A closer look at the Mike Tyson bitcoin wallet – It’s a contender
The first celebrity-associated bitcoin wallet is here and it's got heavyweight champion written all over it. Based on Copay's open source code, it's got Glidera's exchange service built into it and a sleek new style to match the Tyson ATM line.
Movie star and former heavyweight champion of the world Mike Tyson entered the Bitcoin ring for round two yesterday, when Iron Mike and Bitcoin Direct announced that the Mike Tyson mobile wallet has arrived.
Almost six months ago Tyson and Bitcoin Direct held a press conference to release the first-ever celebrity-associated Bitcoin ATM machine, in a Las Vegas bistro. Now they’ve done it again, but at a much larger venue, launching the first celebrity-associated bitcoin wallet at the apple iTunes store. It’s currently available on iOS and Android through Google Play.
"The Mike Tyson Digital Wallet offers beginners a simple and secure way to get started with bitcoin. Users can create wallets for sharing funds with friends, store multiple personal wallets in the same app, accept payments from friends, or pay bitcoin-accepting businesses online or in person."
- Peter Klamka, CEO of Bitcoin Direct
With the black background and unique facial tattoo of Tyson’s adorning most screens, this wallet certainly stands out among mobile bitcoin wallet offerings. In the iTunes store, the icon for this app is a silver coin that has a bite taken out of the bottom corner, which is likely a reference to Evander Holyfield vs. Mike Tyson, billed as "The Sound and the Fury" and afterwards infamously referred to as "The Bite Fight."
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the free wallet is that it’s actually pretty advanced and secure. One might expect that with a celebrity endorsement, a wallet maker wouldn’t go the extra mile and worry about lots of features or top-notch security, but that’s apparently not the case this time. The ‘multi-wallet’ offers serious security features not found in many mobile wallets, including multisignature addresses, a non-custodial exchange, and an open-source code base to ensure transparency.
“Mike Tyson Bitcoin users can hold funds individually or share finances securely with other users with multisignature wallets, which prevent unauthorized payments by requiring multiple approvals.”
- iTunes page for Mike Tyson wallet
The multi-wallet functionality allows for both regular, single addresses to exist side-by-side with multisignature addresses. It can tally up the totals for them all, but sending bitcoin that has been sent to a multisignature address obviously requires that you jump through more hoops before it can be sent. Keep in mind that the choice of service to hold your third key for any multisignature address is what really determines how secure a multisignature wallet is.
While not exactly an exchange, the coin buying service integrated into this wallet is offered by Glidera. It allows users to both buy and sell bitcoins from inside these wallets by connecting your bank account, much like how a Paypal account links with your bank account. However, It’s far more secure than Paypal. According to the company, “Glidera never takes custody of a customer’s funds, but merely enables the transaction, ensures that it is ‘legal’ and meets any regulatory requirements, and is 100 percent secure.”
Competing mobile wallet Airbitz also integrated Glidera into their wallet last November, which many of their customers have raved about over social media.
Perhaps the most important security aspect of this wallet’s security is that the code itself is mostly comprised of the open source code from Bitpay’s Copay wallet. It appears to only add the custom design theme built for the Mike Tyson Bitcoin brand. The Glidera bitcoin-buying integration, which is an open API service that any wallet can now integrate, has been previously integrated into the open source code by the Copay team.
“Mike Tyson Bitcoin is based on free and open source software run on non-proprietary servers, so there’s no need to rely on any company for continuous support. Anyone can review or contribute to the base source code on GitHub (https://github.com/bitpay/copay).”
- iTunes page for Mike Tyson wallet
Some other features the Tyson wallet offers, according to its iTunes description page are:
- 10 supported languages (EN, JP, FR, ES, IT, DE, PT, RU, EL, TR)
- Device-based security: all private keys are stored locally, not in the cloud
- Support for Bitcoin testnet wallets
- Hierarchical deterministic (HD) address generation and wallet backups
- Support for 150+ currency pricing options and unit denomination in BTC or bits
- Email notifications for payments and transfers
- Customizable wallet naming and background colors
- Easy spending proposal flow for shared wallets and group payments
- Synchronous access across all major mobile and desktop platforms
- Payment protocol (BIP70-BIP73) support: easily-identifiable payment requests and verifiably secure bitcoin payments
The Apple version of the wallet is compatible with iPhones, iPads, and the iPod touch devices running iOS 6.0 or later. Android devices require v4.0 or later.
“I’m grateful to be a part of the bitcoin revolution and hoping that my participation in this space will lead to more conversations and help increase knowledge and awareness. In no way do I profess to be any kind of bitcoin currency guru. It just seems very interesting and I’m intrigued with the possibilities. In a few years from now bitcoin and other digital currency are going to be a normal part of our monetary systems."
- Mike Tyson
Disclaimer: Always be sure to do your own due diligence as to the trustworthiness of Bitcoin wallet vendors before entrusting them with real bitcoins or your bank account routing numbers. Neither the author nor Brave New Coin can be held responsible for the claims of third-party vendors.
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