Development of an SMS system used to access Bitcoin wallets

Abstract

The popularity of Crypto currencies has not gone unnoticed, Bitcoin which is an electronic payment system and Internet money, is a leading crypto currency and continues to grow from being popular amongst the people who have knowledge about this technology, i.e. the developers, investors and tech-savvy enthusiasts and those that don’t. If a person wants to use Bitcoin they need to have a Bitcoin wallet which stores the public and private keys used when sending and receiving bitcoins. Most of these Bitcoin wallets were developed for people who have access to technologies such as smart phones, computers and an Internet connection. This paper presents a simplified Short Message Service (SMS) system that can be used by people who do not have access to these technologies. The system was developed as a prototype and tested on a low-end mobile phone to demonstrate its capabilities. It still needs to be enhanced further to enable anyone to use it, e.g. increase the speed of transactions and SMS responses and the use of better security methods.