Benjamindees:

Smartcards are an interesting suggestion.  If there were an ECDSA card out there, it sounds like a private key could not be extracted from it, even for backup purposes.  Is this correct?


If the implementation were done on a non-ECDSA javacard, something like a computer or smartphone would still have to interface with it, correct?

My concern is that a compromised machine could tamper with the input to the javacard, such that the destination address and/or amount is changed when a user wants to make a transfer.

On the other hand, the idea of using a smart card kept in a safe as a bitcoin savings account seems pretty sexy from a usability standpoint.  For people like allinvain who want to keep around 25,000 BTC for a long period of time, is a smartcard something he'd want to keep it on?

(ben-abuya you posted right around when I was going to and it looks like we have similar concerns about the smart card as a savings account)