Bitcoin Forum

Seeing there's a nice raffle for an Arculus wallet, I've done a tiny bit of research on what this wallet is.. and I have more questions than answers :)
So maybe somebody who has seen this wallet can tell more / enlighten me.

I've seen on youtube (https://youtu.be/C3Sb6JikVhQ) that this wallet is basically a plastic card with NFC chip. It works with their proprietary wallet software. You have to have the NFC and the wallet software connected in order to work for the important operation. The wallet software creates the 12 words seed the user has to write down for backup. ... And here my questions come.

Since this is meant to be secure... I'm lost.

Is the Arculus card a hardware wallet and that's the one generating the seed? Or it only provides some sort of 13th word?

Will the 12 word seed work also with Electrum without Arculus card (as it should)? Then I find it incredibly unsafe to show the seed on the smartphone app (am I mistaking?)
Will the 12 word seed work only with Arculus card and their software? Then the user is tied to their proprietary software and hardware and may be a problem if the company disappears.

Thoughts?

Forget about Arculus wallet.
They are closed source and they don't accept purchases for Bitcoin or other crypto, but I would never purchase it anyway.
Arculus only works in one country United States, so the moment you cross borders into Mexico or any other country, Arculus is useless peace of junk and their app stops working as well.
I really don't care how they generate seed words after reading this information:

https://support.arculus.co/hc/en-us/articles/4408161149463-May-I-use-the-Arculus-Wallet-app-outside-the-US-
https://support.arculus.co/hc/en-us/articles/4408171741079-Can-the-Arculus-Key-card-be-shipped-outside-the-US-

Probably one of the worst hardware wallets ever.

Interesting find! I didn't expect it to be this bad..
I am surprised.. how on earth would they expect to ever get in profit with such a product?!
Oh well... thanks.

People are mostly careless and have no difference between open source code or closed source code, on the contrary, I think they will trust a product from a registered company and not an open source product written by an unknown developer.

Since they put restrictions, I think that they at least have access to your wallet seeds, so they are more like a platform than a wallet.
Using their wallet seeds may expose you to trust that the back doors they leave will not be exploited by anyone else.

Not that I care about trying it or buying this hardware wallet, but the app might be tricked into believing you are in the US with a quality US VPN. Unless, of course, you also have to undergo KYC before you can use it. ::) Sounds bad anyway you put it.

@dkbit98 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5406491.msg60584420#msg60584420) already gave a valid reason to stay away from this key card and their app ^{[and @Pmalek (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5406491.msg60586822#msg60586822) provided a workaround]}, but to answer one of your questions, it seems that it'll work without the key card in Electrum... You just have to "set the derivation path to m/0 (https://www.reddit.com/r/Arculus/comments/tfu9x9/comment/i127d8p/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)".
^{- I also consider the latter part of your comment as a design flaw.}

The VPN solution is always there, but if that is necessary, then something is already wrong.


Yeah, both scenarios were bad already. That's why I was confused. But then, with the US limitation and closed source too (clearly, these two go together).. I don't see any usefulness of this device.
Thanks though for the answer.

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My dilemma was cleared, thank you all for the answers, I'll lock the topic now.