Well it's a beautiful little device. Very slick. Feels like a well designed and sexy device. Even the software is professionally done. The onboarding process was simple and relatively quick.
Pretty sure the hardcore bitcoiners will not like it though. But that's obviously not the intended audience.
When you create a new wallet, you don't ever see the 12/24 word private key. It requires permissions to use your Google account to store encrypted data on your Google drive. Seems like this wallet will be only accessible via this new proprietary security process (since you don't have the 12/24 words).
What if I didn't want to associate any Google email to this?
I don't think people will be storing a lot of BTC in this. I would prefer an air gap approach for any significant BTC amount.
Once installed it feels like another wallet app on your phone. And when you want to send BTC you use the cool bitkey to authorize the transaction. This is done by unlocking the bitkey with your fingerprint. And the small LED in the middle of the bitkey illuminates green. Then you place it behind your phone so that the NFC antenna detects it. That all works very well.
I'm having a hard time finding the use case for this though. I don't think it's well suited for large amount of BTC. It only handles main chain transactions (no lightning). So if you want to transfer you will have a significant fee compared to the amount of BTC your sending. For example I sent $75 and received $72. Main chain fee is the culprit. Not this app.
It has ability to purchase BTC. Cool. It listed coinbase as the partner in that purchase. Buying $100 would actually send me $92 worth of BTC. Not cool.
Maybe the fact that it's base layer transactions only, makes me feel it has limited use. We know base layer isn't good for small transactions. Why would I use this over a Phoenix or mutiny wallet?
Summary...
Cons
- proprietary private key storage process
- requires Google email/drive permissions by this app
- no lightning
Pros
- sexy device and obviously professionally developed
There's probably something I'm missing though. I've only been playing with it for 10 minutes.