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MoonXBT - Social Trading

Latest release: 5.3.1 ( 1st October 2022 ) 🔍 Last analysed 15th November 2021 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys
4.5 ★★★★★
481 ratings
100 thousand
11th May 2021

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Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with MoonXBT - Social Trading  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

MoonXBT describes itself as a cryptocurrency “Light Contract” platform that provides a “contract trading environment”. It features integration with the “spot market of multiple exchanges.” It also has copy trading, trade battle, community forums and an educational section.

The Site

Terms of Use

MoonXBT may, by giving notice, at its sole discretion terminate the User’s access to the Platform and to the User’s Account, including without limitation, MoonXBT’s right to: limit, suspend or terminate the Services and the Users’ Accounts, prohibit access to the Services, delay or remove hosted content and take technical and legal steps to keep the Users off the Platform, with or without cause. In particular, MoonXBT may, in appropriate circumstances and at MoonXBT’s discretion, suspend or terminate Accounts of Users for any reason

The App

Depositing BTC will automatically convert the BTC deposited to USDT.

Withdrawing USDT allows USDT withdrawals or USDT converted to Bitcoin

Contact

We contacted MoonXBT via twitter to ask whether they provide BTC wallets for the user. It is possible to deposit BTC, but it is automatically converted to USDT. Buying cryptocurrencies on the platform usually entails the use of USDT.

Verdict

The conversion of deposits and withdrawals from BTC to USDT, and USDT to BTC can involve some third-party interference. This, together with their ability to limit the account of the user makes the service custodial makes 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.
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.