Buycoins Pro: Trade Crypto v 1.1.85
As the provider of this product holds the keys, verifiability of the product is not relevant to the security of the funds!
As part of our Methodology, we ask:
A custodial service is a service where the funds are held by a third party like the provider. The custodial service can at any point steal all the funds of all the users at their discretion. Our investigations stop there.
Some services might claim their setup is super secure, that they don’t actually have access to the funds, or that the access is shared between multiple parties. For our evaluation of it being a wallet, these details are irrelevant. They might be a trustworthy Bitcoin bank and they might be a better fit for certain users than being your own bank but our investigation still stops there as we are only interested in wallets.
Products that claim to be non-custodial but feature custodial accounts without very clearly marking those as custodial are also considered “custodial” as a whole to avoid misguiding users that follow our assessment.
This verdict means that the provider might or might not publish source code and maybe it is even possible to reproduce the build from the source code but as it is custodial, the provider already has control over the funds, so it is not a wallet where you would be in exclusive control of your funds.
We have to acknowledge that a huge majority of Bitcoiners are currently using custodial Bitcoin banks. If you do, please:
- Do your own research if the provider is trust-worthy!
- Check if you know at least enough about them so you can sue them when you have to!
- Check if the provider is under a jurisdiction that will allow them to release your funds when you need them?
- Check if the provider is taking security measures proportional to the amount of funds secured? If they have a million users and don’t use cold storage, that hot wallet is a million times more valuable for hackers to attack. A million times more effort will be taken by hackers to infiltrate their security systems.
The Analysis ¶
This does not represent a full code review.
This app is related to:
Buycoins - The easiest way to buy & sell crypto
App Description
Buy, trade, send, receive cryptocurrencies.
It is possible to withdraw Naira.
Buy Coins Pro includes an cryptocurrency exchange with NGNT (Nigerian Naira Token)
The Site
Buy Coins Pro has the ability to freeze funds of the user (Terms and Conditions)
We reserve the right to cancel and/or suspend your Buycoins Pro Account and/or block transactions or freeze funds immediately and without notice if we determine, in our sole discretion, that your Account is associated with a Prohibited Use and/or a Prohibited Business.
The App
To get started using Buycoins Pro you’ll first need to add a bank account. This account will be used for Naira Deposits and Withdrawals.
We downloaded and registered on the service. Before we could use any of the features, the app informed us that we needed to complete:
- level 1 verification to send coins
- level 2 to buy bitcoin
Verdict
Services that prompt users to pass verification levels and which involves adding a bank account are often custodial in nature. We were not able to find Bitcoin wallet features that allow backing up the wallet as this app treats the user relationship as an “account”.
The ability to restrict usage and freeze the funds of the user is also clear evidence that this is a custodial account. This makes the app not verifiable.
(dg)
Do your own research!
Try out searching for "lost bitcoins", "stole my money" or "scammers" together with the wallet's name, even if you think the wallet is generally trustworthy. For all the bigger wallets you will find accusations. Make sure you understand why they were made and if you are comfortable with the provider's reaction.
If you find something we should include, you can create an issue or edit this analysis yourself and create a merge request for your changes.