Bitcoin Forum

What’s the business model of different wallet services? I have been thinking this for a while but I didn’t get a good answer for few, specially for open source wallet like Electrum.

Anyway, can you please share what do you think about the business model of the following wallet-
1. Electrum
2. Trust Wallet/ Automic Wallet
3. Blockchain.com wallet
Actually I'm talking about monetary gain of these services.

As far as I know Electrum is simply non-profit. And the people developing it only indirectly take advantage of Electrum through contibutions via their GitHub repositories, and probably through their resume. Whereas both can most definitely help them get jobs on other companies.

Trust wallet has an exchange/swap feature integrated in. Safe assumption that they make money off those exchange fees.

Also has an exchange. Also, I'm guessing they also make money off the data being collected.

Electrum developers also earn a small fee for transactions sent from users' 2FA wallets ^{[TrustedCoin - check their fees (https://trustedcoin.com/#/faq#fees)]} and IIRC, they were consulting on the side.

There's also "Blockchain Lockbox (https://www.blockchain.com/lockbox)" that they charge for $59.

Trust/Automic/Blockchain.com is not open source. Binance founded trust wallet and Automic swap earn from swapping fees.
Electrum wallet and BitcoinCore wallet are community-managed wallets, so they may rely on donations.
The developers do not necessarily earn directly, because working in developing popular open source software will make them get a job faster or some fame.
I remember bitcoin.org admin someone asked for help translating .org website and donations were paid later.

Electrum is open source wallet designed for holding and transacting with your Bitcoins, so there is no service in this case.
People donate to Electrum developers because they like it and project stay updated for years.

Trust wallet is sponsored by Binance exchange and I don't think they are open source so you need to trust their code.
Similar like Atomic, they earn fees from people who are exchanging and staking some altcoins.

There is no monetary gain from using any of this wallets, I hear some people are complaining about Blockchain.com wallet and I see no reason of using web wallet like this.
If their website shuts down or if you lose their login password you can potentially lose all your coins.

I hope you got desired answers. Just keep in mind, some people want to help the Bitcoin community without any personal benefit from that product. Electrum and Bitcoin core would example. They get funds if anyone makes a donation. Besides that, some people getting profits behind of the service that we are unaware of. Blockchain wallet would be an example here. They have a huge amount of database which has been using to promote their exchange. Besides that, just try yourself to place a banner ad on the Blockchain wallet website and check the rate of an advertisement. So you will discover how they making money. I really appreciate those open-source wallet developers who have been helping the Bitcoin community without direct financial benefits.

They sell ads on their website. They also advertise their exchange service, which they presumably make money off of. They also sell access to some of the data they have on various blockchains via their API.

This is really information I didn't know about until now, and it's actually nice to reward the efforts of the people behind this wallet in some way. Although this fee is generally small, given the popularity of Electrum, overall a decent amount can be collected.

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Some people would say that in addition to all that, they still make money by hacking their users' accounts - because all this time I'm in crypto, the most mysterious hacking of accounts is just related to this company - coincidence or not, let everyone judge for themselves.

I would be surprised if this ever happened. They are not a one-man shop, they have hundreds of employees. I don’t see a scenario in which employees couldn’t see this happening and someone saying something.

Blockchain.com has had its share of security problems in the past, however they also are one of the oldest bitcoin related company and many, even most early bitcoin related companies had security problems.

Uhh, something something sneed seed?

Don't think electrum is for profit. They run purely on donations and the goodwill of their members.

Blockchain.com has a bunch of in-site features that they try to push you, including buy and sell. That I suspect is where the majority of their profits come from. Once again, you hold the private keys to your wallet (although I'd say not as secure as Electrum or a hardware wallet), so they don't make anything from transaction fees on that front.

Same with Trustwallet and Atomicwallet. You get access to all your private keys (again, security is not guaranteed) so they can't possibly make money on that front. But both of them monetise users by integrating fiat aspects (i.e., having a service to buy BTC with USD or whatnot).

Talking about monetary gain, i think Bitpay and blockchain.co m wallets are the best examples; each one of them has its strategy to gain profits from offering a free wallet service.
With Bitpay, you are enforced to use this wallet to be able to pay enrypted invoices where you pay an extra fee for BitPay. When with blockchain.co m wallet you are invited to use multiple services like swap/exchange in addition to ads.