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Betadeal - Buy & Sell Bitcoin, Ethereum

Latest release: 1.1.0 ( 26th January 2022 ) 🔍 Last analysed 16th February 2022 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys Not functioning anymore
1 thousand
30th June 2021

Jump to verdict 

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 2022-02-07: This app is no more.

App Description

Betadeal is the best and secured platform to Buy, Sell, Store, Invest and Trade Bitcoin, Ethereum ,Litcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and more instantly using your Nigerian Bank Account.

With Betadeal app you can also convert or exchange a coin to another instantly or withdraw it to your local bank account.

We also provide you the best PEER-TO-PEER platform to Buy and Sell your Cryptocurrencies at your own price, coins are escrowed for instant delivery

The App

We tested the app and they required the following: a username, phone number, email address, password and pin code. The options were home, swap, fund, withdraw, wallets, profile.

Buying, selling, funding, withdrawing and sending Bitcoin requires level 2 kyc verification. There’s also a requirement to have $30 minimum deposit that apply to all addresses. We posted a screenshot on twitter.

The Site

We found how Betadeal handles the private keys for the wallets on their Terms and Conditions

“Betadeal securely stores all Digital Currency private keys in our control…”

Verdict

Apps that have cryptocurrency wallet functionalities that require kyc before you can send and receive cryptocurrency act like a closed gate. This means that you cannot use the app if you haven’t met their conditions. This also means that somebody has to approve your account before you can fully utilize this. This is the reason why we give this app a verdict of custodial, effectively making the app 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.

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.