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StormGain Express: Digital Currency Marketplace

Latest release: 1.23.0 ( 26th February 2022 ) 🔍 Last analysed 1st October 2021 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys
4.9 ★★★★★
3998 ratings
500 thousand
10th July 2020

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 

Google Play

CAUTION: This app exhibits a lot of red flags that we detailed below. We gave it a verdict of custodial, but otherwise, exercise prudence, due-diligence and a lot of research, before you invest a lot of funds.

It claims to be portfolio tracking app that allows users to buy, exchange, “hodl” and trade cryptocurrencies. It also claims to offer security for its users in the form of: multi-stage verification, bank-level security and cold wallet storage. It also offers quick educational content about the various cryptocurrencies traded on the platform. These are usually hallmarks of custodial services.

What we find a little bit confusing is why there are two apps with a similar logo. One of the apps has the same name minus the word “Express” StormGain: Bitcoin Wallet App Custodial!

The other app is developed by Stormgain Limited, while this app is developed by Marketing Partners Limited. To further add to the conundrum, Marketing Partners’ office is located in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Stormgain Limited’s office is located in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, an island in the Caribbean.

Their domains for their homepages are also different: stormgain.com and stormgainexpress.com

We downloaded and installed the Stormgain Express app on Blue Stacks.

The Site

As of the time this review was made, the only legal document pertaining to this service is a Privacy Policy and a Cookie Policy.

It lists its features:

  • Exchange all major cryptos
  • Ensure the safety of your account with 2-step verification
  • Hold, send and receive crypto
  • Store your funds in a cold wallet
  • Get 24/7 professional support
  • Withdraw crypto

The App

Once we have the app setup on Blue Stacks, we were able to quickly locate the BTC wallet. Deposit, Exchange and Withdrawals are available options.

It also has a ‘Bitcoin Cloud Miner’ option, a referral and an affiliate program.

From the ‘More’ tab we were able to access a link to ‘Legal’ which then linked to a pdf file on Stormgain.com

Contact

We tried to contact StormGain via twitter search since we were not able to find the twitter link on the domain itself, to ask about this. We also tried to contact them through an officially linked Telegram channel, where we got this message:

Dear client,
Due to the rapid growth of our client base, our support team is experiencing a higher workload. As such, customer support by live agents will only be provided to clients with funded accounts. If you haven’t funded your account yet, please consult the FAQ section of our Help Desk Portal. Other Support options will be limited. To access full customer support service options, please log in to the platform and make a deposit If your account is funded, please log in to the platform and request support from there.

We find it concerning that some inquiries will only be entertained once an account is funded. This is a red flag.

Reviews

Candice Damons
★☆☆☆☆ September 21, 2021
Just when I thought that I’m dealing with a legit organization, Stormgain proves me wrong!!!! You start mining from zero, activation every 4 hours with minimum cash out of $10. Then you learn the sad reality that you NEVER get to reach $10. I came as close as $9.94 and BOOM, you’re dropped to $9.12. Continuing to mine, 8 hours later,you’re up to $9.48 and another 8hours later, you’re back to $9.22. So while you’re making them money, you’re believing in a farce!!!

rhej b
★☆☆☆☆ July 29, 2021
I just downloaded this yesterday thru a friend’s referral. I signed in then downloaded their app left that referral portal to relogged in on their app and verify phone and email. Its smooth actually, but just now i woke up to check the mining, and tada, my ACCOUNT HAS BEEN BLOCKED đŸš« BECAUSE THEY SAID I AM USING MORE THAN ONE ACCOUNT AND THAT I HAVE TO USE MY 1ST ACCOUNT TO SIGN IN WHICH IS IDK WHERE TO FIND BECAUSE I ONLY SIGNED IN WITH ONLY ONE EMAIL. That’s really annoying.

Note on reviews published here Most opinions are subjective and therefore unreliable. Positive reviews are often glowing, “I like this app” and “Nice app, very good work” so we deem them to be unhelpful in most cases. Negative reviews on the other hand, share the user experience that came from a specific bad event.

Verdict

While we are tempted to label this app as fake, it is also possible that the company is coming up with an early prototype of another offering. We advise extra due diligence, prudence and caution when using apps that makes our spidey senses tingle. We have to exert all necessary avenues for communication and that includes getting the feedback of the developer. For now, we will give it a verdict of custodial and not verifiable until the developers reply to our queries.

(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.