Report: Bitcoin Wallet Providers Failing to Make Privacy a Priority

Bitcoin wallet providers haven’t focused on increasing privacy to promote consumer financial independence and safety over the last year, according to the Open Bitcoin Privacy Project’s (OBPP) second edition survey.
As no provider received a score of more than 50 out of 100, the OBPP suggests privacy work has stagnated within the bitcoin wallet industry and that improvements to these services are greatly needed.
While new bitcoin wallet providers have begun adopting hierarchical deterministic (HD) architecture for advanced security, the OBPP contends that many privacy advances from 2014, including Tor support and stealth addresses, were not incorporated by wallet providers in 2015.
The project wrote in its latest analysis:
“Wallets seem to be mostly in a holding pattern, waiting for their competitors to take the lead on innovating.”
Ranvier told CoinDesk that OBPP’s criteria is designed to “leave room for improvement”, but that he believes the low scores are a reflection of bitcoin wallet providers and their sometimes slow efforts to address privacy bugs and leaks.

This post was published at Coin Desk on February 29, 2016.