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ProfitTradingApp for Bittrex

Latest release: 12.0.13 ( 27th April 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 23rd April 2022 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys Not updated in a while
4.1 ★★★★★
362 ratings
50 thousand
20th June 2018

Jump to verdict 

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Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with ProfitTradingApp for Bittrex  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 

2021-09-17 Update:

The provider ProfitTradingApp features a list of apps:

each of which act as an interface to the respectively mentioned exchange.

While the provider doesn’t custody your coins, neither do you. This app can trade on your behalf via its bots and you can also withdraw and deposit. This means you can use it as a wallet but not only are your coins in custody of the respective exchange, this app probably can also empty all the accounts of all its users at once which is why we consider it itself custodial and thus not verifiable.

Previous Review 2021-09-17

Bittrex has its own app. It makes one wonder why it’s necessary to use this one. Additionally, upon installing the app you are required to register with ProfitTrading and secondly, with Bittrex.

ProfitTrading’s app does not have a wallet per se, but rather links to Bittrex, by asking users to provide the Bittrex API.

From the Terms & Conditions:

  1. LINK TO THIRD PARTIES: The App may contain links to websites operated by third parties (“Third Party Websites”). ProfitTrading APP may monetise some of these links through the use of third party affiliate programmes. Notwithstanding such affiliate programmes, ProfitTrading APP does not have any influence or control over any such Third Party Websites and, unless otherwise stated, is not responsible for and does not endorse any Third Party Websites or their availability or contents.

An affiliate program by definition “endorses” a third party. We find it concerning as an affiliate linking to a third party, that it would claim that it does not endorse it.

  1. SERVICE SUSPENSION: ProfitTrading APP reserves the right to suspend or cease providing any services relating to the apps published by it, with or without notice, and shall have no liability or responsibility to you in any manner whatsoever if it chooses to do so. The app will only work while the App related exchange API is operative, no refund will be provided if related exchange API is no longer available.

We downloaded both the ProfitTrading app and created a Bittrex account.

Once we have registered with ProfitTrading, we proceeded to Bittrex to create an API key specifically for the purpose of using ProfitTrading. We inputted said keys to the ProfitTrading app and saw our Bittrex balance of 1,500 Bittrex Credits. The API permissions are only set for “Read” and “Trade”. Withdraw permissions are not asked for by the app.

It appears that the real service this “wallet” provides is the ability to coordinate multiple accounts from different cryptocurrency exchanges via bots. A paid copy broker function is also available for a monthly amount.

The verdict of custodial holds as this service is a third party that gives access to other third parties which hold your coins.

Previous Review 2021-09-13

ProfitTrading is a “full Bittrex client.” It offers buying and selling BTC, trading bots, and other features of a trading platform. This usually hints to a custodial nature or a broker.

Increase your profits at Bittrex with Profit Trading! Welcome to the the quickest, easiest and best Bittrex mobile client.

In the description, a BTC wallet is listed as a feature:

A full list of all the currencies in your wallet with their BTC and FIAT equivalences and the total Bitcoin amount. The best place to control your cryptocurrencies.

Verdict: This app is 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.

But we also ask:

Stale!

Was the product updated during the last year?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Not updated in a while".

Bitcoin wallets are complex products and Bitcoin is a new, advancing technolgy. Projects that don’t get updated in a year are probably not well maintained.

This verdict may not get applied if the provider is active and expresses good reasons for not updating the product.

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.