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ASBAZAR Bitcoin Marketplace &

Latest release: 4 ( 14th October 2021 ) šŸ” Last analysed 2nd November 2022 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys Not updated in a while
3.2 ā˜…ā˜…ā˜…ā˜…ā˜…
434 ratings
10 thousand
15th June 2021

Jump to verdict 

Help spread awareness for build reproducibility

Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with ASBAZAR Bitcoin Marketplace &  via their Twitter!

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

From Google Play:

Welcome to the ASBAZAR cryptocurrency smart trading platform

From this we conclude that this app is meant to be a trading platform. We also find a quote concerning the security of this app:

IS IT SAFE? Sad that this question still needs to be asked in the Bitcoin and crypto space, but we get it! At ASBAZAR, security is our highest priority when it comes to safeguarding your Bitcion and other cryptocurrencies.

This would imply that ASBAZAR is in charge of the usersā€™ funds.

The Site

The website is incomplete, with a many pages only redirecting to a 404 error. The Terms page is currently unavailable.

From the Privacy Policy, 1.2 Information We Collect to Comply with Regulatory Policies:

To comply with global industry regulatory standards, local industry regulatory standards, and government orders in different aspects such as Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know-Your-Client (KYC), and Counter-Terrorist Financing (CTF), Asbazar is required to collect personal information in addition to Identification Information, such as identity documents (including passport, driverā€™s license, national identity card, state ID card, tax ID number, passport number, driverā€™s license details, national identity card details, visa information, etc.), proof of address, source of fund declaration, purposes of fund documents, and source of wealth (ā€œRegulation Informationā€).

The App

We tried the app and registered an account. It is possible to withdraw and deposit bitcoin, but email verificaiton is mandatory first. Users can send and receive assets via QR codes or bitcoin addresses.

No 12-word key phrases were provided for the wallets.

Verdict

This app is custodial and thus 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 donā€™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 ā€œcustodialā€ 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 donā€™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 donā€™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.