Proton Wallet Review: Is Proton Losing Touch?
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It may well be that Proton Wallet is the easiest way to start using Bitcoin, but is a Bitcoin wallet the solution people need to improve their financial privacy?

Proton, the Swiss creators of privacy-focused products like Proton Mail and ProtonVPN, recently released the latest product in their ever-growing lineup: Proton Wallet. Announced at the end of July 2024, it promotes itself as “an easy-to-use, self-custodial” Bitcoin wallet that will ostensibly make financial freedom more attainable for everyone.

It may well be that Proton Wallet is the easiest way to start using Bitcoin, but is a Bitcoin wallet the solution people need to improve their financial privacy?

Contrary to popular belief, cryptocurrency is not an inherently private transactional system.

Had Proton Wallet added support for Monero or a similarly private cryptocurrency, they could have single-handedly boosted a financial system that is actually private by default by a significant degree. In my eyes, failing to do so in favor of the market leader is an unfortunate step back from their “privacy by default” mantra.

Proton Wallet seems like a product that doesn’t know its own place in the world.

Is it meant to save us from the tyranny of payment processors like PayPal who can freeze your funds at a whim?

Or, was Bitcoin chosen to give us independence from fiat currency, including stablecoins, entirely?

However, if Proton Wallet wasn’t meant for all that, if it was simply meant to bring privacy to Bitcoin, then it’s certainly a failure.

Proton hasn’t taken any risks with this product, meaning it’s really only good for satisfying a singular belief: That Bitcoin is just inherently good, and anything to promote Bitcoin is inherently good as well. I don’t share these fanatical beliefs of Bitcoin maximalists, however, when Bitcoin is demonstrably lacking in a wide variety of ways.

Personally, I’m a bit of a cryptocurrency pessimist in general, but I can see some appeal for the technology in very specific areas. Unfortunately, Proton Wallet doesn’t seem to fit in to a useful niche in any meaningful way. The functionality it does support is extremely basic, even by Bitcoin standards, and it simply doesn’t provide enough value over the existing marketplace.

If you’re an existing Proton user simply looking for a place to store some Bitcoin you already have sitting around, Proton Wallet might be perfectly adequate. For everyone else, I don’t see this product being too useful. Bitcoin is still far too volatile to be a solid investment or used as a safe store of value if you crave financial independence and sovereignty, and Proton Wallet simply isn’t adequate for paying for things privately online.

  • Ilandar@aussie.zoneEnglish
    1·
    10 days ago

    Is it meant to save us from the tyranny of payment processors like PayPal who can freeze your funds at a whim?

    Wasn’t this quite literally the the reason provided in Proton’s announcement of Wallet?

    Why build Proton Wallet?

    Early in our journey, we experienced first-hand what it’s like being cut off from the financial system and at the mercy of large banks and institutions — an ordeal that affects millions of people across the globe. In the summer of 2014, as the original Proton Mail crowdfunding campaign was in progress, Proton had a near-death experience when PayPal froze our funds(new window), questioned whether encryption was legal, and whether Proton had government approval to encrypt emails.

    Fortunately, in that instance PayPal returned the blocked funds, and Proton was able to start the journey that we’ve been on for the past decade. However, that dangerous moment has always stayed in our minds, and we still keep a proportion of Proton’s financial reserves in Bitcoin.

    Having experienced firsthand the unreliability of the traditional financial sector, building Proton Wallet is an important strategic move to make Proton more resilient and independent in the future. By enabling us and the entire Proton community to more easily adopt means of payment that deliver on the promise of financial freedom for all, we better insulate Proton from the risks posed by traditional finance.

  • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.businessEnglish
    1·
    10 days ago

    Since either I missed it, or it wasn’t made clear, and I’m not going to go sign up for anything to check - who is maintaining custody of the Bitcoin with this?

    It sounds like it’s web-based which makes me think Proton is, and not you, but again, maybe I missed something?

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      10 days ago

      Exactly. If Proton does anything with cryptocurrency, it should use one of the privacy coins, and Monero is probably the best option here. Here’s how I would’ve rolled it out:

      1. accept Monero w/ a discount directly as payment for Proton - I might have picked Proton over Tuta for this
      2. add Monero payments to Proton Pass
      3. integrate 2 into existing products (e.g. send money to trusted contact, pool money for events in calendar, etc)
      4. add other cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin and ETH) and payment networks (e.g. Lightning)

      But no, they instead did:

      1. accept Bitcoin as payment for Proton
      2. release Bitcoin wallet
      3. ??

      At least it’s non-custodial, but that raises more questions because if it’s non-custodial, I presumably already have another wallet anyway. The wallet doesn’t add anything directly useful.

      • asap@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 days ago

        The wallet doesn’t add anything directly useful.

        It adds a couple of things which can be useful:

        1. You have a single receive email, but it’s associated with a full HD wallet, so every receive will generate a brand new unused address for the sender. As the email is static, you could for example post it for donations and not have to worry about people being able to track anything you’ve received. Of course this only works with other Proton users which is kind of pointless, but perhaps it’s the start of some sort of interoperability standard?

        2. They have support which you can contact, which while almost certainly isn’t important for you, for your aunty it might be useful.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          10 days ago
          1. This seems to only work between Proton accounts, so I doubt many would actually do that. And it seems they’re using the regular BTC network, not Lightning, so fees are going to be huge ($1.60 from their screenshots). Monero solves this way better since there’s no way to see someone else’s balance with their address, and transactions are pretty cheap (a few cents). Their solution doesn’t actually add privacy, it just obfuscates transactions a bit. Lightning does a much better job w/ privacy (it’s private until you close the channel) and costs (transactions are way cheaper and way faster than regular BTC), and it would be the ideal solution to this problem since it still uses BTC.
          2. Sure, but aunty is highly unlikely to be using Proton, much less Bitcoin. It’s a service for enthusiasts. Support is absolutely important though, I just don’t think aunty is likely to be sending crypto over Proton.

          I still don’t really see who this is for. The requirements to actually using it productively is that your contacts need to also have Proton. If most of your contacts use Proton, that means you’re probably running a business or something and thus don’t need to send BTC to eachother.

          Focusing on regular users makes way more sense than focusing on these niche use-cases. Make it so I can easily use cryptocurrencies for online payments. Integration with Proton Pass makes way more sense than integrating with email.

      • M500@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        10 days ago

        Yeah, this is what I came here to say. I bet a large % of their users are linux users. I ended up just getting one drive instead of proton, but would have considered proton drive if they had a linux client.

        • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          10 days ago

          Proton AG is also a pretty small company and has not a lot of programming resources, can’t expect them to magically support everything immediately when their goal is getting marketshare.

          • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
            1·
            10 days ago

            Aint Encrypted contacts integration most requested feature?

            Who asked for pasword manager, crypto wallet and AI?