Actually, in a society based in the instantaneity and movability of information, the adoption of a technology depends, totally, on its capacity of adaptation at this exigencies.
One of the most important strategies for best Bitcoin adoption is the smartphone wallets that give to people and business the possibility of making a transaction anywhere with an accessible and popular technology: basically, an app and a smartphone; this is more similar to pocket change than the credit card (that you can only use with specific technology not accesible for all and in any place). And this isn’t happening only in the first world; nations in Africa or Asia have extensive examples of smartphone uses like Kenya or Tanzania, where mobile payments systems have millions of subscribers.
You can choose between different android bitcoin wallets such as, for example, Coinbase (50-100k users), Blockchain.info (50-100k users) based in different levels of cloud-storage of your private keys, and Bitcoin Wallet (100-500k users) or Mycelium (20k users) for local-storage of the private keys.
KnC Wallet (5-10k users), launched by the famous KnCMiner company, which is another of the recent wallet apps that we can choose from, is only a clone with steroids of Bitcoinwallet that allows you, besides original software features, to send bitcoins to any person in your address book long as that person has installed this wallet too. And the app is distributing some satoshis to any person that installs the app.
The most booming app at present, and with more interesting features, is Mycelium, a semi-opensource android wallet that provides a powerful gateway to the bitcoin network with quick broadcasts throughout their servers. We’re speaking with Andreas Petersson, one of the two full-time developers together with Jan Moller, who has been telling us everything about the project.
According to Petersson their software “is unique because it combines simplicity of use and speed with full power to the end user because he keeps his private keys”.
For months, since I bought my first bitcoin in early 2013, I was a Blockchain.info user but, looking for more security and empowerment of my money I started looking for a better app. Then I found Mycelium; it seemed to have everything that I needed: a simple, secure and useful bitcoin wallet.
I can say that my experience is positive all of this time of using because the app simplifies all the things that, before, I had to do with different apps; as for example, generate paper wallets with encryption or fast and secure cold-storage payments, all with syncing in a fraction of a second.
Of course, for now a perfect and totally secure android wallet doesn’t exist, because without encryption, we’ve always had the problem that malware with root access can read our private keys. For this reason, for me, secure cold-storage payments seems a good way to spend at this moment. This system can read a private key of a paper wallet every time that we want to make a payment and after that the private key is removed.
But, definitely, one of the most interesting features that an android wallet has is Local Trading and, surely soon, Bitcoin nodes.
With the first feature, Local trading, we can sell and buy bitcoins inside the App with a low fee of 0.2% per trade with a system similar to Localbitcoin. The mycelium system allows contacting two people to buy and sell bitcoin with an encrypted message system.
With this feature you can know, with GPS, who is trading bitcoins in your area and start the transaction in a secure platform.
The last feature, that for the moment is only a proposal, is Bitcoin nodes, allowing Mycelium users to know what businesses accept Bitcoin and where ATMs are around there using an OpenStreetMap layer.
If you want try newer features you can also participate in the Mycelium Beta program in their Google+ community.
Definitely I think that smartphones and weareables will be the axis where we should focus our attention. People want to use money in the street, at the shop, in a party, with friends or with strangers but always as smoothly as they do with physical coins or a bank app. Developing a sterling android wallet and expanding its features maybe would be the key for expanding our favourite currency.
May 10, 2014 at 12:26AMLatest Bitcoin News | BTC/LTC Robot | Mining ASICS | BTC Debit Card
