Proton Launches Proton Wallet - A Self-Custody Bitcoin Wallet

• "Our long-term vision is for Proton Wallet to be a digital wallet that gives you full control of your digital assets. While the type of assets that you can hold in Proton Wallet may evolve over time as we add more capabilities in response to community demand, Proton Wallet is starting as a self-custodial Bitcoin wallet," announced Proton CEO Andy Yen in a blog post.

• The product is currently available to Proton Visionary and Lifetime plan users. Other users can sign up to an early waitlist or receive an invite from an active Proton Wallet user.

"Bitcoin’s value to society has been hindered by the difficulty of transacting, and security concerns, and we designed Proton Wallet to specifically address both. Proton Wallet’s ability to support bitcoin via email now makes bitcoin transactions as easy to use as PayPal, while preserving the decentralized and non-custodial nature of bitcoin," Yen said in a press release.

• Proton Wallet is an on-chain wallet and has not implemented Lightning yet for one main reason: “Lightning is very difficult to do in a non-custodial way,” Yen told Bitcoin Magazine.

"If you want to do non-custodial lightning and you want to have people open up channels of their own, that's a user experience that at the present moment still isn't really solved. But Lightning support is something that we can add in the future as we find ways to work around the user experience problem."

Key features

• Your keys, your coins. "Proton Wallet is a non-custodial wallet, and we utilize end-to-end encryption to ensure that we never have access to your Bitcoin."
• Privacy-friendly. The wallet rotates public addresses every time a user sends or receives assets a transaction. This way, you can’t use a blockchain explorer to track all past transactions associated with a specific public address.

• Bitcoin via Email. "As long as both the sender and recipient have a Proton Wallet, you only need the recipient’s email address to send them Bitcoin. That also means that if you are one of the millions of people who have a Proton Mail email address, you can now automatically receive Bitcoins with your email address."
  • "Even if the recipient does not have a Proton Mail email, as long as they have a Proton Account (which can also be created with third-party email addresses, like Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, etc.) and are using Proton Wallet, you can send and receive Bitcoin with them via their email address(new window)."

• Buy Bitcoin securely in 150+ countries. "Proton Wallet also has integrations that make it easy to buy Bitcoin in 150+ countries."
• Open source and publicly auditable. "Proton Wallet is open source so all of our security claims can be checked by the public to enhance security."
• 24/7 human support. "Unlike other wallets, we have your back. You can reach a real human 24/7/365 and get personal support for all inquiries, simple and complex."
• Built-in support for two-factor authentication and "robust recovery methods."
• Enhanced security with Proton Sentinel. "Proton Sentinel uses advanced machine learning and AI that’s analyzed millions of logins to detect and block malicious login attempts with high accuracy. This enables Proton to protect your account, even in situations where you have already been compromised and an attacker has gained access to your login credentials."

Proton Wallet is operated by Proton Financial AG, an independent Swiss subsidiary of Proton AG, whose primary shareholder is the nonprofit Proton Foundation.

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