Andreas Antonopulus announced the launch of Third Key Solutions of which he is the Chief Technical Officer. The start-up is a Bitcoin "best practices" consultancy, which aims to set up an infrastructure for Bitcoin companies to establish policies and enforcements for the handling of funds. The consultancy provides services revolving around the management of funds with multi-signature addresses as described in a summary on their website:
You don't really need Third Key Solutions. Multi-sig is easy-peasy. Just work out an M-of-N plan that makes you secure without exposing you to the risk of losing all your money. Build offline key-generation computers with carefully controlled operating systems and software stacks under strictly documented protocols.
The partial patronizing summary is only the froth of the poison that is being sold. Third Key Solution truly believes they are capable of consulting an institution which handles the same volume of funds such as MPEx which as of this publication transacted 29,691 BTC worth of trades in the past 30 days and has a public depository address that has received an all time total of 168,633 BTC in its lifetime. The above summary implicitly claims expertise in air gapping computer systems although the security chapter in Antonopulus' book Mastering Bitcoin makes no mention of generating a Bitcoin private key offline on a computer that has been air gapped, or the process of creating a raw transaction on an air gapped machine to broadcast from a full node. Reminiscent of C4's attempt at standardization without permission, Third Key Solution's services may prove more poisonous to their clientèle by attempting to render services without the necessary competencies.
Coming soon: Fifth
ColumnWheel Solutions.Seem like Clinton did key escrow wrong! He should have ordered In-Q-Tel to fund a 'Third Key Solutions' instead of that ham-handed Clipper idiocy.
Seriously. Although fifth wheel is useful in some case. Helps your trailer navigate less than straight roads. Then again useful fifth wheel operates on a different axis than the other wheels…
Derpopulus? Same guy who got scammed on localbitcoins with fake dollar bills? Same guy who locked himself out of an encrypted hard drive because he forgot the password? Same guy who promoted the Neo & Bee scam?
*gets out popcorn*
This gunna be good.
1 Feb 2014:
https://twitter.com/aantonop/status/429701734630699008
10 Feb 2014:
https://twitter.com/aantonop/status/433080081179611136
Some people are still stuck in the problems of 2013 :
The only difference between Anpopoderpulous and random kid in Nigeria is the given name. Otherwise, both will have to spend the year reading logs and getting the basics of their Bitcoin presence sorted should they ever decide to actually participate in Bitcoin.