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.
Third class citizens ain't a priority
cries
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.
Aint Encrypted contacts integration most requested feature?
Who asked for pasword manager, crypto wallet and AI?
I just want to be able to set alarms with their calendar app (where it currently only sends notifications).
Set the notification sound to something alarming?
In all seriousness, that is pretty frustrating.
I was referencing the "no linux app" complaint. Yes the rest of the stuff is pretty fluffy, but it at least looks good to the general public who might be shopping.
The fact they are a small resource makes me think mistakes will be made. It’s all well and good to combine code by others to make this work. But it’s so easy to mess up in the final product unless they make a lot of effort and also allow outsiders to check out what they are doing internally.
I personally would not use them for sensitive or illegal transactions until much later after others use it a lot
i'd think at this point it's been proven that any resource, small or large, can and will be compromised. Proton so far has had a better track record than many.