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Bitcoin Suisse

Latest release: 1.1.3 ( 2nd June 2022 ) 🔍 Last analysed 22nd November 2021 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys
0 ★★★★★
0 ratings
21st September 2021

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Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with Bitcoin Suisse  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 

(Analysis from Android review)

App Description

Buy, sell and earn crypto assets with a regulated Swiss company. The bank guarantee by a state-backed Swiss Cantonal Bank and our audited cold storage solution are some of the reasons why our clients trust us with over CHF 5 billion in cryptocurrencies.

The Site

A minimum amount of CHF 100,000 for private clients and CHF 500,000 for institutional clients is required for account opening. Apart from that, new accounts are subject to approval.

Supported cryptocurrencies include BTC, ETH, LINK, BCH, BSV, and more.

Withdrawals are discussed here.

Custody Provision in General Terms and Conditions

Section 8.2 BTCS has the right to decide, in its sole discretion, if Digital Assets are stored in separate custody or collective custody. In the BTCS Online Tools, the Client can download a statement that shows the assets that are covered by the bank guarantee.

Verdict

As a regulated entity, Bitcoinsuisse has many of the hallmarks of a custodial service. The use of cold storage is the strongest evidence for this. This means that the app cannot be verified.

(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.