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Aries: Investing & Trading

Latest release: 3.1.3 ( 30th August 2022 ) 🔍 Last analysed 22nd November 2021 . Can't send or receive bitcoins
1 thousand
23rd June 2021

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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.

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The Analysis 

App Description

Research, analyze, and invest in stocks, ETFs, crypto, and options on Aries Financial, all commission-free, zero account minimums, offered through TradeStation Securities, Inc.

Aries is a trading app, and while there is mention of cryptocurrencies you can trade, there’s no confirmation on if it can be used as a wallet.

The Site

From the Terms, Your Account:

We must not be liable to make any compensation, monetary or otherwise, following such suspension, termination or inability to use our Services. You are responsible for any fees that we incur with respect to your Account as a result of any of the foregoing.

Multiple passages in the terms state that Aries will be able to terminate your account or your access to its services.

Notably, we also find this:

You acknowledge that your Account is not a Bank nor Deposit account and that our Services do not qualify as financial instruments, nor does your Account incur any interests on any funds or Digital Assets you use to purchase or trade for any other assets.

There’s no information on cold storage, keys, or wallets on the website. It appears as though Aries is a trading app.

The App

Attempting to register will take you to their partner’s site, Tradestation. To sign up, you are required to fill out a form that asks for personal information such as full name, birthday, address, country of residence, and occupation.

You will have to wait for them to process and approve your account before you are granted access.

Verdict

We conclude that this app, while it lets you buy and sell bitcoin, will not allow you to send or receive BTC.

(dg)

Verdict Explained

The product can't send or receive BTC.

As part of our Methodology, we ask:

Can it send and receive bitcoins?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Can't send or receive bitcoins".

If it is for holding BTC but you can’t actually send or receive them with this product then it doesn’t function like a wallet for BTC but you might still be using it to hold your bitcoins with the intention to convert back to fiat when you “cash out”.

All products in this category are custodial and thus funds are at the mercy of the provider.

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.