Wallet Logo

Bitcoin India Wallet & Exchange

Latest release: 3.1.45 ( 29th July 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 25th September 2021 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys Not functioning anymore
1.5 ★★★★★
1341 ratings
50 thousand
11th June 2018

Jump to verdict 

Help spread awareness for build reproducibility

Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with Bitcoin India Wallet & Exchange  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 

Update 2021-09-17: This app is no more.

In the description we read:

India’s Most Secure Bitcoin Wallet

Ok, sure. :)

You are the only one who can control and have access to your wallet.

That’s a claim of being non-custodial?

If your e-mail gets compromised, only you can access your Bitcoin India wallet, because you would still have 2fa on your phone at Google Authenticator.

If the email is relevant for your security, somebody can grant you access and that somebody … has access. That does not sound non-custodial.

All transactions are synced across all of your devices in real time and are protected by an intense bank-level security protocol.

Now if we would give them the benefit of the doubt and assume you restored the same seed on all devices then yes, the blockchain would make sure of keeping your devices in sync but somehow “protected by an intense bank-level security protocol” does induce the opposite of trust.

Many reviews read like this on Play Store:

Sagar Agarwal
★☆☆☆☆ 26 November 2020
This people are fraud u can only deposit money into it but cannot withdraw or transfer your coins. No customer supports no help desk. Beware of this fraud app!

or on App Store:

★☆☆☆☆
Sripada@1, 12/08/2017
It’s more than 200 cr scam org app
More than 200 Crore scam,
Bitcoin-India.org company blocked more 3000 Bitcoin holder account without any notice. DENIED WITHDRAWAL OF THIER FUND @BTC_india @arunjaitley #bitcoin_sykamreddy_scam
Don’t install this app

At this point we assume the worst. At the very least it is a custodial offering and thus not verifiable but … don’t install it. Just don’t.

(lw)

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:

Defunct!

Is the product still supported by the still existing provider?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Not functioning anymore".

Discontinued products or worse, products of providers that are not active anymore, are problematic, especially if they were not formerly reproducible and well audited to be self-custodial following open standards. If the provider hasn’t answered inquiries for a year but their server is still running or similar circumstances might get this verdict, too.