Coinbase Has the Green Light for Its Bitcoin Payment Portal

This week was a productive one for the Californian cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Now, the company is looking to improve its Bitcoin security trading system.

According to the patent published on 14 August by the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), Coinbase is seeking to design a payment portal aimed to help users pay in Bitcoin directly from their virtual wallets.

“It may be a security concern for users that the private keys of their bitcoin addresses may be stolen from their wallets,” the patent cites. “Existing systems do not provide a solution for maintaining security over private keys while still allowing the users to checkout on a merchant page and making payments using their wallets.“

A “key ceremony” to be integrated

The upcoming system will come with a “key ceremony“, whose role is to generate key shares that are mixed with an “operational master key” encoded with users’ 24-word passphrases. The keys can be easily removed after they have been made public.

You will need the operational master key during the checkout as well as to confirm the transaction.

The document also focuses on “freeze logic“. This is a protection measure that automatically stops any transaction when the funds’ owner decides not to continue it.

“At any point in time after the master key is loaded, the system can be frozen. The system can be unfrozen after it has been frozen using keys from the key ceremony. The checkout process can be carried out when the system is frozen and when the system is unfrozen. The payment process can only be carried out when the system is unfrozen.”

Other platforms will be able to create their own interpretation of the payment portal, as the original one will integrate an API key.

Coinbase added Ethereum Classic

On August 16, the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced that starting today at 5pm, “Coinbase Consumer customers will be able to buy, sell, store and use Ethereum Classic (ETC) on http://Coinbase.com and through the mobile app“. Despite the bearish market, the price of ETC increased by 19% following the announcement.