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Betconix: Buy Bitcoin & Crypto

Latest release: 6.7 ( 14th December 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 15th November 2021 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys
1 thousand
1st July 2021

Jump to verdict 

Help spread awareness for build reproducibility

Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with Betconix: Buy Bitcoin & Crypto  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

Betconix is a cryptocurrency exchange. It allows users to send and receive Bitcoin and other assets and claims to keep users’ funds secure in their app.

The safety and security of your funds is our top priority. Your funds are protected by our Asset Insurance Fund. Keep your crypto assets safe with the Betconix app!

The Site

On security:

Betconix has implemented at least two levels of authentication, Google Authenticator, email, double protection against DDoS attacks, and monitoring by the security service.

User Agreement

Betconix’s Terms and Conditions states that the app is capable of storing your money.

The Service undertakes to accept Cryptocurrency from the Users, store it, keep count of it, conduct transactions under the instruction of the User and provide the User with Cryptocurrency upon his request.

It is also mentioned in Section 3.10 that Betconix requires you to fill out a form to be able to withdraw funds:

To withdraw funds from the Wallet, the User has to fill the form designed for withdrawal of funds using the Personal account. Meanwhile, the User will be sent a message on the e-mail given during the registration about the necessity to confirm the withdrawal or to abandon it. In case of refusal or not confirming to withdraw funds by the User, funds will remain on the Wallet.

The App

We registered an account and were able to access the Betconix wallet. We found several assets such as BTC, LTC, or ETH. Upon choosing BTC, we were given options to deposit with a provided deposit address or withdraw by pasting another BTC address and typing the amount of BTC to send. The app looks like an exchange and there is no indication that you are given access to your wallet’s mnemonics.

Verdict

This is a custodial app and 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.
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.