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> Everyone’s heard stories about investors losing access to their crypto tokens — perhaps because they forgot their private key for example — but this doesn’t h

by tromp 9y ago

> Everyone’s heard stories about investors losing access to their crypto tokens — perhaps because they forgot their private key for example — but this doesn’t happen to e-residents if their wallets are linked to their government-backed digital identity. How is that supposed to work? You do not fully own crypto tokens unless you and you alone hold the private keys.

bufferoverflow 9y ago
It sounds like it's not any different from regular electronic money, but maybe with better APIs.
mbrock 9y ago
If you lose your private key as an e-Resident, you go to the embassy to revoke it and get a new one. The state as a root authority is convenient in that sense. You can imagine, for example, that your tokens would be owned by a smart contract controlled by your e-Residency, so that as long as you can present a currently valid e-Residency, you can access the tokens. Presumably you could also transfer those tokens to a non-e-Residency address, and forfeit the convenience of the state identity.
Strom 9y ago
It works by associating your tokens with your identity. You're the only one with the private key, however the identity manager (government in this case) decides which public keys are linked to an identity. Of course this also means that the government could seize your coins.
- krrrh 9y ago
  It would also mean that pseudonymity is out the window. Does anyone else remember when anonymous transactions was the sine qua non of cryptocurrency hype?
Avamander 9y ago
Pretty sure they're just saying "Here's our (web-based) wallet where you have to login with your ID card and sign transactions with your ID card". But that's pretty much as secure as a Yubikey assuming the government doesn't fuck up it's cards or their software again.
- usrme 9y ago
  It's worth noting that this wasn't something the government did wrong. The information didn't reach the country's Information System Authority (ISA) through the proper channels, but rather through security researchers who had already informed the manufacturer months prior, though this is contested by the representatives of the manufacturer within the country who stated that they had informed ISA already in June. This may have led people to believe the government just sat on this information, but I don't think this is the case. Thanks to quick acting from everybody involved (aside from Gemalto it seems...) no real downsides existed aside from people having to renew their certificates and PIN numbers, which was no real hassle.

by tromp 9y ago

bufferoverflow 9y ago

It sounds like it's not any different from regular electronic money, but maybe with better APIs.

mbrock 9y ago

If you lose your private key as an e-Resident, you go to the embassy to revoke it and get a new one. The state as a root authority is convenient in that sense. You can imagine, for example, that your tokens would be owned by a smart contract controlled by your e-Residency, so that as long as you can present a currently valid e-Residency, you can access the tokens. Presumably you could also transfer those tokens to a non-e-Residency address, and forfeit the convenience of the state identity.

Strom 9y ago

It works by associating your tokens with your identity. You're the only one with the private key, however the identity manager (government in this case) decides which public keys are linked to an identity. Of course this also means that the government could seize your coins.

krrrh 9y ago
It would also mean that pseudonymity is out the window. Does anyone else remember when anonymous transactions was the sine qua non of cryptocurrency hype?

Avamander 9y ago

Pretty sure they're just saying "Here's our (web-based) wallet where you have to login with your ID card and sign transactions with your ID card". But that's pretty much as secure as a Yubikey assuming the government doesn't fuck up it's cards or their software again.

usrme 9y ago
It's worth noting that this wasn't something the government did wrong. The information didn't reach the country's Information System Authority (ISA) through the proper channels, but rather through security researchers who had already informed the manufacturer months prior, though this is contested by the representatives of the manufacturer within the country who stated that they had informed ISA already in June. This may have led people to believe the government just sat on this information, but I don't think this is the case. Thanks to quick acting from everybody involved (aside from Gemalto it seems...) no real downsides existed aside from people having to renew their certificates and PIN numbers, which was no real hassle.