In July of the previous year, Swiss privacy technology firm Proton (creators of Proton Mail) announced its intent to introduce its own bitcoin wallet — Proton Wallet.
I (along with roughly 100,000 other users) was granted early access to the wallet for testing and was amazed by the wallet’s user interface. I particularly appreciated its feature that allows you to link a user’s email address to their bitcoin address, meaning you only need to enter the email when initiating a bitcoin transaction.
You can read my assessment of the wallet here.
Now that the wallet is accessible to the broader public, I will suggest it to anyone I know who’s finally prepared to transfer their bitcoin from an exchange into their own control. I’ll also endorse it to individuals who wish to make semi-regular on-chain bitcoin payments with a relatively small amount of bitcoin.
My motivations for endorsing the wallet are outlined below:
- It’s costless to utilize (users can generate up to three wallets and maintain up to three accounts in each wallet, which is adequate for most users — more information on that here; to create additional wallets or accounts, Proton imposes a fee)
- It’s simple to set up (you are not obligated to record the 12-word seed phrase during wallet setup; however, it’s wise to do so!)
- Similar to Proton Mail, Proton has no access to the user data of Proton Wallet, nor does it access its users’ private bitcoin keys
- Utilizing an email address (which isn’t required to be a Proton Mail address) for sending bitcoin lowers the chances of mistakenly entering an incorrect bitcoin address in the transaction recipient field
- You can choose the transaction speed priority when sending bitcoin
- You can acquire bitcoin through Ramp or Banxa while using Proton Wallet, facilitating the direct transfer of the purchased bitcoin into your custody
The only drawbacks of the wallet are that it doesn’t accommodate Lightning transactions (consider the Breez SDK, Proton team!), and it doesn’t allow you to manage your UTXOs (spare change from bitcoin transactions, in simple terms).
The latter point isn’t critically important, however, as I’d still recommend this wallet to those new to bitcoin self-custody. Managing UTXOs is more relevant for intermediate to advanced Bitcoin users.
All in all, Proton has developed yet another excellent product for its 100 million users and beyond, and it’s one that I will be advocating for Bitcoin novices in the future.
This article represents a Take. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.