Coinkite to shut down user wallet services to focus on enterprise-level Bitcoin hardware development

Bitcoin wallet and technology provider Coinkite has announced that it will be shutting down its web wallet to focus on developing enterprise-grade hardware products.

Coinkite said in a blog post that the web wallet will be closed after 30 days from now, and users will automatically withdraw their account balances when they log in to the website. Coinkite said that if there are still any unclaimed remaining funds, an additional processing process will be provided.

Why did Coinkite make this decision?

Coinkite CEO鲁道夫·诺瓦克explained that their efforts to provide this service involved “meaningless distractions” that wasted a lot of resources and energy.

Novak said:

"We want to focus on writing software, not dealing with lawyers and DDoS (distributed denial of service attacks)."

In addition, Novak pointed out that another reason for shutting down the service was the high cost. It is very expensive to provide a reliable free software service.

Coinkite was founded in 2012 and has been providing users with excellent development tools since then, including what the company calls a more decentralized and privacy-friendly Bitcoin API and wallet product.

"The main reason, of all the reasons, is that providing SaaS (software as a service) to users is free, but it requires support, and we want to provide good support. But all these things have costs," Novak continued.

Coinkite encourages users to switch to wallet services from Bitcoin.org, Bitcoin Core, Electrum, and Ledger.

Is Microsoft's "free lunch" reliable?

Nowak said Coinkite will focus on creating hardware to process bitcoin transactions, a product he said would appeal to more lucrative enterprise users.

Notably, Novak said the product is more secure than cloud-based offerings such as Microsoft Azure. As we all know, Microsoft is accelerating the creation of its Blockchain-as-a-Service platform, which is expected to be officially launched this spring.

“It is not safe to use a hosting service,” Novak said. “It is important to use a server that is designed to transfer funds and utilize Bitcoin’s business logic.”

Novak did not provide a specific timeline for new product development, but revealed that the announcement of its latest products will be made soon. The products that Coinkite will focus on include physical bitcoin and payment terminals.

More details on Coinkite’s service shutdown can be found here.

Original article: http://www.coindesk.com/coinkite-consumer-wallet-enterprise-bitcoin-hardware/
By Pete Rizzo
Translator: printemps
Editor: printemps
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/coinkite-drop-consumer-wallet)