I’m upvoting because this is good relevant information, but man I wanted to downvote. How awful.
Proton Now Has a Bitcoin Wallet
Submitted 9 months ago by corbin@infosec.pub to technology@beehaw.org
https://www.howtogeek.com/proton-now-has-a-bitcoin-wallet/
Comments
Sneptaur@pawb.social 9 months ago
halm@leminal.space 9 months ago
I’m petty enough to downvote anything remotely endorsing shitcoin, this one’s for you 🤝
Templa@beehaw.org 9 months ago
It seems everyone here think an organization can’t have multiple teams working in more than one thing at the same time
wholookshere@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
That assumes dev resources are limitless. And for a company the size of proton that’s certainly not true.
They can only have X amount of devs. So how they allocate them says a lot.
Also given that most complaints I’ve seen at the top are about specific missing features for ages, I think it’s safe they’re putting their eggs into too many baskets.
drwho@beehaw.org 9 months ago
That would make too much sense, something in short supply in companies these days.
kate@lemmy.uhhoh.com 9 months ago
what? why?? there are so many open source options already???
LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 9 months ago
This and the new LLM “feature” in ProtonMail suggests that someone higher up has had a sniff of the techbro kool-aid.
catastrophicblues@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Yeah. Part of what I get for paying is the Bridge app so I can use Thunderbird instead of the website. I don’t want or need the LLM thing.
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 9 months ago
Are there any that are cloud-hosted, secure, and private? My experience is limited, but I’ve never found an easy way in. I can’t imagine anyone who’s not tech-savvy getting started without walking through a minefield of scams.
Every now and then I look at options for how I might actually use crypto, and everything looks either outrageously scammy or way too much trouble. Pretty much every exchange I’ve looked at holds the keys to your account, and several have gone under or outright stolen their users’ funds.
The question is, when Proton embraces bitcoin, should it make me trust bitcoin more, or trust Proton less? I don’t know. I’m still skeptical. Their blog post is interesting, but also doesn’t answer a lot of questions. proton.me/blog/proton-wallet-launch
I mean, look at this:
Buy Bitcoin securely in 150+ countries
If you are new to Bitcoin, Proton Wallet also has integrations that make it easy to buy Bitcoin in 150+ countries, and we have also put together a comprehensive Bitcoin guide for newcomers.
That “comprehensive” guide spends three paragraphs talking about the “Blocksize War”, and makes absolutely no mention of how a user can actually buy bitcoin using Proton Wallet. WTF, Proton? Who is your target audience here exactly?
jarfil@beehaw.org 9 months ago
cloud-hosted, secure, and private
Until homeomorphic encryption becomes a thing, cloud can’t be secure or private.
every exchange I’ve looked at holds the keys to your account
Exchanges, are not wallets. You’re supposed to move the coins out of the exchange for safekeeping. If you can’t, then it’s not a crypto exchange, it’s an ETF peddler.
how a user can actually buy bitcoin using Proton Wallet.
Wallets, are not exchanges. They can link to exchanges, like Metamask does, but their core function is to hold your keys.
foreverunsure@pawb.social 9 months ago
Funny how the free plan is not receiving any of the recently announced trash, making it more attractive than the paid options.
coffeetest@beehaw.org 9 months ago
I like Proton and I guess this kind of makes sense for them, sort of, but its weird.
sleepybisexual@beehaw.org 9 months ago
Enshittification hitting hard
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Smart move for any free, international organization. Esp as inflation continues to impoverish people. Move into the future.
corbin@infosec.pub 9 months ago
Bitcoin’s value is significantly more volatile than the US Dollar.
LukeZaz@beehaw.org 9 months ago
Not to mention the obscene fees with using it. Crypto is rife with issues.
jarfil@beehaw.org 9 months ago
Volatile means that in the short term, some may win, and some may lose.
The multi-year trend though, still beats inflation hands down.
LukeZaz@beehaw.org 9 months ago
I… can’t tell if this is sarcasm?
drwho@beehaw.org 9 months ago
I don’t think it is.
Ilandar@aussie.zone 9 months ago
Why build Proton Wallet?
Early in our journey, we experienced first-hand what it’s like being cut off from the financial system and at the mercy of large banks and institutions — an ordeal that affects millions of people across the globe. In the summer of 2014, as the original Proton Mail crowdfunding campaign was in progress, Proton had a near-death experience when PayPal froze our funds(new window), questioned whether encryption was legal, and whether Proton had government approval to encrypt emails.
Fortunately, in that instance PayPal returned the blocked funds, and Proton was able to start the journey that we’ve been on for the past decade. However, that dangerous moment has always stayed in our minds, and we still keep a proportion of Proton’s financial reserves in Bitcoin.
Having experienced firsthand the unreliability of the traditional financial sector, building Proton Wallet is an important strategic move to make Proton more resilient and independent in the future. By enabling us and the entire Proton community to more easily adopt means of payment that deliver on the promise of financial freedom for all, we better insulate Proton from the risks posed by traditional finance.
mindyabeesnes@beehaw.org 9 months ago
Having experienced firsthand the unreliability of the traditional financial sector
*\Under very specific circumstances that no user could possibly come across on their own
Incredible the lengths people go to to justify their shit.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
Proton and all they do was always an obvious attempt at making money off of non tech people that care about their privacy but dont know what to do.
Their services are counter to all the best practices of security by design. If they spent all this time on improving existing secure systems and making them more user friendly they would have a much more positive impact.
Myaa@beehaw.org 9 months ago
Do you mind expanding on this? I recently moved away from Gmail to Proton in an attempt to be more privacy conscious and don’t really know of any alternatives. Even at a paid tier I only use Proton for their email services.
I would say I’m generally tech savvy but new to the whole privacy space. What better alternatives are there?
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
Just use any other email service that works for you and use OpenPGP to encrypt your emails. Also if whoever you are emailing isnt using protonmail, then you arent actually getting any more security than with gmail. For work emails the other party usually wont be using encryption, for personal stuff you should use standard messengers that have encryption built in like matrix, signal, session.
If you want e2ee email tho, then on desktop Thunderbird has everything you need built in and for mobile there is the K9-Mail client that can be coupled with the openkeychain plugin to offer encryption.
There are also things like DeltaChat that allow you to use email in an instant messaging style format while using the same encryption keys that you use for standard emails. But tbh thats not what email is intended for, i would just use matrix for that.
Protonmail is a decent attempt at offering “easy to use” encryption but by doing so, makes it overly complex from a software security and compatibility standpoint.
With end to end encryption you want to have the absolute minimum level of complexity and code to make it easy to audit and understand. PGP has been the standard implementation for email encryption for decades. Any attempt to “expand” on this by implementing fancy web based shenanigans undermines the simplicity and inter compatibility of the preexisting email encryption ecoystem that everyone has been using.
Gamers_mate@beehaw.org 9 months ago
It starts with a Bitcoin wallet. Cryptofication is just another flavour of Enshitification. They could of at least used a crypto that is more energy efficient than Bitcoin not that there is really any green cryptos in the first place.
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 9 months ago
Bit by bit Proton is slowly becoming Brave
emerald@beehaw.org 9 months ago
Ah, timely as ever, really riding that crypto hype
At least they’re not launching their own token
yet
herrcaptain@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
What we’re begging for: A Linux client for Proton Drive
What we get: A fucking Bitcoin wallet
drdiddlybadger@pawb.social 9 months ago
Im about to get my pitchforks out over it man.
baggins@beehaw.org 9 months ago
I want to be able to print my calendar!
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
does rclone not work?
herrcaptain@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
I’ve actually meant to try that but haven’t yet gotten around to it. I’d still love an official app though, as sometimes 3rd party solutions don’t work great with cloud storage (at least in my experience).