CoolBitx’s Hardware Wallet Provides Credit Card Style Payments

For a currency to succeed it needs to be able to be spent online, as well as in brick and mortar stores, in a easy and secure manner. Many have criticized the digital currency, bitcoin, for having an unfriendly user experience. In everyday shopping cash and credit cards are still more convenient options than bitcoin. The rise of new products like Apple Pay, for traditional payments, has only made the gap in convenience between bitcoin and credit  cards larger.

Some bitcoin businesses have made small steps towards solving this problem, but none have attempted what a new Taiwanese company has in the works. CoolBitx will be introducing a bitcoin hardware wallet called CoolWallet, which will securely store bitcoin and allow for “effortless” spending.

CoolWallet enables safe and easy bitcoin transactions by using a cold storage device and modern payment solutions. By tapping the hardware wallet against a paired device, which could be a mobile phone, a one time password is sent to the phone through bluetooth or near field communication (NFC). Without the private keys ever leaving the hardware wallet, the user can now make a transaction form his Cool Wallet. The transaction has the ease of mobile payments, with the extra security of a device that has never connected to the internet.

There are already several hardware wallets on the market, including the very popular current market leader, Trezor. Looking similar to a tiny portable hard drive, Trezor off or onloads private keys via USB, and is considered a very secure method of bitcoin storage. A newer competitor is Ledger Wallet, which is a USB stick style wallet, with security in mind. All the existing hardware wallets on the market are designed for long term storage and aren’t designed for daily commerce.

CoolBitx wants to make bitcoin transactions secure, without making them cumbersome. Founder of CoolBitx Michael Ou explains, “Our CoolWallet gives you the convenience of credit card, but with a better security. No more identity theft, clone card, or fraud. We believe this will enhance the financial system.”

Like its competitors, CoolWallet was born out of the desire to provide an easy and secure way to store bitcoins. One of the company’s co-founders, Leo Treasure, was the victim of a hack and lost 750 BTC, about $280,000 at the time. He was hacked because he was using poor security practices and didn’t want to bother with more complicated and time consuming methods.

Though he has upgraded his security, he still thinks there is a gap for convenient and secure solutions which he sees CoolWallet filling. “I first met the team working on CoolWallet at one of the Bitcoin meet ups in Taipei. I already felt that some sort of card would be the way that most people would feel comfortable using in order to store and spend their Bitcoin in the real world. So when I saw the prototype of the CoolWallet with my own eyes I knew this product had the potential to radically accelerate the adoption of Bitcoin and I just had to get involved.”

An unique security feature of the wallet is WatchDog. If the wallet gets more than 10 meters away from the paired device, the “watchdog” will be activated and the connected device will alert you to this. This is designed to help prevent the wallet from being lost or stolen. The team has also added hierarchical deterministic addresses, which are used for all the addresses generated on the device.

The device was built with style, ease, and durability in mind. Made out of flexible solid plastic material, it is the size of a credit card and easily fits into your wallet or pocket. It is also waterproof, but not unbreakable, as it can break if it is put under “extreme abuse.” If your CoolWallet is ever broken though, you can recover the bitcoins through the seed that was originally used to create the wallet on the device.

Right now, CoolWallet is a few weeks away from completing beta testing of the hardware. To finance the last few steps of the product’s development, they will be launching an Indiegogo campaign later this month. The Indiegogo campaign will give backers the chance to be among the first to get their hands on the device, and offers the option for a customizable engraved version. Other perks include a Bluetooth dongle, NFC charger, and a business starter pack with 20 CoolWallets and NFC chargers.

The month long campaign has a goal of crowdfunding $20,000 and will ship the CoolWallets to backers in May of this year.  The company will begin selling CoolWallets publically for around $75, after the campaign.

The ambitious young company is already working on expanding into bitcoin businesses as well. They have partnered with a hardware designers, SmartDisplayer Technology and InfoKeyVault Technology, to make bitcoin payment terminals that only require tapping the terminal to pay for the device, similar to Apple Pay. The other service they are building is a “decentralized BitStamp that is Gox proof.” With the 5 million dollar BitStamp hack in recent memory, the group is working on creating a better exchange where bitcoins aren’t deposited, so if the exchange goes down there is no risk of losing your bitcoins.

“CoolBitX is dedicated to improving the Bitcoin environment with easy, safe and cool technologies. We are working to improve security in Bitcoin storage and paying from cold storage more convenient. Our goal is to make it easier for people to use Bitcoin. We believe in Bitcoin and look forward to its continuing success.”
— – CoolBitx