It’s official: Bitfi is, like, so lame

John McAfee’s cryptocurrency wallet building venture, Bitfi, has won the ‘Lamest Vendor Response’ gong at the annual Pwnie Awards.

During the launch of the Bitfi wallet in June, everyone’s favourite technology eccentric boasted: “Of all today’s elaborate and sophisticated methods for making wallets secure and easy to use, surely none is as epic as that of the new Bitfi wallet. Several of my competitors have pioneered innovative methods to protect private keys, but Bitfi pulled out all the stops to ensure that the private key can never be obtained by illicit means.”

“The radically innovative Bitfi wallet, grew out of desperate need to find a completely secure and convenient storage solution so that we could drive rapid adoption of decentralised blockchain assets,” added Daniel Khesin, Co-Founder of Bitfi.

“Intimately involved with the cryptocurrency revolution, we sought to develop the ultimate instrument that would be the last word for the problems of storing and interacting with cryptocurrency and other digital assets. Early prototypes so astonished various users (like John McAfee) who share our passion for cryptocurrency that, through simple word of mouth, many crypto enthusiasts were soon clamouring for a Bitfi wallet of their own. This demand led to our formation and the filing of numerous patents for over two dozen breakthrough features.”

Stick that in your crypto pipe and smoke it

Don’t believe the hype, good people. Held at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, the Pwnie Awards are devoted to “celebrating and making fun of the achievements and failures of security researchers and the wider security community”.

Lamest Vendor Response focuses on those who mis-handle a security vulnerability most spectacularly. Bitfi was this year’s recipient for the following reason: ”This response has everything. Bitcoin. The word Unhackable. John McAfee. A 250k bounty that is so narrowly constrained it is ridiculous. Reverse engineers posting that the wallet has no hardware security mechanisms (not even anti-tamper). Multiple people breaking the device. A video of John McAfee being displayed onscreen on the device. A tweet from Bitfi claiming that rooting the device doesn’t mean that it was hacked.”

Further details here.