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Aladiex

Latest release: 1.7.9 ( 27th April 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 23rd April 2022 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys Not updated in a while
1 thousand
4th July 2020

Jump to verdict 

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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.

The Analysis 

App Description

AladiEx is a crypto trading platform.

AladiEx makes it simple to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies. This is an official App of AladiEx (www.aladiex.com) that provides you easy, safe and fast digital assets trading experiences. Buy Bitcoin instantly or trade spot & margin on the AladiEx cryptocurrency exchange!

It has wallet services, although it is unlikely to provide any private keys.

Store and send hundreds of digital assets securely with the secure in-app crypto wallet. Whether you need a Bitcoin wallet or Ethereum wallet, your funds are protected with world-class security and fraud detection systems.

The Site

From the Terms of Use, Termination of Agreement:

You agree that AladiEx shall have the right to immediately suspend your account (and any accounts beneficially owned by related entities or affiliates), freeze or lock the funds in all such accounts, and suspend your access to AladiEx for any reason including if it suspects any such accounts to be in violation of these Terms, our Privacy Policy, or any applicable laws and regulations.

Notes

The website’s FAQ/help center is closed and the iOS version is not functioning.

The App

We tried the app and created an account. The app looks like an exchange and you can withdraw and deposit crypto with QR codes and a deposit address. There is no way to backup the wallets or view private keys.

Verdict

This app is custodial and as such not verifiable.

(dg)

Verdict Explained

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:

Custodial!

Is the product self-custodial?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Custodial: The provider holds the keys".

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.

But we also ask:

Stale!

Was the product updated during the last year?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Not updated in a while".

Bitcoin wallets are complex products and Bitcoin is a new, advancing technolgy. Projects that don’t get updated in a year are probably not well maintained.

This verdict may not get applied if the provider is active and expresses good reasons for not updating the product.

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.