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FarhadMarket - Cryptocurrency

Latest release: 1.9.124 ( 5th December 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 23rd September 2021 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys
4 ★★★★★
1035 ratings
10 thousand
8th July 2019

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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 

From its Google Play store description:

Farhad Market is an all-in-one cryptocurrency wallet that supports multiple cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC).

We downloaded the app but had difficulty since the interface is in Farsi. We opted to contact support to ask where the app stores private keys. We proceeded to register via the web app. Many functionalities are not accessible without verification. Unfortunately, we were not able to verify as we did not have access to an Iranian number.

Registration involves user levels and various ID verification methods including submission of Iranian ID documents.

That said, our initial assessment points to FarhadMarket as a centralized exchange. We would be relying instead on the Terms and Conditions and other information that we could find.

In its FAQ section under “What is a Bitcoin Wallet”,

A bitcoin wallet is like a bank account that individuals have. To hold a bitcoin, you need an international wallet that can be used around the world. We have made this possible for you. You can use Farhad Market wallets to store your password

Another telling proof of its custodial nature can be found in its Terms of Service

Clause 3 states:

Farhad Market considers itself obliged to protect and maintain the assets of users

Clause 8 of Article 4 states:

Transactions made during the transfer of cryptocurrencies are non-refundable and the user accepts that he has entered the information entered during the order carefully and the user is responsibl

Clause 23 of Article 4 states:

Farhad Market as a cryptocurrency exchange platform; It will be able to cancel the exchanges whenever there is a price difference between the trading parties and in a quick exchange

Depositing bitcoins in the platform’s wallet is described in this blog post:

The address and QRCode are displayed to you. You can deposit any amount of bitcoin to your wallet. After depositing the amount, a message will be displayed for you in the Notifications section with the following content, but the final deposit of the amount to your account will take time to receive and perform the confirmations

It can be gleaned in its Fees page, that there are cryptocurrency withdrawal fees limitations, and thus, the ability to withdraw the cryptocurrencies.

For example, at the normal user level, it is possible to withdraw the equivalent of $ 500 from any type of cryptocurrency.

These proofs lead us to a verdict of 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 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.