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Aximetria Swiss crypto account

Latest release: 2.1.3 ( 2nd August 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 26th November 2021 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys Not functioning anymore
3.3 ★★★★★
13 ratings
6th July 2018

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Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with Aximetria Swiss crypto account  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 2021-11-12: This app is not on App Store anymore.

(Analysis from Android review)

Update 2021-11-14: This app is not on Play Store anymore.

Google Play App Description

All advantages of a licensed financial service from Switzerland will be available instantly.

Top-up or withdraw funds from your crypto accounts with bank transfers or card transactions on your own when you need it.

Fiat digital accounts are a comfortable instrument to buy and sell large amount of crypto assets at a minimum commission rate. This option is available for all Aximetria clients with Premium and Premium+ service plans activated.

Aximetria is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland and is regulated by Swiss financial standards (FINMA).

Google Play Reviews

Milan Kocic
★★☆☆☆ September 28, 2021
Suddenly i cannot loggin anymore. It says it needs to be updated but no update available.

Pablo Mandado
★☆☆☆☆ June 11, 2020
Broken app, made a deposit after verifying, no issues. When I try to withdraw it doesn’t work at all, the send button doesn’t do anything. Occasionally appears a contact support button that doesn’t take you anywhere either. If you go to support there is a contact form that doesn’t confirm it was sent nor send you an email confirming your query was received. There is a specific support category for contact support messages, telling you to upload a video, but tapping on upload video does nothing.

The Site

Terms and Information

Termination Clauses

We may suspend or terminate our agreement with You and Your Account, or refuse to reactivate Your Account, immediately upon a notice given to You via email.

Pricing for Different User Tiers

Aximetria has four user tiers found in its Pricing page:

  • Lite
  • Pro
  • Premium
  • Premium+

Each tier has the following conditions or restrictions:

  • Top-up from a bank card
  • Withdraw to a bank card
  • Top-up from a bank account
  • Withdraw to a bank account
  • Monthly limits on card deposit, card withdrawal limit, 3rd party withdrawal limit and wire transfer

You can find tutorials on how to send/receive digital currencies via their help page.

Private Keys

Q What happens with my Aximetria account after the account is deleted?
A An encrypted PDF file with private keys will be sent to your email. The password for the PDF file is the same as the last password for your Aximetria account.

As soon as you access the PDF with private keys, all the information associated with your Aximetria account will be erased and Aximetria GmbH will no longer be responsible for your cryptocurrencies’ safety and privacy.

The last sentence above highlights the custodial nature of the app.

Media and Third-Party Sources

CoinDesk

Something like a crypto-friendly TransferWise, the app offers exchange and international payments using the U.S. dollar, the euro and cryptocurrencies, as well as a crypto-enabled debit card in some jurisdictions – the firms says customers must pass a “rigorous” remote know-your-customer (KYC) process before they can buy or sell currencies.

Verdict

Regulated, AML-compliant, with KYC-requirements and different user tiers, this is a custodial app 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:

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.