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BYKEP - Bitcoin for everyone

Latest release: 3.5.4 ( 21st June 2022 ) 🔍 Last analysed 4th October 2021 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys
10 thousand
14th February 2020

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Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with BYKEP - Bitcoin for everyone  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 

Google Play

In the description, BYKEP advertises buying crypto by credit card or transfer.

It also directly states that it is a custodial product.

The BYKEP wallet is the perfect compromise between the security of a physical wallet and the convenience of a digital wallet:

  • Your cryptos are kept cold (cold wallet): the most secure type of storage
  • No need to remember your 12/24 words to access your cryptos
  • If you lose your credentials, contact our customer service to recover them safely

The Site

From the site, on the How does it work? page.:

BYKEP™ wallet’ private keys are stored following a multi-layer enhanced security protocols . Not displaying the private key, provide novice users, with a cryptocurrency managing tool, adapted to basic technical knowledge.

From the General Terms and Conditions:

BYKEP undertakes to store your Crypto-actives securely in your BYKEP Crypto-Wallet. The storage of access to your Crypto-actives is carried out on unconnected media (Cold Storage), thus guaranteeing the integrity of your private key.

  • 5.2 The security protocols in place guarantee You access to your Crypto-actives by protecting them against the risk of loss, forgetting or deterioration of traditional means of access.
  • 5.3 The management of access rights within BYKEP allows to limit access to the BYKEP Crypto-Wallet while preserving access in case of internal failure (operational resilience).
  • 5.4 BYKEP is responsible for controlling the means of access to your Crypto-actives (private cryptographic keys) and for entering the balance of your Crypto-actives in your Crypto-Wallet BYKEP. However, Keplerk is not responsible for the possession of your login credentials allowing access to your BYKEP Crypto-Wallet, for which You alone are responsible.
  • 5.5 BYKEP undertakes to comply with the principles of segregation of Crypto-actives, prohibition of the use of Crypto-actives of the Customers unless otherwise agreed by the Customers, and return of Crypto-actives in accordance with the terms defined in these GTC.

Keys are definitely on the side of the providers.

Verdict

This app is clearly custodial. Thus it 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.