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Instantcoins – Crypto Trade

Latest release: 1.0.5 ( 16th April 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 16th February 2022 . Can't send or receive bitcoins Not functioning anymore
2.8 ★★★★★
26 ratings
17th August 2020

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The Analysis 

Update 2022-02-09: This app is no more.

(Analysis from Android review)

App Description

Sell & Buy Bitcoins, Ethereums, USDT, Litecoin, and Perfect Money securely with Instantcoins! We are the best platform to exchange cryptocurrencies in Nigeria. Instantcoins is duly registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), making us the safest, fastest and all-around best application for selling, buying bitcoin and other crypto currencies for individuals and institutions who are based in Nigeria.

Google Play Critical Reviews

Life Good
★☆☆☆☆ August 4, 2021
I’m having issue, I haven’t receive my money since yesterday and this is the second time I’m facing this issue. I send Bitcoin 2 times same wallet and I was credit for 1 up till now I haven’t received any credit alert from them, now I try to sell Bitcoin yesterday being 3th up till now I haven’t receive any money from instantcoin so painful 😭😭😭

Onoriode udoma
★★★☆☆ November 16, 2020
The app is quite good but there is no option to send bitcoin to an external wallet. It will be awesome if this option is added.

The Site

Terms and Conditions

It is the customer’s responsibility to ensure the correct wallet address has been used, failure to do so is wholly to the loss of the customer and we cannot be held responsible for any loss to the customer resulting from this, or any loss to any third party as a consequence of the inaccuracy.

The App

We downloaded the app and we were not able to find the buy function. Selling Bitcoin involves inputting: Bank Name, Account Number and Account Name. Once the bitcoin gets sold, the Naira is supposedly credited to the user’s bank account automatically

Note: The process for buying bitcoin is detailed in a third-party article but not on the site itself. It can be seen in globaltechedu.com. Furthermore, many of the options or buttons pointed out in the article no longer exist in the app itself. Buying bitcoins using this app, entails inputting a third-party wallet.

Users can input their bank account details via the profile page.

When selling Bitcoins you can choose from Paxful, Bitcoins, LTC and PM. We were not able to fully access these features, but the form’s tooltip describes the process as:

You will be redirected to your paxful wallet to complete the trade, once on paxful.com make sure you are logged in, just click on “send bitcoin now” and you will be redirected back here and your bitcoin will be converted instantly.

Contact

Instantcoins’ twitter profile has protected tweets. Its Facebook account is also limited.

Verdict

As of October 25, 2021, the buy bitcoin feature seems to have disappeared from the app. This can previously be seen from their video app demo on youtube.

Judging from the limited available information we have, the app automatically converts bitcoin send from an external wallet to fiat and deposits it to the user’s bank account. Since we cannot locate the “Buy Bitcoin” function on the android app and on the web interface, it would seem feasible to assume that this has been disabled.

Until further information is available, this app has not advertised features with the ability to send or receive bitcoins. Furthermore, the automatic conversion of bitcoin to Naira, directly deposited to the user’s bank accounts means the conversion is automatically done on the back-end.

Our verdict for this app is it cannot send or receive bitcoins.

(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.

But we also ask:

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.