The "best practice" for something like this is to have a dedicated machine for the wallet. It should be a machine that is disconnected from everything (no network connection) except for the moments the transfers of funds are done.
All the directors can have a login account to the machine but there should not be multiple copies of the keys laying around. Ideally, this would be what I'd recommend: 1) a laptop is setup with a TPM on it with a linux install, a new bitcoin wallet, and the bitcoin software. It is allowed to sync for a day or something to catch up with the block chain. 2) miner is configured to mine bitcoins to this new wallet. 3) directors are given login credentials to login to this machine. 4) the wallet data is copied to an encrypted USB drive. 5) The USB drive is kept in a locked location as a "we lost the laptop" backup and basically never touched. 6) the laptop is kept powered off except for the once a month or so when someone comes in, powers it on, and uses it to transfer bitcoins from the wallet. (The wallet does *NOT* need to be online for the bitcoins to be collected by the account. The wallet only needs to be internet connected to send money from the account). This would allow any of the directors *access* to send money from the account, without the non-logability of having multiple copies of the keys floating around. Basically, there would be a paper trail of who logged in to send money and when. On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 9:00 AM, Mark Jenkins <[email protected]> wrote: > On 10/14/13 22:20, Alex Weber wrote: > >> Could we do some "N of M" stuff? That would be pretty sweet, and >> probably prudent too. There's a Shamir Secret Sharing tool in Debian's >> repository and I'm pretty sure I've used one on Windows too. >> > > With the rate of mining profits now being pretty small and still being > cleared out per month, I don't think this is worth the time to set up. > > Only thing we're protecting against is either me or Ian running off with a > month's worth of funds and claiming it was the other guy / gremlins. > (both of us have access to our own copy of the same private keys right > now, so both of us have to lose that for funds to be locked up. I can give > other directors the same thing). > > And even when it was just Ian, the "gremlin's took it" point of view was > still a possibility, especially with his machine being at the space with > the risks that entails. > > But I guess if this rally in price continues then our relative "trickle" > per month in bitcoin terms could turn out to be decent in CAD terms in the > end... > > But I'm not sure a tool independent of bitcoin would be optimal -- if > we're group encrypting one underlying bitcoin private key then there are > potential opportunities at the moment the group decrypts it for one to walk > away with a copy unless we start putting tamper resistant platforms in > place. (I did take a machine away from Skullspace 1.0's junk pile with a > TPM in it, interested in playing with this for these kinds of things some > day...) > > There's also potential for doing N of M stuff in the bitcoin protocol > itself where everyone has their own private key, but I've now learned that > is apparently still maturing in bitcoin, escrow type situations with 3 > signers are apparently working well but multiple signers releasing funds in > the style of a multi-signature bank account not as much. > > Let's see how far the current rally in price goes... > > > > Mark > ______________________________**_________________ > SkullSpace Discuss Mailing List > Help: > http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/**index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss<http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss> > Archive: > https://groups.google.com/**group/skullspace-discuss-**archive/<https://groups.google.com/group/skullspace-discuss-archive/> >
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