Proton isn’t reinventing the wheel with this crypto wallet. But it’s another solid option for people looking to create a crypto wallet for the first time. However, cryptocurrencies tend to be a polarizing topic, so let’s see if Proton Wallet doesn’t hurt Proton’s brand image in the future.
- More information: Proton Blog Article
But… Why? Who asked for this? Instead of stuff like this, can we get feature parity with at least the Android app when it comes to the Linux VPN app?
Why do you need a VPN app? Using wg-quick from the command-line on Linux is dead-simple. I’ve hated every VPN app I’ve used, but I don’t hate wg-quick. Take advantage of WireGuard support being baked into the kernel. :)
Wow excuse my zoomer language but… Who asked?
It makes sense if you look at their broader offering. They’re basically building alternatives to Google products, and this seems to be an analogue to Google Wallet, but with crypto instead of credit cards.
It’s a really low-cost way to add services to your suite. There are tons of FOSS crypto wallets out there, so it’s basically just copy paste, audit, integrate, and ship.
I really didn’t see anyone asking for this, hopefully it didn’t take too many resources to create. Even though I don’t understand it being made I’ll probably still switch to it, because Exodus feels like it’s getting more and more bloated and annoying to use.
edit: I just realized this wallet only seems to support bitcoin? Why on earth would they do that? Most people holding a significant amount of Bitcoin are storing it in a hardware wallet and rarely transferring it. It sucks to use for actual transactions.
Minimal Viable Product. They shiped it with only one coin to avoid having to spend too much time on implementing every possible coin protocol. But they says that they will add more of them in the future, and, maybe, even fiat currencies.
Why must companies feel like they need to be everything to everyone? Proton would be absolutely awesome if it stuck to it’s “We’re better than GMail” plan and provided stellar email and calendar.
Leave the VPN and cryptowallets and all that “not email related” crap to it’s own app/company/environment.
Eh, having a more complete package is how you defeat Gmail. People don’t use Gmail because Gmail rocks, they use it because of all the other crap it comes with, like Google Drive and Calendar. So at a minimum, they should provide those with their email. But a lot of customers want VPN, and they already have a bunch of server infra for email and calendar, so why not add VPN?
If you look at their product stack, it reads like a set of alternatives to gsuite. Here are some less obvious ones:
- Pass - alternative to Google single sign-on
- Wallet - crypto alternative to Google Wallet
- VPN - Google One VPN
If they follow this trend, they’ll make privacy-friendly alternatives to Meet and Gemini (Scribe AI?). Maybe eventually they’ll build/integrate an office suite to compete with Docs and Sheets (maybe OnlyOffice or Collabora).
They want to be privacy-friendly Google, building replacements for anything that can be self-sufficient (i.e. can be sold at a profit).
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You know, people are mad at this for some reason, but while I don’t see myself using this ever, I’m really glad a more privacy conscious alternative to the google ecosystem is growing.(Even if this product of theirs doesn’t compete with them, many others do)
It kind of does compete with Google Wallet, just with crypto instead of credit cards. It’s low hanging fruit to add an analogue to a Google service on their platform.
Possession of any cryptocurrency should be punished by 5 years in prison. The only use case is paying ransoms to North Korea, and the side effects are destroying our climate
