I'm the dev behind Bitcoin Safe, a desktop wallet to manage cold storage bitcoin for individuals and organizations.
AMA
Available in lots of languages and with powerful features: www.bitcoin-safe.org Latest release introduced Compact Block Filters for a speedy and private wallet sync. This eliminates the privacy leak to electrum servers, if you don't run your own.
Mempools aren't exactly packed, downloads for most of the cold storage apps number in the hundreds or thousands, not tens of thousands. Do you think self-custody will ever be widespread?
Self-custody is incredibly important for individual freedoms and also for the long-term survival of Bitcoin. We can only make the tools good enough and hope people use them. Self-custody is the goal and Bitcoin Safe pushes on this front:
The revenue model for self-custody wallets seems to be pretty challenging, especially for FOSS. Do you plan on staying non-profit or do you see a path to a sustainable business model for a cold storage wallet?
Working on it to find a sustainable way to keep development of Bitcoin Safe up. Right now funding is provided by opensats https://opensats.org/blog/tenth-wave-of-bitcoin-grants#bitcoin-safe
I am a big fan of your work. While I don’t use your software I think it’s absolutely amazing! Keep building!!
Thanks so much. That means a lot
In your opinion is Linux (debian) better for running a desktop/laptop cold wallet than windows or apple?
Linux is definitely a great choice for an OS. However different users are feeling at home in different OS. That's why Bitcoin Safe provides binaries for Win, Linux, and Mac.
Is multi-wallet RPC integration for Bitcoinsafe being planned?
Bitcoin Safe had RPC connection to bitcoin core in the past (with the old BDK version). However the current BDK version doesnt have python bindings for the RPC client, and therefore Bitcoin Safe currently doesnt have RPC.
This would be a nice feature I'd like back too ;-)
You could ask nicely on https://github.com/bitcoindevkit/bdk-ffi to also create FFI-bindings for the RPC client. Maybe we get it :-)
Do you think you will ever build a mobile version? Or too much of a security problem?
The focus for Bitcoin Safe is managing cold storage for individuals and organizations. While a mobile version might be useful for some, the biggest user group probably wants to manage these amounts of money on a desktop computer.
A desktop computer offers more time and space to focus, review, and slow down on such important transactions.
That makes a lot of sense. I doubt I'd ever use mobile for my cold storage stack.
However, I wonder if the masses will move to adopt a desktop-only app.
Thanks for your feedback.
There are other phone wallets that offer great tradeoffs for payments and lower amounts of money.
What is the best juiciness for you?
lol
"lol" - the answer I deserve. OK
Good job! How long are we talking for install and sync? Can we hook up to this node with other wallets?
Bitcoin Safe is a wallet which can connect to electrum/esplora/Compact Block Filters to sync the wallet state.
Sync times are detailed here: https://bitcoin-safe.org/en/knowledge/compact-block-filters/#what-to-expect-when-syncing Quick summary: First time setup/recovery of a wallet , about 30min. All other cases <30 seconds sync time.
30 minutes for all the Compact Block Filters?
For a segwit wallet, on a normal internet connection. The developer of the BDK Compact Block Filter client https://github.com/rustaceanrob/ has done an awesome job!
That's impressive. From your perspective, could downloading Compact Block Filters be a security issue? Or are the CBFs calculated locally?
CBFs are calculated and served by full-nodes. They are a summary of a blocks content. Bitcoin Safe downloads all of them (for the initial sync). Downloading them reveals nothing about your wallet.
If a relevant transaction could be identified in the CBF, then whole block is downloaded from a random connected node.
get it. There's still a tiny chance of a privacy fault, but it definitely levels up compared to basic wallets. Is downloading the whole damn blockchain still the best setup for privacy?
If you download a block from a random node, you have the anonymity set of all transactions in the block (so about 2000). To get even better you have to download more and more irrelevant blocks, with the upper limit of the whole blockchain.
Bitcoin Safe also supports testnet4, signet,.. , so feel free to test Bitcoin Safe first with test coins.
How do you see the user experience for bitcoin wallets changing over the next 10-20 years?
We can already see that with the growing user base of Bitcoin, also wallets specialize in certain areas to offer the best experience.
This will continue and Bitcoin Safe is focussing on making self-custody cold storage easier and safer for individuals and organizations.
What do you find to be the biggest challenge of building/competing in the bitcoin wallet space right now?
The balance between providing features and at the same time making them accessible in an intuitive and user friendly way is challenging (but also super fascinating, and we are learning a LOT).
And there is no shortage of cool features that could be included in Bitcoin Safe.
What has been the most rewarding part of developing this wallet?
Super rewarding is all the feedback from users of Bitcoin Safe. Additionally from a dev point of view, getting to know the people behind BDK is a awesome!