Jack Dorsey’s yet to be released Bitcoin (BTC) hardware wallet will have a fingerprint reading sensor to authenticate its owner securely, according to a new update.
The former CEO of twitters new company is named Block, but was previously known as Square. They had announced plans for a hardware wallet last year but there were not many details provided. In the recent update, the team creating the BTC wallet stated it will contain both a mobile application as well as the hardware wallet to allow its users to set their own options for security and ease of use.
“We believe PINs, passwords, and seed phrases are confusing and often not secure given the workarounds normal people have to create given all the friction,” the company said in a Friday statement. “Instead, to achieve seamless authentication in practice, we plan to incorporate a fingerprint sensor into the wallet hardware.”
Block did mention that the fingerprint approach has some trade-offs, but touts its increased security against theft or misuse of the hardware wallet. “We’re aware of limitations we’ll need to design around,” the statement reads. “As we build the product, we’ll evaluate additional access methods that customers could opt into. And of course, fingerprint sensor data will never leave the hardware device.”
“Customers will primarily manage their money by interacting with the mobile application we’re building, and will only need to interact with the hardware in combination with the mobile app to authorize larger, less frequent transactions above an amount of their choosing,” per the statement. The company plans to prioritize the mobile app as the main source of interaction and the hardware wallet wont be packed with tons of features, it will not have a display either. It will also be USB-C researchable via a lithium polymer battery.
“We don’t want to force new behaviors on customers with a novel interface on the hardware component of the wallet we’re building,” The company then stated. “Instead, making the mobile application the center of the experience will lead to familiar, intuitive interactions.” When the device hits the market the new BTC hardware wallet will be competing with other popular hardware wallet like Ledger and Trezor.
 hardware wallet will have a fingerprint reading sensor to authenticate its owner securely, according to a new update.){kind=link}