Proton releases a self-custody bitcoin wallet

When you think about it, Proton has always been a crypto company — cryptography, not cryptocurrency. But the Switzerland-based company, better known for its secure email, VPN, and storage services, is now launching its first cryptocurrency product.

Proton Wallet is a crypto wallet designed to make it easy to get started with Bitcoin. The wallet only supports Bitcoin for now, but the company says it will add support for more currencies in the future based on user feedback.

Proton Wallet is a self-custodial wallet where users keep control of their private keys. When you send cryptocurrencies to another wallet, you must confirm the transaction using a pair of public and private keys.

Cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, or Kraken handle this complexity for you. They hold cryptocurrencies on behalf of users and can sign transactions without a user needing to know what the private key is.

Like hardware wallets from MetaMask, Ledger, or many self-storage wallets, Proton uses a recovery phrase as a backup for your private keys. For example, if you set up a bitcoin wallet on your device via Proton but later lose your device, you can recover your bitcoin wallet by entering your recovery phrase on another device.

It’s a good backup for securing crypto assets because the recovery phrase is easy to write down and store in a drawer or notes app. However, cryptocurrency users are often targeted by phishing campaigns asking for recovery phrases (which should never be shared), so it’s not perfect, but there’s no perfect security model either.

With this special design, Proton cannot access its customers’ digital assets. And even if Proton is compromised or stops working, users can recover their assets and transfer them to another wallet. Proton Wallet is open source and has been audited by the company through a third-party firm.

While the wallet is only available in early access to users who pay for the Proton Visionary Plan, the company plans to make it available to all Proton users in the future. The Visionary Plan costs $39.99 per month (or $29.99 per month if you pay for a year) and gives you access to the premium versions of all of Proton’s products. Proton Wallet will be available as a web app and also on iOS and Android.

What makes Proton Wallet different from other crypto wallets is that it integrates with the Proton ecosystem, which has over 100 million accounts. This means that Proton Wallet users can send their crypto assets to other Proton Wallet users by entering their email addresses; no need to copy and paste a long public key. Proton has also partnered with third-party on-ramp companies (currently Banxa and Ramp) so customers can easily buy bitcoin using fiat money.

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“Bitcoin’s value to society has been hindered by the difficulty of transacting and security concerns, and we designed Proton Wallet to address both. Proton Wallet’s ability to support bitcoin via email makes bitcoin transactions as easy to use as PayPal, while preserving the decentralized and non-custodial nature of bitcoin,” Proton co-founder and CEO Andy Yen said in a statement.

Proton Wallet has another interesting privacy-focused feature: it rotates public addresses every time a user sends or receives assets from a new contact. This way, you can’t use a blockchain explorer to track all past transactions associated with a specific public address.

The company saw the benefits of bitcoin during its first crowdfunding campaign in 2014. New customers could sign up for a premium account using PayPal as a payment option, but PayPal temporarily froze Proton’s account due to the large amount of money passing through the account. The company preferred credit card and bitcoin payments for the remainder of the crowdfunding campaign.

Overall, like the Proton Pass password manager, Proton isn’t reinventing the wheel with this crypto wallet. But it’s still a solid option for those looking to create a crypto wallet for the first time. However, cryptocurrencies tend to be a polarizing topic, so let’s see if Proton Wallet will hurt Proton’s brand image in the future.