Proton isn’t reinventing the wheel with this crypto wallet. But it’s another solid option for people 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 doesn’t hurt Proton’s brand image in the future.
- More information: Proton Blog Article
But… Why? Who asked for this? Instead of stuff like this, can we get feature parity with at least the Android app when it comes to the Linux VPN app?
Why do you need a VPN app? Using wg-quick from the command-line on Linux is dead-simple. I’ve hated every VPN app I’ve used, but I don’t hate wg-quick. Take advantage of WireGuard support being baked into the kernel. :)
It takes me an hour or two to learn wg-quick every time I have to do it.
Not just the one program, but managing the keys, god help me if I need to figure out routing again.
Some might say “git gud scrub” but some might also say, for some there is wg-quick, for others there’s a gui somewhere
I suppose. But once you’ve done it once, you can usually just reference an existing config and change the 1-2 things that need changing. The Arch Wiki is super helpful, and it’s really nice to be able to have it start on boot.
To each their own, I’m glad both options exist.
Crazy. There are already millions of Bitcoin wallet apps for small amounts and quick transfers. And anyone smart is storing significant amounts on hardware wallets.
Release the Linux Drive app please
Contacts for phones too
Like what is the start here… The market is super saturated for this and password manager.
Seems like Proton is branching out into a lot of new areas lately. Possibly too many? I’d prefer it if they’d work on improving their current offerings first…
I don’t think doing this means they aren’t working on their other offerings. Both Drive and Pass have recieved very highly requested features in the past couple weeks.
The problem is that all of these new products take a LOT of time, money, and dev resources. Those are all a limited supply. There are super duper basic Calendar features that they could be working on instead.
So why does Proton work on multiple products at the same time? Simply because:
- throwing more bodies at existing efforts has a point of diminishing returns and then a point when it even becomes counterproductive
- given the lengthy minimum time it takes to perfect services, starting earlier lets us deliver more to the community over the long term
That’s why we bring new services to market earlier than some of you would like, but I can also say that it’s never done if we believe it would compromise an existing effort.
Wow excuse my zoomer language but… Who asked?
It makes sense if you look at their broader offering. They’re basically building alternatives to Google products, and this seems to be an analogue to Google Wallet, but with crypto instead of credit cards.
It’s a really low-cost way to add services to your suite. There are tons of FOSS crypto wallets out there, so it’s basically just copy paste, audit, integrate, and ship.
lol bitcoin
Right, Monero is the big player these days
so stupid how monero, the only useful crypto, gets hated to oblivion for no reason
Monero is great for covering yer tracks, for sure!
Yup, just like cash, because that’s what it’s trying to be. It’s as close to digital cash as you can get: untraceable, stable, low transaction fees.
I don’t have any yet and have never used it, but if I use crypto I think Monero is what I would do.
Same. I recently set up a wallet, but haven’t gotten around to funding it yet. Some sites have discounts for using Monero, such as https://based.win (run by YouTuber Mental Outlaw, who’s big into privacy and cyber-security), and I’ve thought about buying something from him w/ Monero to support him.
The more I hear about Monero, the bigger of a scam it seems
How so?
It’s the closest you can get to digital cash. It’s untraceable, has very low transaction costs (a few cents), and it’s mining-resistant (so no big mining farms). It’s not popular for speculation, so the price tends to be pretty stable (has been pretty flat for 2 years now), at least related to other coins. I honestly haven’t seen many scams around it, probably because it’s a tough sell to get someone to “invest” (it’s never going “to the moon”).
If you are looking for a digital alternative to cash, Monero is it. The main problem with it is due to its main benefit: governments don’t like it because it’s untraceable, and because it’s untraceable, it’s often used for illegal activity. So you can’t buy it directly in many areas due to gov’t regulations, but you can usually trade another cryptocurrency for it (e.g. Bitcoin), but you should do it in relatively large transactions because BTC fees can be steep (as in, $1-2 fees, so convert >$100 at a time).
People don’t advocate for it because they’re looking to get rich, they’re advocating for it because they want more options to spend their Monero, and the more people that use it, the more stores will accept it.
I really didn’t see anyone asking for this, hopefully it didn’t take too many resources to create. Even though I don’t understand it being made I’ll probably still switch to it, because Exodus feels like it’s getting more and more bloated and annoying to use.
edit: I just realized this wallet only seems to support bitcoin? Why on earth would they do that? Most people holding a significant amount of Bitcoin are storing it in a hardware wallet and rarely transferring it. It sucks to use for actual transactions.
Minimal Viable Product. They shiped it with only one coin to avoid having to spend too much time on implementing every possible coin protocol. But they says that they will add more of them in the future, and, maybe, even fiat currencies.
I would prefer a privacy conscious alternative to Google Wallet first, then add the crypto stuff, but that’s just me
What does a privacy conscious version even look like?
Some things simply aren’t legal anymore like buying crypto without identification.
You can still do it, it’s just more annoying.
Problem is, as they said in their bloc post, that to handle real money they have to get the required authorisation from the Swiss bank authority.
I stopped using Brave when and because of crypto bs.
I stopped using proton a few months ago because the price was just too high and my need too small. I needed a reasonably priced family plan for email on my domain, not another cloud drive.
I think this decision will hurt them as others come to this conclusion
I never switched to Proton for exactly this reason. I’d much rather use a service that does one thing really well than one that does 20 things okay.
It’s all just to keep you locked into your subscription. Now they want you to keep other money tied up in it too.
It did email really well. And it had the best VPN. Didn’t like the calendar or drive Didn’t touch the password manager.
I don’t think it will hurt them, because I think the majority of Proton users want exactly what you didn’t. There are lots of options for email using your domain, but I don’t know of any cloud suite providers that respect your privacy like Proton does.
Also, I am surprised that with the amount of different plans they offer none do what you wanted well. I thought they had a family plan for just mail without the other services, but they only have a business one and $7 per user is not a great price.
Tutanota is kind of a protonmail competitor but it’s been years since I looked into it idk how they’re doing
Yep, I’ve been a paid user for years and reconsidering my choice to invest my time and money in Proton lately, and this one hit hard. Crypto? WTF Proton.
Focus on getting the basic shit working instead of jumping on bullshit scams like AI and crypto, both of which are eating up enormous amounts of energy for very little good as well.
People still can’t sync their fucking contacts. It’s 2024.
Tbh I think it’s cool, and since most ppl wanted proton to release stupid things like another browser or another encrypted chat app, a wallet fits right into that while being something that doesn’t need that many manhours to be maintained.
I think this will benefit them, proton is more mainstream than you might expect
(also, unlike brave, they are a profitable business without vc and a non-profit org, so there are no intentions to sell your data)
It does need many man hours to be built and maintained, especially with things like finance apps. Also, this is a crypto wallet, not a competitor to something practical like Google Wallet. Crypto is basically a useless pyramid scheme and uses an enormous amount of energy.
Yes, it needs like a month or two to be built, but after that the most time you’ll spend on it is when you add tokens. If you look at something like the electrum wallet, there are like 3 ppl working on it in their free time.
Also: Imagine you’re the average proton user. You probably don’t know what PGP is, you mostly use proton for the VPN and you use Google as your default search engine.
You just got solar and you’re thinking about what to do with the excess energy created at mid day, so you download NiceHash or whatever and set up a wallet.Wouldn’t it be a nice thing if the company that you’re already trusting with your mails, data and internet traffic had a crypto wallet? Like, yes, trusting one company with everything is not best practice, but trusting proton with everything is still better than using some random closed-source software.
And again: people voted for another chat app and a browser. WTF.
How will it hurt them? If you don’t want a Bitcoin wallet, don’t use it. It’s not like offering one takes a significant amount of resources or drives up the cost.
I’m not a customer, but I personally avoid any company offering that mentions crypto and/or AI. I’m guessing I’m not alone based on some responses here. They are just the latest buzz words to try to inflate company value and I’m tired of them.
I started migrating off from Google products (homepage, chrome, drive soon) and my laptop does not have windows anymore for example. It’s hard to get customer trust back after it is lost.
I’m similar, I’ve been on Linux for 15-ish years and I’ve been pushing to get off Google. So I get the anti-big company sentiment. I also understand being tired of crypto nonsense, there are so many scams that the handful of legitimate use-cases get buried in a sea of speculation.
But offering a crypto wallet has nothing to do with that. Proton doesn’t get any of the crypto, and you could get essentially the same thing with just using their drive to store your keys and using a separate wallet app. I could probably build a Bitcoin wallet in a weekend, they’re really not that complicated and there are plenty of FOSS libraries and whatnot to borrow from.
I get it though, there are a ton of crypto scams out there. If Proton created their own coin, then I’d be with you running for the hills. But just offering a wallet might catch the attention of new customers, and more customers means more investment in their platform. Proton is transitioning to a non-profit structure, so they’re really not in it to make a quick buck, they’re on it to build a solid, sustainable business.
My main complaint is that they’re prioritizing Bitcoin, which is very much not a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, instead of Monero, which is a lot more privacy focused (but also more complex to build a wallet for), so their appeal to privacy-minded crypto people would be minimal. But it’s low hanging fruit so why not?
As a userbase grows, companies have 2 options to make it more competitive.
More services Lower prices
And no company chooses the later.
And that’s how you get bloat
Companies do the second all the time. As the number of services grows, so do the options for service tiers. But that only works if there’s competition. For example, my ISP had two options for years, but as soon as my city announced a new fiber rollout, they overhauled their product offering with options above and below the previous options. I just checked and they overhauled things again (new higher tiers), and now my tier is $5/month cheaper than it used to be. In my area, we currently have about 4 options (cable, DSL, my local ISP, radio), and we’re adding a city-owned fiber network as a fifth.
Oh, and they added more features and now offer TV, managed WiFi, etc, and those are also at competitive prices. So at least in my case, adding options has decreased prices due to product segmentation.
Back when I only had 2 options (cable or DSL), their prices kept going up and their features stayed stagnant.
You know, people are mad at this for some reason, but while I don’t see myself using this ever, I’m really glad a more privacy conscious alternative to the google ecosystem is growing.(Even if this product of theirs doesn’t compete with them, many others do)
The reason people are mad with this is because Proton’s longstanding services are lacking basic features for months and years already with no update in sight, and in less than a month after a (now) controversial poll, Proton introduces AI and crypto wallet in their portfolio.
Genuinely wondering, what features are you talking about? Proton has a page for voting for features, and I definitely see highly voted ones get added.
Linux client is the biggest one I’m waiting for, but AFAIK they’ve said it’s planned, and I appreciate the support for Rclone in the meantime.
I could go on and on about those features on that page that are there for ages, but one struck me hard in the last hour: I tried cancelling my subscription, and after clicking on 6 “I’m sure” buttons and writing a reason why, I couldn’t cancel because I was using too much storage (3GB, free accounts have a 500MB limit). I deleted everything on my Drive and emptied the trash, tried again, no success. Deleted all my emails and emptied the trash, still failed. Deleted everything on Calendar and Pass, nothing. Couldn’t find anywhere how to contact support. There’s a small bar that shows how much storage I’m using, one would expect that clicking on it would show a summary of what’s using your storage, but all it does is show a popup with Proton’s subscription plans.
I can’t cancel my subscription because they don’t have the basic functionality of a storage usage summary.
Hmm… Is that a problem with their more recent endeavors? I myself have only used their email and pasword manager services and I find their feature sets to be sufficient.
Also, marketing containig the letters “A” and “I” does not invalidate the product. While I absolutely despise seeing AI plastered everywhere, it is true that ML algorithms are often incredibly useful (even if LLMs aren’t)
They’ve made a poll that had questions about AI, but no clear options to indicate that you don’t want anything to deal with AI. From the results, less than 20% of the voters signalled that they wanted an AI offering from Proton, those being business users, and less than a month later Proton introduces (to business accounts at the moment) a LLM that writes email for you (that has to decrypt and read plain text the emails that were supposed to be stored with zero access encryption), and it uses a model that was trained on copyrighted data without permission.
Not even two weeks later they come up with this crypto wallet, and both endeavours are on two very sensitive and controversial topics, to a point it seems Proton is “selling out” to techbros.
All the while, you can’t even create or edit folders and labels on their mail mobile apps.
Fair enough. I sure hope that “business” feature stays business-only or opti-in.
In a way I get it since from my experience the C-suites really like not writing their emails themselves so this is their way of trying not to lose existing corporate customers, however I do see how their lack of transparency is concerning.
The entire way that Proton introduced the Proton Scribe seemed very shady. Usually Proton would go on and on about transparency and all that, but with Scribe it just seemed very off, like they were purposefully avoiding talking about the thing in question.
On the Reddit post about the bitcoin wallet, Proton team is also avoiding replying to most negative constructive comments about it, and the very few that they did reply to are just trying to justify the walletand LLM because “banks have crypto ETFs”, “other companies have implemented AI” and my favourite “one shouldn’t confuse Bitcoin with “crypto””.
Proton is acting in a shady way with these two controversial services that seemed to appear into thin air on how quick they released those. I cannot see myself using Proton’s products anymore and while trying (fighting) to cancel my subscription, I can see some dark patterns that try to prevent you from doing it, or trying to upsell you something.
Oh and by the way, Hylics is such a great game
The product was an LLM.
Oh, ok my bad 😅
It kind of does compete with Google Wallet, just with crypto instead of credit cards. It’s low hanging fruit to add an analogue to a Google service on their platform.
Why must companies feel like they need to be everything to everyone? Proton would be absolutely awesome if it stuck to it’s “We’re better than GMail” plan and provided stellar email and calendar.
Leave the VPN and cryptowallets and all that “not email related” crap to it’s own app/company/environment.
Proton would be absolutely awesome if it stuck to it’s “We’re better than GMail” plan and provided stellar email and calendar.
You’re saying that like those have now gotten worse than they were before.
Eh, having a more complete package is how you defeat Gmail. People don’t use Gmail because Gmail rocks, they use it because of all the other crap it comes with, like Google Drive and Calendar. So at a minimum, they should provide those with their email. But a lot of customers want VPN, and they already have a bunch of server infra for email and calendar, so why not add VPN?
If you look at their product stack, it reads like a set of alternatives to gsuite. Here are some less obvious ones:
- Pass - alternative to Google single sign-on
- Wallet - crypto alternative to Google Wallet
- VPN - Google One VPN
If they follow this trend, they’ll make privacy-friendly alternatives to Meet and Gemini (Scribe AI?). Maybe eventually they’ll build/integrate an office suite to compete with Docs and Sheets (maybe OnlyOffice or Collabora).
They want to be privacy-friendly Google, building replacements for anything that can be self-sufficient (i.e. can be sold at a profit).
Their brand has been privacy-focused alternatives to the most important parts of online life.
- Email / identity
- Passwords
- VPN
- Calendar, etc
Now with their crypto and ai products it feels like they’re not focusing on regular users any more.
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There are separate mail and VPN plans. What are you upset about?
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I could see this being better if it supported a variety of currencies. Like Monero. No reason in particular.
/hjI used to use Bitcoin core for my wallet. But the block chain is just too huge to really make that feasible nowadays. (Also I don’t own any crypto now.)
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Also see: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG)
WaPo… "The Swiss firm made millions of dollars selling equipment to more than 120 countries well into the 21st century. Its clients included Iran, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican.
But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the company’s devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages."
More… https://www.cryptomuseum.com/manuf/crypto/index.htm
“In 2014, it came to light – from released documents of the Friedman Collection – that there had been some kind of Gentleman’s Agreement between Hagelin and the NSA from 1951 onwards. As part of this deal, Hagelin would not sell secure machines to certain countries. And in February 2020, ZDF, SRF and The Washington Post revealed that in 1970 the company had been secretly purchased by the BND and the CIA, and that from 1994, CIA had been the exclusive owner [12].”
common proton l
