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You can have multiple wallets though. You can have a really secured wallet, maybe signed with a smart card (is it possible? If yes then it's pretty much impossible to steal, unless someone steals it physically.) and have a less secure wallet on your smartphone. Your smartphone plays the role of a "regular wallet" and you only have minimal amounts on it (like what you need for daily purchases).


Sure, but that takes a considerable amount of time and mental energy to set up and maintain. If possible, most people would just outsource the whole operation to some third party so that they can forget about it and get on with their lives. Of course, the third party would charge a fee for the convenience that they offers to their customers...

...and that's how you get a bank.


That's where my original comment of "I don't see adoption becoming anything more than anecdotal" comes from :)

I don't think the benefits of bitcoin outweight having to maintain (multiple) private key's security.


And what happens when you lose said wallet?


Or the smartcard develops a hardware fault?


Well I'm a bit late on the questions but here is my suggestion:

For the really secure wallet you program two (or more) cards with the same key in case one of them is lost or craps itself (then throw away the private key). They are protected by a PIN code so they brick themselves after 3 subsequent wrong tries. If you lose one of the cards then you get two new cards, program them with identical private keys (clearly it is different than the previous one) then transfer all of your money to the new wallet.

It's really hard to be your own bank, but it is possible. The beauty of bitcoin that you don't have to trust any third party, but it's really hard manage properly.

I would be surprised if anybody used this scheme, I don't have any bitcoins either. If I jump into the bitcoin business I'm sure I will adopt this scheme.




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