Privacy and security firm Proton has revealed its new self-custody Bitcoin-only wallet, which allows users to hold and spend Bitcoin.
The announcement from the Switzerland-based email firm said it’s making it easier for newcomers to start on their Bitcoin journey and adopt it as a means of payment outside the control of centralised institutions.
🙏 We built @ProtonWallet to make financial freedom attainable for everyone by making Bitcoin the most accessible its ever been for newcomers and non-tech savvy people.
More here: https://t.co/uskddNrr7L
— Proton (@ProtonPrivacy) July 24, 2024
However, the move could raise eyebrows among privacy-advocates, who recognise that Bitcoin’s mere pseudonymity is not good enough when widely available solutions such as Litecoin’s Mweb and Monero exist. Litecoin and Monero are not supported by the email provider so far, but that may change depending on user feedback.
The company boasts end-to-end encryption in its communications suite, and has features like Bitcoin via Email with security provided through Proton Sentinel.
Proton first hatched in 2014 by a team of scientists who met at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN). They created the encrypted email service with over 100 million users.
Bitcoin support
Proton has accepted payments and donations via Bitcoin over time, stressing the importance of financial freedom during its initial crowdfunding round when PayPal froze its funds, almost killing off the company.
Despite having gone through this ordeal, the company is apparently on the fence about supporting the aforementioned complimentary privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies, citing possible association with criminality, overlooking the fact that Bitcoin was also viewed as potentially criminal just a few years ago.
Yesterday, the Proton team replied to a reddit post asking about a possible Monero integration.
“because of the risk of associating Proton with criminality. Unfortunately, at present, Monero support in Proton Wallet would not assuage those concerns.” 5/9 https://t.co/MuqFkIE1rs pic.twitter.com/krmJhpP34N
— ᴜɴᴛʀᴀᴄᴇᴀʙʟᴇ (@DontTraceMeBruh) July 25, 2024
Still, Proton also has a Bitcoin-treasury policy, such that it holds Bitcoin as part of its financial reserves. With the launch of the Bitcoin Wallet, the company is taking yet another step to protect users’ financial freedom. However, support for popular coins that provide more layers of financial freedom, privacy and censorship resistance is somewhat elusive so far, and might infringe on the company’s stated goal to protect users in the long run.
Proton will only support Bitcoin on launch. In the future it may support other currencies.
Key features
Among the features of the new Bitcoin wallet is “Bitcoin via Email,” taking advantage of Proton’s infrastructure and email userbase for a potentially wider addressable market. The Proton Wallet also streamlines the process of sending and receiving Bitcoin, requiring only the recipient’s email address, provided both sender and receiver use a Proton Wallet.
The Wallet automatically rotates Bitcoin addresses for every transaction, preventing easy linkage of transactions. It is also self-custodial and end-to-end encrypted, which means users control their encryption keys. In other words, nobody (not even Proton) can access users’ digital assets. A robust recovery method ensures access to BTC even when the wallet is offline.
Finally, the wallet has standard two-factor authentication and Proton Sentinel’s advanced machine learning and AI tools to protect against potentially malicious login attempts.
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