Comment by bigiain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bigiain | Hacker News Reader

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Because "online wallet" sites are the sort of bad idea that _needs_ to have access to the private keys. If you can spend bitcoin out of an "online wallet", the person in control of the software managing that wallet _does_ have access to your bitcoin. Even if they've tried to set things up "securely", the very best they can do is achieve Lavabit levels of security - if they (or someone coercing them) wants to, they'll get full access to your funds anytime you try to access them.

Think of them as like keeping your change on the bar - the security relies _purely_ on social conventions encouraging the bar owner, bar staff, other customers, and your friends to not take your money.

You would no more store your weekly pay, your rent money, or your new car savings on the counter at a bar - why the hell are people storing those sorts of values of bitcoin in other people's webservices?

Sure, online wallets might be _useful_, but anyone keeping any more value than they can afford to lose in one is insane (or, less critically, very poorly informed).

True.

I may be wrong here - but is the private key only required to send the money? So, if the user kept the key and it wasn't recorded on the server...or if they use some type of password hash for encrypting it, then there wouldn't be hundreds or thousands of wallets stolen at once. The user would enter their password when they want to transfer funds, the hash is calculated, private key decrypted, transaction made, and the private key is never recorded anywhere.

But, this would require the user to NEVER forget their password, or else they lose their money.

It's possible to sign transactions offline, so that the private key never touches a device that's connected to the internet. Check out http://www.bitcointrezor.com/

If the user kept the secret key, that's not much of an online wallet - you might as well just use your secret key at home and send it directly yourself. They could encrypt it with a password or a pin that isn't saved on their site so that you would have to enter it to decrypt the secret key. That still counts on the site not just lying and keeping it or you getting it keylogged or otherwise compromised on your side. Many online wallets do nothing of the kind, they simply have the secret key and use it to send. Someone with your password or access to the site could do the same. It's the same as a normal bank really, you have no physical/technical control over what they or someone who snuck into the bank does. You can control your access credentials (passwords, cards, account numbers, ID info, etc) and that's good and well, but there's nothing preventing it from disappearing on their side besides what they (not you) do for security.

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