I pay for it because I thought it was a trustworthy service that had earnt my money. Instead, if they continue with stuff like this then I’ll go back to not trusting subscription services again.
Are there any that are cloud-hosted, secure, and private? My experience is limited, but I’ve never found an easy way in. I can’t imagine anyone who’s not tech-savvy getting started without walking through a minefield of scams.
Every now and then I look at options for how I might actually use crypto, and everything looks either outrageously scammy or way too much trouble. Pretty much every exchange I’ve looked at holds the keys to your account, and several have gone under or outright stolen their users’ funds.
The question is, when Proton embraces bitcoin, should it make me trust bitcoin more, or trust Proton less? I don’t know. I’m still skeptical. Their blog post is interesting, but also doesn’t answer a lot of questions. proton.me/blog/proton-wallet-launch
I mean, look at this:
Buy Bitcoin securely in 150+ countries
If you are new to Bitcoin, Proton Wallet also has integrations that make it easy to buy Bitcoin in 150+ countries, and we have also put together a comprehensive Bitcoin guide for newcomers.
That “comprehensive” guide spends three paragraphs talking about the “Blocksize War”, and makes absolutely no mention of how a user can actually buy bitcoin using Proton Wallet. WTF, Proton? Who is your target audience here exactly?
Until homeomorphic encryption becomes a thing, cloud can’t be secure or private.
every exchange I’ve looked at holds the keys to your account
Exchanges, are not wallets. You’re supposed to move the coins out of the exchange for safekeeping. If you can’t, then it’s not a crypto exchange, it’s an ETF peddler.
how a user can actually buy bitcoin using Proton Wallet.
Wallets, are not exchanges. They can link to exchanges, like Metamask does, but their core function is to hold your keys.
If you want to beat inflation, dump the money in a high-yield savings account, or a 401k, or a stock index, or any of the other options that have something resembling banking protection/regulation. There are so many better options than a speculative investment that you lose entirely with a social engineering attack or a SIM swap.
Proton and all they do was always an obvious attempt at making money off of non tech people that care about their privacy but dont know what to do.Their stuff might be free now but from how much vendor lock-in they are building into their software its quite obvious to me.
Their services are counter to all the best practices of security by design. If they spent all this time on improving existing secure systems and making them more user friendly they would have a much more positive impact.