Bitcoin 0.6 Will Blow You Away

Gavin Andresen and team are aiming to have Bitcoin 0.6 Release Candidate 1 ready for testing within a couple of weeks.

0.6 will be the first version of the client that truly starts to leverage Bitcoin's higher-level capabilities, with Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) 11, 12 and 13 on the list for inclusion, among other upgrades.

Implementation of BIPs 11, 12, and 13 will allow for multi-signature transactions, but what does that mean for you and I?

It means that even if your wallet is compromised, you can have a third-party service contact you for your permission before your Bitcoins are spent. For example, a text message could be sent to your phone, asking for a second authorization.

Casascius describes another approach with a similar goal:

Joe wants a secure bitcoin address, but is rightly afraid of viruses and keyloggers. He need not fear, since he will use two virus-infested devices to securely generate an address [editor's note: he's being funny, sort of].

He generates one ECDSA keypair on his virus-infested PC with a keylogger and remote viewing trojan monitored by someone in Romania.

He generates a second ECDSA keypair on his Blackberry that has been rooted by his wireless carrier at the behest of his government, via an online website that secretly keeps a copy of all the private keys it produces.

He writes down both private keys.

With either of these computers, he creates a single Bitcoin address by hashing his two public keys together. Unless he uses two machines both pwned by the same attacker, or the two attackers have some way to find one another and do a "show you mine if you show me yours", he is pretty much safe from attacks because neither of his adversaries knows the other private key and both are needed to spend the funds. Heaven forbid he generate one of these keys using a device that has no internet connection, and there's no way he'll be able to get his bitcoins stolen.

The new client will also have a built-in escrow service that will allow you to generate transactions requiring three signatures, with a trusted third-party acting as the agent in the event that dispute resolution is required.

Equally exciting, this upcoming version of Bitcoin will have a new 'standard' transaction type that will enable the receiver of Bitcoins to specify the transaction type needed to re-spend them.

A good example of a use case would be where a business can be set up such that received coins cannot be further spent without the permission of specific individuals (i.e. a higher-level manager or the CEO).

Finally, Bitcoin version 0.6 will have the ability to import and export private keys, though the functionality won't be within the GUI, just yet.

With these features implemented, Bitcoin will be even more secure than your credit card and possess more functionality than any payment processor, all while maintaining almost zero fees. Well done, dev team!

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