Here’s why Jack Dorsey’s Bitcoin wallet will contain fingerprint authentication instead of pins

For the uninitiated, a hardware wallet stores your private keys in a secure physical device, it is considered as one of the best ways to protect your cryptocurrency.

By: Tech Desk
Pune | Updated: March 14, 2022 04:55 PM IST

3 min read

Parag Agrawal, Parag Agrawal Twitter, Indian born CEOs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Jack Dorsey, silicon valley

Jack Dorsey stepped down as chief executive of Twitter, the social media site he co-founded in 2006.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s payments company Block (formerly Square) is working on a new Bitcoin hardware wallet that will use fingerprint authentication, instead of the traditional pin or passcode based authentication. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin, are stored in something called a ‘wallet’, which can be accessed by using your ‘private key’—the crypto equivalent of a super-secure password— without which the crypto owner cannot access the currency.

For the uninitiated, a hardware wallet stores your private keys in a secure physical device, it is considered as one of the best ways to protect your cryptocurrency. However, a recent report by Chainalysis revealed that cyber criminals are hacking computers of crypto holders using malware, and have being successful in stealing crypto coins from them. Not only thefts, but in several cases owners of crypto wallets have even forgotten the passcodes, locking them out of their crypto wallet forever.

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The payment company wants to address this issue. In a statement the company said, “We believe PINs, passwords, and seed phrases are confusing and often not secure given the workarounds normal people have to create given all the friction. Instead, to achieve seamless authentication in practice, we plan to incorporate a fingerprint sensor into the wallet hardware.”

Block acknowledges that every authentication technology comes with tradeoffs and limitations, but the company believes that this method is the most secure method.

Dorsey’s Bitcoin wallet will use a rechargeable lithium polymer battery and USB-C port to power the device. Block believes this is the best choice for this product, as it optimizes for the best customer experience and design. “Customers will primarily manage their money by interacting with the mobile application we’re building, and will only need to interact with the hardware in combination with the mobile app to authorize larger, less frequent transactions above an amount of their choosing,” as per the statement.

Meanwhile, Block has asked the Bitcoin community to give feedback on its design decisions as it attempts to build an intuitive bitcoin self-custody setup. As of now, it is unclear when Block’s hardware wallet will be released.

“We’re excited about the security against theft or misuse that this will provide, the peace of mind that will come from not needing to remember yet another PIN, and the ease of placing a finger on the sensor rather than manipulating tiny, failure-prone buttons on a difficult-to-read screen,” the company added in the blog post.

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