Why we should hide the bitcoin address
IP addresses are the backbone of the internet, but the internet would have never been so big if we would still show them to the user. Bitcoin addresses are the backbone of bitcoin, you can’t send a transaction without it, but it is time to hide it for good.
Bitcoin is ready for mainstream
1NQXv5UuZ1VFFyE5aV39wvQKdbT8x37CQj, really?
When an average user sees a bitcoin address for the first time, they will think bitcoin is too hard for them. Are we making bitcoin for the tech-savvy elite?
How many potential bitcoin users did we scare away?
Bitcoin is the safest payment system in the world
uhh, who am I paying?
Some people call bitcoin the most secure payment method in the world, but the bitcoin addresses is vulnerable to scams and a man in the middle attack.
How many bitcoins have been stolen already, and how many will be stolen in the future?
Bitcoin is the future of money
And I thought my bank statements were hard to understand
Let’s have a look at my transaction history from the past couple of months. I have no clue where which bitcoins went..
The bitcoin payment experience moves as slowly as that of the banks
Let’s make bitcoin ready for mainstream, the safest payment system in the world and the future of money
The solution is already here; the Bitcoin Payment Protocol (bip70). It was developed 3 years ago and currently implemented by some of the wallets and merchants. With this protocol wallets will get all necessary information about a payment via a secure connection directly from the merchant. Now you are paying bitpay.com instead of 1NQXv5UuZ1VFFyE5aV39wvQKdbT8x37CQj.
bitpay.com -> 255.255.255.255 -> 1NQXv5UuZ1VFFyE5aV39wvQKdbT8x37CQj
I identified some reasons why adoption of the Bitcoin Payment Protocol is slow.
- The bitcoin development community is focussed on scalability and security on a protocol level and doesn’t spend much time on usability.
- Users don’t demand it from their merchants and wallets.
- Currently it is hard to implement. I tried to setup a server with the bitcore-payment-protocol, but after a few hours, I could not get it to interact with Copay.
Some point in the future the bitcoin address will be hidden behind interfaces, but let us make sure it happens sooner rather than later.
I am Kai Bakker and I write about bitcoins user experience, my goal: my mom and dad should be able to use bitcoin.
