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.
Is it meant to save us from the tyranny of payment processors like PayPal who can freeze your funds at a whim?
Wasn’t this quite literally the the reason provided in Proton’s announcement of Wallet?
Why build Proton Wallet?
Early in our journey, we experienced first-hand what it’s like being cut off from the financial system and at the mercy of large banks and institutions — an ordeal that affects millions of people across the globe. In the summer of 2014, as the original Proton Mail crowdfunding campaign was in progress, Proton had a near-death experience when PayPal froze our funds(new window), questioned whether encryption was legal, and whether Proton had government approval to encrypt emails.
Fortunately, in that instance PayPal returned the blocked funds, and Proton was able to start the journey that we’ve been on for the past decade. However, that dangerous moment has always stayed in our minds, and we still keep a proportion of Proton’s financial reserves in Bitcoin.
Having experienced firsthand the unreliability of the traditional financial sector, building Proton Wallet is an important strategic move to make Proton more resilient and independent in the future. By enabling us and the entire Proton community to more easily adopt means of payment that deliver on the promise of financial freedom for all, we better insulate Proton from the risks posed by traditional finance.