Coinkite Reveals Most Extensive Multisig Support for Bitcoin Security

TORONTO, November 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Coinkite has announced today the release of its multi-signature (multisig) API and Co-sign Pages, giving users the first Bitcoin platform of its kind to support M-of-15 signatures.

The company's Multisig announcement is aimed at Bitcoin developers and businesses wishing to store larger amounts of Bitcoin in a more secure environment, with conditional withdrawals and multiple approvals.

Up until now Bitcoin users everywhere were limited to transactions signed by 2-of-3 or 3-of-5 users. With this innovation, it is now possible to create an M-of-15 wallet, meaning that bitcoins can now be held in trust between as many as 15 people.

Coinkite CEO, Rodolfo Novak, explains that, "With this new feature, we wanted to be able to offer something to the crypto-currency advocates that are nervous whenever a service holds their precious private keys. Now you can decide if any or all of the private keys for a shared account will be kept secret from Coinkite. We are using BIP32 extended public keys, and every payment address for the account will be unique."

Continuing their focus on easy-to-use Bitcoin tools, Coinkite has created 'Co-Signing Pages' which are a meeting place to sign and approve a proposed transaction affecting a shared (multisig) account. This means accounts where multiple signatures are required to release funds, will require the user to "create a new 'proposed transaction' and each proposed transaction has a dedicated co-signing page. For the transaction to move forward, all the signers need to come to that page, review the details of the transaction, and authorize it."

In light of recent events where Bitcoin organizations have been called out for their lack of transparency and accountability, the release of Coinkite's Multisig API gives many companies including Bitcoin Exchanges and Bitcoin-accepting Charities, the opportunity to store funds in a transparent and trusted manner with robust security options.

Coinkite is an enterprise-grade Bitcoin platform offering an easy to use webwallet and point-of-sale terminal with advanced Bitcoin key management, all supported by their Hardware Security Module (HSM). Every deposit on Coinkite is secured by their proprietary HSM, and funds stored in Multisig accounts cannot be moved by the company itself, providing the ultimate in protection to users concerned about potential security issues like database hacks or failure of the company.

If you're interested in playing with the multisig technology yourself, feel free to test-drive the Multisig API using this link. And because Coinkite offers a free starter account, we invite you to get started now at http://www.coinkite.com

Coinkite Blog post for this announcement: 

Pre-release link: http://blog.coinkite.com/private/102291566521/tumblr_ndhz7ewndR1sh76xy

Final after 11AM Eastern on November 18, 2014: http://blog.coinkite.com/post/102291566521

For questions please contact: media@coinkite.com

Rodolfo Novak 

CEO