How to store SmartCash cryptocurrency on a Raspberry Pi, the clever way.

In matter of cryptocurrency, SmartCash is a really powerful and versatile project aiming, as pointed out on the official website, to create a viable, fast, merchant oriented, user friendly and community driven cryptocurrency with a decentralized governance system. You can also follow the project on Discord or Telegram.

One of the main assets of SmartCash, aside its community, is the fact that in September 2018 its network consists of more than 13,880 masternodes. In comparison of the Dash network, its main competitor, the SmartCash network has 3 times more nodes (private servers runnings a wallet 24/7) and can thus lock the transactions at an improve pace.

But despite its incredible proposition and its vivid development, SmartCash as every cryptocurrency which is aiming to create a distributed and decentralized paiement network suffers from certain flaws inherent to the fact that allowing people to be their own bank means that everyone is responsible to store their coin on their computer or other similar solutions. And computers can be hacked… specially when they are used to surf the Web, install non verified apps and so forth. Being hacked when you own cryptos can be devastating.

So today, we are going to introduce you with a great way to secure your SmartCash coins, by using a Raspberry Pi (a cheap single board computer ranging from 5$ to 39$ in function of the flavor you choose, the Zero or the Raspberry Pi 3B+ respectively)…

To begin, you need obviously a Raspberry Pi and the periphericals needed to run it smoothly (hdmi screen, keyboard, mouse, 5V 3A power supply and as many micro sd card as SmartCash wallets you plan to have) and you need to install Raspbian Strech (choose the OS with GUI or without, suited to your needs) on a micro sd card. Update and upgrade the OS, secure your instance with a password and sets an internet connection (via wifi or ethernet).

If you are completely noob with Raspberry Pi and Linux, the Raspberry Pi website provides a great tutorial for you.

Once you have installed the OS on the sd card and turned on your Raspberry Pi, you are going to install some programs trough the terminal by using command lines.

Do not stress, it is easy. Bear with me and copy/paste the following commands.

First, open the terminal by double clicking on the following icon.

Secondly, install some dependencies (Python, a Programming Language, and PIP, a package manager for Python packages) by typing in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools python3-pyqt5 python3-pip

Thirdly, install a specific wallet, electrum-smart (official link found on the SmartCash website).

sudo pip3 install https://github.com/SmartCash/electrum-smart/releases/download/v3.1.2/Linux.Electrum-smart-3.1.2.tar.gz

Finally, run the wallet and type:

electrum-smart

Now, your new wallet on the Raspberry Pi opens and needs to be configured.

Try to follow the images below to configure it properly.

Select Auto connect and press next.

Press Next.

If you want to create a new Wallet check the standard Wallet box, if you want to import an old one check Import SmartCash (in reality even if your computer has not been compromised, it can be advised to add security measure by creating a new wallet), and then press next.

In the same vain, check create a new seed and press next.

Write down the seed on a paper and maybe use VeraCrypt (tutorial), a free open source disk encryption software for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux to save it electronically as well (on your mail because your home can burn).

Re-type the seed you just get and press next.

Choose a password and do not forget it because this is the only way to retrieve your coins if you plan to store some in this wallet.

Then your newly created wallet opens.

Now, you can send and receive smartcash normally on it.

Note that this wallet is a communitarian one (password: smartcash). I do not plan to retrieve the funds on it. If you plan to try SmartCash on a Raspberry pi, feel free to use those funds in a rational manner, let other people try the concept of securing their SmartCash coins trough Raspberry Pi’s. Do not monopolize those funds. If your are rich, don’t be greed by cashing out all the coins I gave for the tutorial, let people try out the SmartCash concept and enjoy it, do not spoliate your fellows because you can make fraction transaction of SmartCash coins to try the concept and you can give to this address as well.

Once you installed your own wallet (with your own seed and own password) and made a transfer of coins to it, swap out the sd card from the Raspberry and your wallet is now offline and secure. You do not need to consult your wallet to just check the amount of coins you have. Let your wallet offline for that purpose and use the SmartCash scanner to do so. By entering your address in the search box (at the top), you will see the amount of Smartcash you have and all the transactions without compromising your wallet.

The prize of a micro sd card is really cheap so you can replicate this tutorial to have as many as “cold” SmartCash wallets as you want.

The SmartCash devs are working to add features to the next release of the electreum-smart wallet: the possibility to store the coins on Trezor and to control Smartnodes.

To summarize, this article showed a way to use Raspberry Pi sd card feature to make a kind of cheap cold SmartCash wallets in order to secure your SmartCash Coins.

I hope you will enjoy as much as me the possibility to use SmartCash on Raspberry Pi’s.

To finish, note that I am a french native speaker so I probably make some syntax or spelling mistakes, please feel free to review them and I assure you that I will correct them. Moreover if you have too much SmartCash feel free to make a small donation to my own address: SWmZ22sghZRUsdu9uSqPPLmDFSHhA4BUsw .

You will receive my eternal gratitude in return… :D