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Here’s my new hot/cold wallet setup. After a few days of testing I based it on Bither which allows for a cold/hot wallet setup on two separate devices and which is available for both iOS and Android. My hot wallet (Bither in hot mode) runs on my iPhone. I keep some bitcoin change on that for small every-day payments. My cold wallet (Bither in cold mode) runs on an unlocked (MySaga C1 entry-level) Android phone that I just bought new for that exact purpose. It set me back € 65 including shipping. The Android phone that holds the cold wallet is offline. Wifi off, Bluetooth off, Airplane mode on. All it does is run an offline Bither cold wallet. That’s its only purpose. It is locked away until I need access to some of my cold wallet funds. In addition it’s locked with a strong password. ...

An interesting iOS bitcoin wallet has just hit the app store: Bither. You can use Bither as a regular hot wallet for your day-to-day pocket change, or you can use it on two separate devices in two different modes: one will act as the hot wallet that's connected to the net and the other one is run in cold wallet mode and only runs when the device is offline (e.g. in airplane mode), adding some additional security. In that mode you would keep larger funds on the (offline) cold wallet while doing your day-to-day transactions from the hot wallet. You can keep an eye on the contents of the cold wallet by adding a watch-only address to your hot wallet. Spending from the cold wallet is also possible by following this workflow: Hot wallet: initiate a send from a cold wallet watch-only address. T...

breadwallet is a strange beast. At first I misunderstood it, but over time it has turned into my main go-to wallet. I have professionally worked in usability for years, and I’m now a photographer. I have worked with users on all levels, from the complete newbie to the seasoned professional. From noob to geek. And over the years I have learned to draw a clear line between my personal taste and the things that might benefit an end user. Two main functions First of all, I don’t think any other wallet has a UI as simple as breadwallet. You have two tabs (or rather two views that you slide left and right), one to send money, one to receive. That’s pretty much it. On the top, breadwallet always shows you the wallet’s balance in bits (more on that later) and your local currency. User interaction...

We humans have evolved to handle physical objects. It is in our nature. It is easier for most of us than handling digital information. Bitcoin paper wallets are much more tangible for people than a string of letters and numbers sitting on their screen. I love giving people the gift of a few thousand bits for a birthday, or having a few paper wallets with a couple of Euros worth in bitcoin on them to hand out to friends, just to get them interested. It works better than you think. And of course, a paper wallet is what’s also called cold storage, a good way to securely stash away some of your funds. But making paper wallets is where it gets hairy. If you create one while you're online, with today's bad computer security...

Just under three weeks ago, I’ve written about web-based bitcoin wallets that worked on iOS. Guess what? Apple has meanwhile clarified their rules (see item 11.17 in Apple’s 2014 App Store Review Guidelines), basically allowing bitcoin wallet apps back into the App Store. So whatever I wrote three weeks ago isn’t true anymore, so I better follow up with a first quick review of some of the native iOS apps that are available in the App Store: (Note: I personally don’t recommend putting any serious amounts of btc into any of these wallets, I’d give them some time to see how they fare and age) 1. CoinPocket - used to be web only, now a virtually identical native version is available in the App Store. Still a single address wallet. The web version used an external QR code sca...