Bitcoin and altcoins wallet plugin for your WordPress blog

If you want to run a Bitcoin or altcoin wallet plugin, in other words, run a micro wallet at your WordPress blog that’s possible. Do know that this will require you to run a full bitcoin node and due to that you will minimum need a Bitcoin VPS hosting plan.

The first question that you should ask yourself is, is it secure?

A Bitcoin and/or Altcoin Wallets plugin is only as secure as your WordPress installation. Regardless of whether you choose to offer such a service to your users, you should have already taken steps to secure your WordPress installation. At a minimum you should do the following:

• Install a security plugin such as Wordfence.
• Read the Codex resources on Hardening WordPress.

Now what if your site does get hacked and user funds where stolen 

As you may know, cryptocurrency transactions are non-reversible. You, as an administrator, are solely responsible for the security of your site. There is no way plugin developers could assume responsibility for lost funds  If you have evidence that your funds were stolen you should go to the police. Recovering lost funds will be difficult and might not even be possible by law enforcement but they improve also and have been able in the past years to track/find thieves.

What about regulations?

You have to take into account that you will provide financial services to your users. With this ‘depending by country’ you will have to see if you are allowed or not to operate financial services without a license provided by your government. A next step will be user privacy, most likely your government will also demand KYC of all your users.

Now, what plugin to choose?

There are many plugins but so far we have found only one with a decent support level and constant updates. As you will work with ‘money’ and hold funds of your users, it’s a prime requirement to have such a support level for your Bitcoin WordPress plugin.

So let’s start with a possible good plugin but it’s still at your own risk and you will have to be sure you can provide the security needed which we mentioned earlier.

The Dashed Slug Micro Wallet - Bitcoin and altcoins plugin for WordPress

Note: this is NOT an endorsement, always do your own research and due diligence

Link & Plugin Download: https://www.dashed-slug.net/

It is a core plugin that takes care of basic accounting/micro bitcoin/altcoins wallet functionality:

• Accounting for your users. Data is held on tables in your MySQL database. (Make sure your security level is top-notch, this is a vulnerability)
• A financial transaction PHP API:
  • Calls that let the logged-in user handle their cryptocurrencies.
  • A JSON API: JSON requests of the above, for logged in users.
  • Deposit from the blockchain
  • Withdraw to an external blockchain address
  • Transfer funds to other users (on-site transactions that bypass the blockchain) — No fee transactions as they are internal
    
  • View a history of past transactions
  • Widgets the same UI elements available via shortcodes can also be used as widgets in your theme.
  • Configure who has a wallet and who does what using WordPress capabilities.
  • Configure e-mail notifications for users.
    
  • Configure e-mail confirmations for transactions and optionally confirm transactions via the admin interface.
  • Backup and restore transactions: An import/export functionality to backup transactions to and from CSV files.
  • Extensible architecture, easily install coin adapter plugins to use other cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin.
  • Easily install extension plugins that talk to the PHP API to provide additional functionality such as payment gateways

Drawbacks

Like we mentioned above this will require technical knowledge but also an infrastructure of minimum a Bitcoin VPS Hosting

Running a full node requires you to set up the daemon on a Bitcoin VPS hosting or other machine that you own and administer. Normally the full blockchain needs to be downloaded, so you need to make sure that your server can handle the disk and network requirements.

However

• Cloud wallets
  Instead, you can choose to install one of the available coin adapters that are backed by cloud wallet services. These currently are:
  • The CoinPayments Adapter extension
  • The block.io Cloud Wallet Adapter extension

    Study the services and their terms of service including what fees they charge before choosing to use them.

• bittiraha
  

  This is a wallet based on bitcoinj and does not store the blockchain locally. You will have to install this on a Bitcoin VPS Hosting or another server via the shell.

  A downside is that the walletnotify mechanism and the listtransactions command are not implemented. This means that there is no easy way for the plugin to be notified of deposits. Deposits will not be recorded in the transactions table.

  Users will not be emailed when they perform deposits and they will not be able to see their deposits in the [wallets_transactions] User Interface. Deposits will incorrectly affect users’ balances. You have been warned.

Conclusion

Operating a micro wallet will require knowledge and infrastructure and should be carefully thought through before considering to install, this is not just another service to offer to your users. You will handle also their money. Make sure you are able to do so and provide the needed resources and support that asks such services.

Did you install and operate this WordPress plugin ? Let us know in the comments below