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iDeyPay: Buy and Sell Bitcoin

Latest release: 1.0.69 ( 30th October 2022 ) 🔍 Last analysed 2nd November 2022 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys
3.8 ★★★★★
1 thousand
3rd September 2020

Jump to verdict 

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Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with iDeyPay: Buy and Sell Bitcoin  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

This Nigerian specific cryptocurrency buy and sell service claims to have a Bitcoin wallet with the app.

With iDeyPay bitcoin wallet, it’s easy to buy, sell and store your bitcoins safely whenever and everywhere you want. Make use of your Nigerian Naira efficiently today and secure your currency in Bitcoin.

They also claim to allow users to send Naira to friends and family via their Naira wallet.

Account Suspension and Termination Clauses in Terms and Conditions

iDeyPay reserves the right to change, suspend or discontinue any aspect of the services at any time, including hours of operation or availability of the services or any Service feature, without notice and without liability. iDeyPay also reserves the right to impose limits on certain service features or restrict access to the Service without notice and liability. iDeyPay may decline to process any transaction without prior notice to you. If an online transaction does not satisfy the terms and conditions of www.ideypay.com, iDeyPay has the right to deny you access. Access shall also be denied if iDeyPay has a reason to believe that the online transaction violates any laws, rules or regulations, or may otherwise subject iDeyPay and Its’ affiliates to liability.

Verdict

IdeyPay claims to store the private keys in the cloud. Although, it does not mention who has control or access to this. Piecing together clues, we’d find that since it has the right to discontinue access to any portion of their service, the user can be left with no method to retrieve his or her bitcoin. This means that this service is custodial and the app is 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.