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.
I would recommend you this interview with the CEO of Proton regarding Proton wallet, AI and more. Opt Out Podcast - with the CEO of Proton
Timestamps regarding specifics:
I've only had time to listen to the first 10ish minutes. I can follow his reasoning but I just don't buy it. If payment options outside normal channels were so important why did they wait almost a decade? The framing of the issue with PayPal feels disingenuous too because there is/was a lot of crowd funding fraud. PayPal asked legitimate questions about the nature of the campaign and then quickly unlocked the account.
It also feels disingenuous because it's not like Proton is going to ignore the laws. If a government legally asks for information they will turn it over. The same is true for money. So if Proton is in a position where banks are shutting down payments Proton has bigger problems. In fact, creating a wallet is going to cause more headaches for all Proton users. It already has a reputation as being used by bad actors and that belief* is being reinforced by having a built* in bitcoin wallet.
He stated that they planned Proton Wallet a long time ago. Also I think it's because of the audit problems they feared to have, since Bitcoin was for a long time synonymous with crime. That changed just a few years ago (for context 49:00).
I would considered it "disingenuous" if they stated that PayPay did it in bad faith. He just stated that, at the time, their only money flow was blocked and they didn't want such a situation again. I interpreted that he didn't want to be dependent on only state controlled financial institutions and wanted to make it easier for peoples to use something more financialy decentralized and locally independent.
I still recomend you listen through the whole thing, since they touch on other things too.