Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Do we really need Bitcoin?
by
DeathAndTaxes
on 18/07/2014, 21:21:00 UTC
Good point. After all one cannot have both security and convenience. But careful when intutively using systems as throwing two dices. Often times the distributions are not as constant at it may seem.

Of course you can.  I wouldn't say taking two minutes to generate a single high entropy seed using a deck of cards gives up either security or convenience.

Actually the seed is the beginning of a long algorithm you are trusting. And if you trust the algorithm, you can also trust the seed generator. If not, you need to generate for each private key 256 bits of entropy throwing a dice (for example).

No that isn't correct.   A hardware device can act as a black box however if the outputs are deterministic then the outputs can be validated.   If a block box provides you a random key how do you know it is actually random?  The reality is you don't and thus you need to TRUST the results are truly random.  However if you provide a black box which implements BIP32 (HD Wallets) a seed you can VERIFY the keys match the expected outputs.  Single random seed -> a lifetime of verifiable results.