Bitcoin Forum

Its was always a thought , how the manage to make profit making a crypto wallet company free for people ?

PD: and the case of wallets without buy and sell options for crypto JUST a normal wallet.

Wasabi is a coinjoin and the money that would be made should be from coinjoin. I am not using Exodus because it is a close source wallet but it supports altcoins and it may support third parties sites that can be used to convert from one coin to another. Electrum developers are not making money from anywhere.

Exodus its user friendy thats why i guess its more famous.

Electrum relies on donations.  Exodus is a company (https://www.exodus.com/investors/).  Wasabi earns from coinjoins fees.

Electrum doesn't generate revenue directly from the wallet itself. However, developers or contributors may receive donations from users who appreciate the service.

Exodus Wallet generates revenue through relationships with third-party exchange, fiat, and other API providers who offer services in Exodus. Exodus receives a small percentage of the spread of each swap serviced by a third-party API exchange provider (https://www.exodus.com/support/article/90-how-does-exodus-make-money)

I tend to agree, upon reading the OP's question, I'm thinking this answer.
Since Electrum is open-source or any open-source wallet, most of the developers who contribute to the progress of such open-source wallet often do so voluntarily, which means, they didn't generate any profit.  But their passion as a developer pushes them to contribute to any open source projects like Electrum Wallet.

I didn't know Exodus wallet since I didn't use it.

Friendly or not, it is not most important.

A most important factor of a wallet is open source which Exodus wallet does not have. It is a close source wallet that means you have risk of backdoors set up by Exodus wallet.

You can check reviews on Exodus wallet
https://walletscrutiny.com/?platform=allPlatforms&page=0&query-string=exodus

Wasabi charges fees for CoinJoin transactions.

Electrum probably doesn't have revenue as part of its operational structure. As for donations, this was once the reply of the developer:


As for Exodus, it offers buy and sell and trades or swaps. Surely, they are earning from the spreads of those. After all, you cannot just swap or buy and sell coins and tokens based exactly on their actual prices in the market. There will always be a difference and that's a nice source of revenue.

Do Electrum devs have any donation link? I don't think people won't mind if they do that because a lot of people are using their wallet with satisfaction and it's a pretty good wallet too, easy to use and almost idiot proofed. It's pretty good that they care about their servers but the devs need some love too right?

I haven't seen any donation address on the official website. Maybe there was before, I can't remember but this is what I've seen on the same question if there's a way to donate to electrum.

This is the exact thing that came out when I've searched. It asked and answered three years ago on reddit.



Prolly, all of the servers and stuff are gonna run based on its community or otherwise if come short, from their own pockets.

That's too bad that they're working for free, in my opinion, they're the type of people that I won't mind paying for their services because they're doing what they're promising to do, they would've been making bank if they start some form of monetization but they choose to be our heroes, when I finally made a profit, I'll probably do what @ThomasV wanted us to do. I can't imagine myself running a server and having to spend my own money to run it without any profit, I salute this people, not all heroes wear capes.

There are actually a lot of services that are offered without any subscription or fee payments. These people do this to improve the technology as a whole and they ask for donations to pay for some of the expenses eg. Hosting fees etc. (Preev.com)

So, if Bitcoin are doing good, then they are making a profit with the coins that they own. 👌

Some of them are developers that developed something as a side project to get noticed and to promote themselves.

Other alternative question: How Satoshi makes money by create Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core and this forum? the answer is not every person that invent something is purely for making money. I guess Electrum's devs are OG, so they're already have a lot Bitcoin since Bitcoin was very cheap at that time.

They famous because they have money to advertise their project, have stakingcam program, accept multi cryptocurrency. Since most people only care about making money instead of safety, they choose a project that can generate more coins.

There are typically hidden revenue streams in these companies. Wasabi's CoinJoin mixes transactions for privacy. They make money by charging a little fee for this service.

Electrum, known for its simplicity and reliability. Although free, the wallet accepts third-party plugins. Plugins with extra services can be sold. Remember the donation model. Customers that like the wallet's features donate as thanks. A subtle but effective revenue stream.

Its user-friendly UI makes Exodus a popular wallet. Exodus gets exchange fees when you shift cryptocurrencies on their free wallet. Its smart to give a free, high-quality product and monetize wallet users' additional services. They balance value and profit this way.

Most of the wallet make money from their affiliated service while others does not make money in their services but it is voluntary service render to service and promote Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies in the ecosystem. Such is life even in the real life. Those who have money can pay someone to develop an open source wallet and pay the developers to maintain the wallet while the sponsors are serious investors in cryptocurrency. So they don't know to make money from the users of the wallet. Before and even now many people think that, wallet developers make money from the transaction fee but that is not true though that was what they think and it was not bad for them to think so but that is not wrong. Developers do not make money from transaction fee or mining but it is from affiliated services or they render free service to develop the cryptocurrency ecosystem. And as others have said, and I am not far from that, and Electrum wallet developers are not making any money from the wallet but I believed they are strong investors in Bitcoin so they don't bother to even thinking of making money from it since they are making money from the investment. And I believed they update the wallet through donations and from their investment. And among all the wallets the Op mentioned, Electrum is the most friendly and easy to use. I have been trying to install Wasabi wallet in my system but I can't so I leave and for the Exodus wallet I have not seen it before.

Aside from the answers given by the other users of how these crypto wallet company, there is a bitcoin donation portal that support bitcoin developers and their projects. It is specifically for developers working on opened sourced project. Here is the full list - https://bitcoindevlist.com/
It looks like this.

Exodus is a company that had a stock offering a while ago, but I do not know whether the shares were sold or not. It is a closed source service, and it has cooperation with crypto exchanges. They definitely charge fees from referral links and may sell user data (there is nothing that can Confirm or Deny this information .)

Electrum is an open source project, so funding goes to developers. You can search for developers to find out who is funding them, but with open source projects you can fork the project and develop it yourself.

Pretty bad example, though. Satoshi invented money, he didn't just make an SPV wallet. Sure, he did risk his time and energy, but in a way, he did pay himself.

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Another noteworthy detail, is that people working on free software around Bitcoin, completely voluntarily and with their own hours of operation, are likely retired already. I wouldn't be surprised if OG Bitcoin Core developers or ThomasV (as an example of an old SPV dev) sit on top of big stash and have decided to maintain the ecosystem for the rest of their lives.

He spent his time to code and invent Bitcoin. Nobody paid him (assume Satoshi Nakamoto is a male person) for the Bitcoin development but he actually reserved something like mining early Bitcoin blocks and believed Bitcoin will have value some day.

Only estimation. How many Bitcoin does its inventor Satoshi Nakamoto still own? (https://decrypt.co/34810/how-many-bitcoin-does-its-inventor-satoshi-nakamoto-still-own)



What do we know and have so far?

• Millions of bitcoin probably lost. We don't know the exact number but surely not all 21 million bitcoins in total supply can be spent, some were lost forever.
• The world population in 2024 is more than 6.8B people. It is 8B in 2023. [1]

[1] World population growth over time (https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth-over-time)

Interesting question! I have not thought about it but knew about Wasabi and Exodus. What I never realized or thought was about Electrum wallet being a constant user of this wallet. I today came to know that they operate from donations made to them and this is pretty slick to me as it is a very good wallet. Wasabi uses Coinjoin and generates revenue from it and Exodus from features like swap, buy crypto, etc. The best wallet out of the three for me will always be Electrum wallet for Bitcoin and not the mobile one.

Electrum doesn't rely on donations, @ThomasV said that they'd rather have those donations go to the servers that help Electrum run efficiently. But I do think that they do deserve to get some form of compensation for what they do, coding and maintaining a reliable service is difficult you know.

Completly true, i guess that the 80% of the times they put their pocket money.

FWIW, in past zkSNAKCs (company behind Wasabi Wallet) received 10 BTC bounty[2].


They also own company called TrustedCoin which used for Electrum's 2FA[1].

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5465806.msg62808815#msg62808815 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5465806.msg62808815#msg62808815)
[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.msg51274844#msg51274844 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.msg51274844#msg51274844)

I just checked Electrum's official website as well as their github and I also don't see any donation link mentioned like many other projects. So how can people donate and developers can receive donations to keep the project going?

I'm waiting for Electrum to release an iOS version, but so far there's no information about that. As of now I understand that since they don't get any revenue from it, it's unlikely that we will have an iOS version of Electrum wallet. This is really a pity for iOS users like me because Electrum is deservedly the best software wallet for bitcoin.

What has been in my mind for a long time has been answered, how a wallet as popular as ELECTRUM can make money, especially for developers and contributors from their work.

From all the answers to this question, I can conclude for myself after reading one by one the reply posts and ThomasV's statement regarding not asking for any donations that are considered ineffective and only accepting if someone gives it as a form of appreciation.

I concluded that very few people have such good ideas for the benefit of many people. And in this world there are still good people who don't only think about their own profits through the work and innovation they produce.

The goal of any company is to make a profit for itself. Whether the company is ready to sacrifice the interests of its users for the sake of that same profit is an open question.

These want to make a profit from the actions of their users. What lengths are they willing to go to in order to maintain profits (or the existence of the company)?

The only bitcoin wallet of these three that is not aimed at making a profit, because it is not a company or commercial organization, but free-to-use software (and developed by a community of independent developers) and, in fact, the best option for any bitcoiner. Even on this forum (dedicated to BTC), a separate section ( Electrum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=98.0)) is dedicated not to Wasabi or Exodus, but to Electrum. Therefore, in my opinion, the choice of wallet is obvious.

They've got concern to the community and I am sure that there have been a lot of opportunities that came to them after helping everyone here.

It is one of the most successful projects that they've done so, let's say that they are still into development or consultancy. Then, it's possible that they've been hired by known companies that pays them well.

There are many of them and we're all grateful for having them.

That's actually amazing, and another thing about them is that they're also really brilliant people, imagine that this isn't their main work and that this is just a side project for them in a way because they don't receive any money and most of the time they spend their own money, they're definitely something. This should be the guys any programmers should aspire to be, someone that creates and invents not recreate and reinvent.

This is correct. 0.5% fee seems standard across wallets and other services.

That's a goos question. Wallet providers do charge you when you make a transaction and the transaction fee itself is not included but for other wallet providers don't make money when people are using the wallet but earn through donations. Other people don't have lots of money but as a way to donate then they share their ideas for the wallet's security (if they have skills to do it, that's why others just donate money). I have checked a wallet that I used before where I set the transaction fee myself but when I use an explorer then the fee is less than the amount I set and that's what I think how they make money. It may be not much but for one transaction yet imagine many people using it then it is no longer small amount. For wallets where you can buy crypto then expect that there's a spread in price where the buy price is different from the sell price.

Right, sorry.  Electrum servers receive donations.  Maybe many of the developers run the default servers, or as said, they are retired.


Wasabi?  Probably they want to maintain profits if we take into account that part of their coinjoin fees go to blockchain analysis company.

And projects like electrum add great value to there career profiles and resumes as well, but after such a successful product I don't think the team has to send their resumes to someone, if they are publically known then big organizations making security tools might have hired them to make there product. So directly or indirectly the success of a product (Electrum) does provide financial returns to its owners in some way.

Or other than doing work for someone else, they might come up with another feature in Electrum which would be paid one, or an other product like electrum which would be paid one too. The point is ones the developers are famous, they can make a living out of that fame using there fan following.

The core team member of Electrum wallet said that he and the team don't need donation to develop the wallet software.


About Electrum wallet team. (https://electrum.org/#about)

Contributors (https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/graphs/contributors). Two main ones with write access are

Thomas Voegtlin: ecdsa (https://github.com/ecdsa) on Github.
SomberNight: SomberNight (https://github.com/SomberNight) on Github.

Same reason any open source project that has privacy in mind makes money: Donations. This is the only way often times, that these projects get any funding. They don't usually send any services, precisely because they don't want to collect any data from costumers only to get hacked and have it leaked along with your interest in privacy.

You could say the same thing from Bitcoin developers. The way it works is that they contribute to the project and this forms a portfolio they can use to find jobs elsewhere with an actual salary. A lot continue working on Bitcoin after that from real interest in the project.

Ironically, none of them relies on donations.  Not even electrum.


Bitcoin Core developers do get paid contributing though.

Donations and tips from generous users who have been supporting their work. Most of these are just open-source projects that great devs partake in and improve on their free time. I'm pretty sure all of the devs involved in supporting these wallet applications have main jobs to support them financially, and knowing how well they coded these applications, they have jobs that pay them well to allot some time for these said wallets.

Electrum has been around for over 10 years. During those years, lots of people have donated tens if not hundreds of bitcoins to the team. Just imagine how much money is that now.

Exodus wallet, in my opinion, is user-friendly and suitable for both novices and expert users. While Exodus supports other cryptocurrencies, the Electrum wallet focuses on privacy and security for Bitcoin fans or aficionados.

Now, in addition to coinjoin technology, the Wasabi wallet has a non-custodial design with enhanced privacy features like Tor integration.
And it focuses more in Privacy and anonymity for Bitcoin transactions.

donations, most of devs are just doing it for the love of BITCOIN

That is why its very important for us to donate to these kind people !