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Swipe Wallet

Latest release: 1.901 ( 13th May 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 6th July 2021 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys Not functioning anymore
2.6 ★★★★★
1599 ratings
100 thousand
13th September 2019

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Help spread awareness for build reproducibility

Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with Swipe Wallet  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 

Update 2021-07-06: The app looks abandoned. It was:

  • Removed from the App Store
  • Their Twitter account is suspended
  • Most reviews on Play Store are 1-star, some with scam accusations and since July 2020 none got a reply from the provider, with many reporting similar silence on support channels

We found some Binance link to this, too:

Jul 06 2020
Binance and Swipe Partner to Bridge Crypto and Commerce, Announce Acquisition
Binance, the global blockchain company behind the world’s largest digital asset exchange, today announced the completion of its acquisition of Swipe, the industry’s leading multi-asset digital wallet and Visa debit card platform that allows users to buy, sell, convert and spend cryptocurrencies, for an undisclosed amount.

External Custodian

According to public information from this provider, they use an external company such as BitGo, Gemini Custody or Coinbase Custody as their custodian. Many of the products listed here do the same.

While this might be a good thing:

  • External Custodians are usually highly specialized in securing assets
  • External Custodians will care about fixing issues with one client, to not lose others
  • External Custodians are usually registered businesses under regulatory oversight
  • External Custodians will try to protect your funds even from your wallet provider: With fraud detection, they will certainly try to avoid the emptying of all users' wallets at once
it also has its down-sides:
  • External Custodians are extra intermediaries: Even when the wallet provider wants to let you use your money, they might turn out to be uncooperative
  • External Custodians holding custody of many wallets are interesting targets for hackers and thieves
  • External Custodians, being publicly registered will not be able to resist if in their jurisdiction rules on the use of Bitcoin get tightened

As External Custodians usually don't publish lists of companies they are working with and past information might be outdated, we have no way of assuring claims by wallet providers to be using their custody solution. Please let us know if you found proof that the provider is being dishonest about their business relation to External Custodians!

Original Review

This app is a custodial offering:

SECURE STORAGE
Swipe users can have peace-of-mind knowing their assets are covered under a $100M insurance policy with our custodian. All User deposited funds are stored in cold storage with a trusted custodian. Having these funds in a cold storage wallet ensures our users that their funds are safe and easily accessible through the Swipe Network on the Swipe Wallet.

This contradicts itself. Being in cold storage should mean that it’s precisely not easily accessible via network. What’s on the network is by definition a “hot” wallet.

The website lists “coinbase | custody” and “BitGo” as custodians, which means you not only have to trust them but also two other services to make sure your and all the other clients’ funds are being accounted for with funds in their custody.

Anyway, this is all not verifiable.

(lw)

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.