
Mint now lets users keep track of their Bitcoins - plingamp
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/01/30/popular-financial-planning-service-mint-now-lets-users-keep-track-of-their-bitcoins/#!tWS01
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EdJiang
This integration is NOT SECURE.

Mint asks for your API key, which Coinbase implements rather poorly. Your API
key will grant any application FULL ACCESS to your Coinbase account, so if
Mint gets compromised, the attacker can send your Bitcoin to another account.
And Bitcoin transactions are irreversible.

Yes, you do give Mint your bank account credentials, but if someone steals
your username/password and use it to send a transaction, you can get it
reversed.

Mint can easily fix this by using Coinbase's OAuth API instead of using an API
Key, which allows for selective permissions (read-only) to be set.

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orblivion
Why do they need Coinbase? Just give them your address, which is public
information anyhow.

~~~
deskamess
I think if you are using an exchange your coins are not really in a known
address. The exchange probably stores your coins, along with others, in many
of its wallets.

However I do see how the ledger comes into play for your personal coin
addresses. That is actually a powerful concept and pretty cool.

From a Mint perspective adding meta-data for coin transactions would be a good
start to help categorize coin spends/receives. Another approach would be well
known receive address sets. For example 'Grocery Store X' would have one (or
multiple) well known 'receive addresses' that Mint could categorize
appropriately.

~~~
yebyen
At Coinbase, this is not true. You own your addresses. There is no "Hot
Wallet". This may not be true of coins you just bought, that have just been
added to your balance, but it's certainly true of coins you received as
payment (to an address that you knew / gave to a customer / used in an API
payment button on a website).

What Mint can't do without access to the API is know all of your owned
addresses and aggregate their balances into one. Now as for the rest of your
ideas, I'm not from California, but I honestly don't see any vendors signing
up to use Bitcoins. Everywhere I go will take the Paypal card, but nowhere is
offering to take bitcoin via NFC or QR code. Maybe "if you build it they will
come."

I would like to have a way to export a global public key from my private key,
such that customers could generate their own receiving addresses (for my
wallet) without any sort of access to my private key, or third party. I have
no idea if this is even a thing, but I also can't say for sure that it's not
possible. If it were possible, I think it would also make it possible to pin
the exact balance of a wallet, so I suspect it's not possible/an undesirable
idea.

~~~
atweiden
The thing is called a Master Public Key:

[https://github.com/kangasbros/electrumpos](https://github.com/kangasbros/electrumpos)

[http://acceptbit.com/](http://acceptbit.com/)

~~~
yebyen
Thank you! I see it takes a certain kind of wallet, a "hierarchical
deterministic" wallet. That sounds reasonable.

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peter_l_downs
I wish they'd add support for not double-counting my credit card purchases
instead.

~~~
damon_c
Ha, yes... and support for not counting money transferred from savings to
checking as income would be nice too.

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usaphp
And the money withdrawn from PayPal account to bank account.

~~~
ilyanep
And realizing that my credit card bill that's due Feb 2nd was paid a month
ago.

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WesleyJohnson
This is my biggest issue with them: bill payments. They don't match up bill
reminders with transactions. So, as you said, something you've paid still
shows up as due and once the due date goes by, if you haven't paid it, it just
disappears off your list even though it's still outstanding. They really need
to fix this.

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tlrobinson
Should read "Mint now supports tracking Bitcoins in your Coinbase account"

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etrain
I like that they're still referred to as a "startup" even though they exited
for $170m nearly 5 years ago.

~~~
jonrussell
good point, duly updated [author here]

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snitko
I don't recommend anyone leaking info about the amount of Bitcoins you have or
spend to any third party.

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lowglow
Does anyone think there is room for a new mint-like service?

~~~
esamek
www.hellowallet.com

If anyone is interested in an account with us for user research, leave a
reply. It's normally $100 a year. I'll circumvent that.

~~~
deelowe
See my comment above. Where most of these tools fail is with investments
(brokerages, 401k, and real estate). If yours can do that, I'm certainly
interested.

Really, there's nothing out there for the power user. I believe that market
would pay for a good product that doesn't try to push stuff on them (ahem...
wealthfront).

If you're looking for a user with real estate assets, I'd be interested in
helping by being a tester.

~~~
esamek
You are right. That there isn't much out there for the "power" users.

We (HelloWallet) are much more focused on holistic financial wellness. But we
are working on some very exciting investment-oriented products as we speak.

It still would be interesting to get your perspective if you want to create an
account:

[https://my.hellowallet.com/PublicHWWebApp.html?p=hackernews#...](https://my.hellowallet.com/PublicHWWebApp.html?p=hackernews#CreateYourAccount)

~~~
deelowe
Budgeting isn't really an issue for me (managing my savings and investments
is). Until I can find a better site that supports mortgages and investments,
mint works the best. Though, I'd be happy to try hellowallet once there are
some more advanced features.

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disdev
Would be nice if they decided that cashflow forecasting (Microsoft Money and
Quicken Online both did that well-ish) was important to add. That's the single
reason I haven't gone with Mint.

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adaam2
I think they should be focusing on opening Mint up into new markets (namely
the UK) rather than this!

