron Cash (EC) wallet supports the Tor network which adds another element of privacy to the fused transaction. In the proxy window, select “start integrated Tor client” and make sure the Tor proxy is selected as well. After turning on Tor, the network circle at the bottom right side of the wallet should now be blue. After the Tor network is working with the wallet, shut off the Cashshuffle toggle switch in the EC client.

Then double click the Cashfusion symbol which is located to the left of the Cashshuffle symbol. Select “Cashfusion settings” and make sure the Tor client is connected and make sure that the “SSL” setting is not selected or shut off. If you followed all of these steps and there’s a fraction of BCH stored in the EC wallet, then you are ready for the Cashfusion process.

The wallet’s main window will show you the funds are being prepared for the fusing process and you might have to wait a while in order to fuse a transaction. While experimenting with Cashfusion it took me around an hour to fuse 0.01440652 BCH. You can select the Cashfusion settings again and watch the fusion progress by selecting the utility window called “fusions.” The utility window will tell you that you are queued in line or whether or not you are able to connect to people fusing transactions.

My test transaction of 0.01440652 BCH finally fused and a block explorer had shown there were 37 inputs and 79 outputs within the transaction data. Transaction signatures were also Schnorr signed and the funds fused with roughly $17.60 worth of bitcoin cash. The fused funds I had used were already shuffled using the Cashshuffle platform a few months prior. Overall, the Cashfusion feature for the EC client is fairly simple to use after following a few directions at least once. If you already have a grasp using Cashshuffle, then utilizing Cashfusion should be a breeze. The wait time for a fusion can be long, but if more people participate, then time frames between fuses should shrink. When news.Bitcoin.com first tested the Cashshuffle platform, the wait time was similar during the early testing phases. The trick is to be patient and simply let the wallet sit running in the background in order to prepare for the Cashfusion process and before you know it, you will notice that you’ve fused your first BCH transaction. For a step-by-step walkthrough that covers the Cashshuffle process, check out this article here.

What do you think about the Cashfusion protocol for the Electron Cash wallet? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned software. The software mentioned in the article above is in its alpha stage which could be buggy and have issues. Bitcoin.com or the author is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, software or services mentioned in this article. This editorial review/guide is for informational purposes only.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Fair Use, Electron Cash Wallet, Cashfusion logo, and Jamie Redman.

Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here.

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