Proton Wallet

I just got access to Proton Wallet earlier today. Is there anything you’d like to know?

Q&A

I’m on a family plan and have been a paying customer for about 2/3 years.
I haven’t bought any Bitcoin yet but will report back on that once I have.

34 comments

I don't see the point to this. All their other products seem to be targeted at replacing less private, non-E2EE services. Mail, calendar, VPN, and a password manager are excellent choices with no major well integrated E2EE solution. This, not so much.
Also, I don't really get why they chose Bitcoin, it's PoW and is much less energy efficient than other alternatives while also not being as private as Monero, nor having things like smart contracts.
- If you want the answers to the questions you listed, then it's pretty much covered in the privacy podcast called OptOut. Linked here if u wanted to have a listen.
  https://www.buzzsprout.com/1790481/15505787-proton-wallet-w-andy-yen.mp3
  
  Do you have a tl;d...l?
  
  Thanks
- They probably started with BTC because the majority of the world believes that it's private (we know it's easily traceable). Bring in the new users!

Signed up for decent encrypted email and now I feel like Proton's only goal is to shove so much extra shit down my throat that they'll choke me to death- and apparently I'm the only subscriber completely uninterested in any of it.
- I genuinely don't get why they made a Bitcoin wallet, but all of their other services are direct competitors to (and imo much better than) the Google suite apps and made it much easier to de-google my life
  
  De-Googling is great, keep at that.
  That said, Totally investing in a single other provider may not be the answer.
- Besides this wallet, what are you referring to with 'extra shit'?
  
  Proton VPN, Proton Drive, Proton Pass, etc- none of these existed when I signed up but here they are. If anything I'd rather opt out of all the extra stuff for a discounted rate, but that'll never happen.
- Do you ever use the VPN?
  
  Already have a different provider, so no.

I received my invite today as well (Portugal). Overall here are my first impressions:
Interface is very clean, but lacks a Dark mode
You can import wallets by seed phrase only
Buying bitcoins redirects you to a broker's website, it's not as seemless as I'd like. They ask you for all sorts of personal information, which I guess is industry standard, but it's a third party service
I tried making a 50 euro purchase, but after a few hours I got an email saying it was canceled, no reason provided
You can't sign messages to confirm the ownership of your wallet, which is required by some brokers
This service is marketed as exclusive to users in the Visionary plan. I'm in the Proton Unlimited plan. It's unclear what's going to happen to my wallet once this beta period is over. Am I going to lose access to my bitcoins? Some functionality? The Proton support just told me "Please be advised that Proton Wallet is only available for users on our Visionary plan at the moment", which doesn't fully clarify it.
- Being on whatever plan you're on shouldn't change anything on the back end.
  All that's happening is they've set your account to have permission to access the service.
  Even if they revoke your permissions, your data will still be on their servers.
- They ask you for all sorts of personal information, which I guess is industry standard, but it’s a third party service
  The reason is money laundering / tax evasion laws. There is not really a way to buy crypto anonymously without breaking laws.

I encountered a scary bug in Proton Wallet, posting here in case someone has the same problem
I sent around 20 euros worth of bitcoins to a friend, to test the service. Everything went fine and was very easy and intuitive
Today I logged in and noticed my balance was short by about 220 euros; It indicated that the transaction also sent around 220 euros to a second bitcoin address, classified as "external recipient". This is usually normal, the wallet sends "change" back to itself, but in this case it didn't seem to go back to me and the "external recipient" totally threw me off.
I imported proton wallet with Sparrow Wallet, it showed the same, incorrect, balance. I increased the "gap" value from 20 to 300 and the balance now shows up OK in Sparrow Wallet. The issue happens because Proton Wallet doesn't use the first available change address, it used a random one way further down the list. In my case the "change" income was the change address 20-300th (I had to scroll a lot to find it).
My balance still shows incorrectly in Proton Wallet and the transaction shows as -240 euros. I have reported this issue to Proton, hopefully no one else will be scared :P
- Thanks for the heads up!

I just set it up as well. Nothing groundbreaking, but clean interface. Haven’t used the btc via email function yet.
My only concern would be if there was some sort of breach that affected my proton credentials (yes, I realize the odds are low), then that would also give access to my wallet (and passwords, but not using that).
This might be good for a hot spending wallet, but not sticking anything substantial in there.
- You can set a passphrase for the wallet as well as far as I know.
  
  Yeah, correct.

May i ask what country you live in?
I am very interested in how this runs in EU countries. Also the ease of use for absolute crypto noobs.
- I’m in the EU. So far, it’s been really easy to follow everything. I made a €20 purchase (you get redirected to a third party, with two available to choose from) without any issues.
  
  Did you have to verify your personal information in some official manner somehow?