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Кошелек. Криптовалюты & Токены

Latest release: 1.12.0 ( 20th June 2022 ) 🔍 Last analysed 4th November 2021 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys
4.5 ★★★★★
74 ratings
5th August 2020

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Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with Кошелек. Криптовалюты & Токены  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

Use our crypto wallet for storing your digital assets, buy or sell cryptocurrency for rubles, dollars, euros and other currencies with P2P trading. Start earning in the staking service for the Free TON cryptocurrency.

The app seems to offer a lot of features

Services

Koshelek Online - The main custodial storage method for all services. We will make it as fast and convenient as possible for you.

Koshelek Blockchain - We will give you private keys or a file that you can transfer to your hardware wallet. All keys remain only on your device. Transactions are signed automatically.

Koshelek Offline - Simple and reliable cold wallet. Generate any of the available address types, mnemonic phrase and sign transactions yourself.

Koshelek P2P trading - Exchange currencies from your wallet with users directly. Friendly fees and API for trading.

Koshelek Staking - Delegate your funds and get passive income in cryptocurrency (Already available for FreeTON cryptocurrency).

Koshelek Trading - Unique adaptive interface and convenient tools for all types of transactions. Low commissions (positive for market makers), API for bots and notification system. Trading should be comfortable.

Koshelek Payments - Buy whatever you want with cryptocurrency. Instant direct payment at partner stores. In other stores, you pay with cryptocurrency, and the store receives money.

Koshelek Rates - Aggregator of offers from exchanges and exchangers. We will collect over 500 options. Compare, see history and statistics. The exchange will always be at the best rate.

Koshelek Explorer - We will make a blockchain explorer right in the application. You can track transactions or just follow your curiosity.

Koshelek Cryptomats - Buy cryptocurrency through the nearest cryptomat that you will find on the online map or simply exchange it for what you need.

Koshelek Cashier - Discover a new way of cryptocurrency payments for your Business.

Koshelek IEO - Another way to start developing with us. Go out with your company or idea to the market and let investors back you.

Koshelek Portfolio - Collect your asset bundle and watch it grow.

Koshelek Academy - We will teach you how to use our services, as well as how to benefit from it.

The Site

The site reflects the user account created from the app. There seems to be more information and functionalities available on the website.

Part of this is the roadmap (image copied and posted on twitter). See above to see that a “blockchain wallet” that is described as self-custodial will be launched sometime in the 2nd Quarter of 2020-2021. The details were not specified.

Apart from that, most of the website seems to be a P2P cryptocurrency exchange. Multiple cryptocurrency wallets are also available including Bitcoin. Coins can be sent, received or staked (when applicable).

The App

We tried the app and registered an account. We were asked to confirm this through email as well as create a PIN.

There is a multi-currency wallet which includes BTC. We could not locate the private keys, or a backup option on the app itself.

ID verification includes: proof of identity, proof of address and selfie with ID.

2FA consists of Google authenticator

There is also a referral program and an academy.

Contact

We contacted Koshelek via twitter to ask about their “blockchain wallet”

Verdict

Judging this app was difficult as it has many features. At its most basic, it is a custodial service. However, they are promising a self-custodial solution in the form of the “blockchain wallet”, sometime in the future. Until that has been released, we believe 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.