Modern Day Cred Stick

This product is a really interesting find. It is essentially a write only usb flash drive that stores an offline bitcoin wallet. It creates both the public key and private key for the bitcoin wallet on the device itself. The way it works is really very genius. When you first plug the device into a computer it shows up as a normal drive. The drive doesn't have anything stored on it by default. The user has to drop a random file from their computer onto the drive. The file can be anything the users wishes as it isn't actually storing the file on the drive. It uses the data from the file to introduce entropy or randomness to the encryption for the wallet creation. Once you move a file to the drive it creates the wallet and creates a python program. The program will show the private address for the wallet as well as a way to load the wallet with bitcoin. here comes the cool part. If you want the private key off of the opendime you have to break it. There is a small pinhole on the bottom side of the board that passes through to a chip. if you take a paperclip and punch it through the hole it breaks the chip telling the small microprocessor that the board has been tampered with. It changes it state to tampered and will now display the private keys in the program so you can sweep the wallet clean of any bitcoins.

The Basic idea of this device is it acts as a bearer bond for bitcoin. I can load a opendime with a specific amount of bitcoin lets say $20 USD. I can then pass the opendime to a person in a transaction. I can pay the person for a SNES for instance with bitcoin that doesn't need to be verified by the blockchain. The seller can see the funds by plugging it into his computer or even his phone. Once they see the amount is really on the device, he can cash them out if he wants to. Otherwise, he can just pass it along whenever he needs to make a bitcoin purchase. This is a great way to save on miner fees and keep your transactions offline. The whole thing uses open source standards so you know exactly how the thing works. The opendime is essentially a cred stick from the shadowrun universe and it's fucking awesome. If youre interested in the product or want to know more information about how it works I have posted the link to the opendime webpage as well as embedded a youtube video about it below.

Opendime Website