Cost to have a btc wallet created?

[RogerMoore]

This is a general question. What is the average usual reasonable cost to have a bitcoin wallet created for a client? The wallet platform, not the website included.

Thanks.

[desmodiAN]

specify what you mean? some software wallets are free, open source. you can do whatever you want with them without paying.

[RogerMoore]

specify what you mean? some software wallets are free, open source. you can do whatever you want with them without paying.

desmodiAN, thanks for replying. I am a marketer and have a client who runs a bitcoin investment business, and she wants me to help her get a wallet created, she wants her own. I contacted a reputable freelancer site who matched me with a software engineer. He says he can do it, and it will take him 4 weeks, 50 hours per week. Wanted $9000 but went down to $7000. That is the background to why I asked.

[Taras]

specify what you mean? some software wallets are free, open source. you can do whatever you want with them without paying.

desmodiAN, thanks for replying. I am a marketer and have a client who runs a bitcoin investment business, and she wants me to help her get a wallet created, she wants her own. I contacted a reputable freelancer site who matched me with a software engineer. He says he can do it, and it will take him 4 weeks, 50 hours per week. Wanted $9000 but went down to $7000. That is the background to why I asked.

If that sounds high to you, just remember that this wallet may be used to store orders of magnitude more money than that, and all it takes is one single flaw and all that money is stolen. That developer had better be worth his salt, because his work has to protect your client's customers' assets.

[RogerMoore]

desmodiAN, thanks for replying. I am a marketer and have a client who runs a bitcoin investment business, and she wants me to help her get a wallet created, she wants her own. I contacted a reputable freelancer site who matched me with a software engineer. He says he can do it, and it will take him 4 weeks, 50 hours per week. Wanted $9000 but went down to $7000. That is the background to why I asked.
[/quote]
If that sounds high to you, just remember that this wallet may be used to store orders of magnitude more money than that, and all it takes is one single flaw and all that money is stolen. That developer had better be worth his salt, because his work has to protect your client's customers' assets.
[/quote]
Taras - do you think there is a too much of a risk to use free, open source to create our wallet? Can it get hacked easier if we use that than if we let the software engineer program it from the ground up?

[cr1776]

desmodiAN, thanks for replying. I am a marketer and have a client who runs a bitcoin investment business, and she wants me to help her get a wallet created, she wants her own. I contacted a reputable freelancer site who matched me with a software engineer. He says he can do it, and it will take him 4 weeks, 50 hours per week. Wanted $9000 but went down to $7000. That is the background to why I asked.
...
If that sounds high to you, just remember that this wallet may be used to store orders of magnitude more money than that, and all it takes is one single flaw and all that money is stolen. That developer had better be worth his salt, because his work has to protect your client's customers' assets.
...
Taras - do you think there is a too much of a risk to use free, open source to create our wallet? Can it get hacked easier if we use that than if we let the software engineer program it from the ground up?

It depends on which open source wallet you use and the features required.  I would be very concerned about a from the ground up wallet because there are many ways to make mistakes and lose anything stored in it.  And $7000???  No way.

If she just wants to store bitcoins, use cold storage or Electrum or Bitcoin Core.  Bitcoin Core is likely the best choice, but it depends on usage. So, again it depends on what she wants to do, but the open source wallets have been vetted, while a closed source one hasn’t.

[mannas]

I would not recommend you to build the wallet-software from ground up. At least not the security relevant part of it.

There is one principle, which I take seriously as software engineer:

Do not try to create security software by your own. It will be insecure and there will be flaws and vulnerabilities for sure, unless you are not given enough time and ressources to test every aspect carefully (not by your own, but by professional security engineers and trough a community).

It depends of course on the risk of being hacked and what damage it will have.

If you choose a popular, supported and proven open-source software, in which already a lot of man-hours were invested, you‘ll be better off.

And if you push the price, there will be flaws for sure, because security is the part of software-engineering where you can save money by not doing it ;-)

[nullius]

I contacted a reputable freelancer site who matched me with a software engineer. He says he can do it, and it will take him 4 weeks, 50 hours per week. Wanted $9000 but went down to $7000. That is the background to why I asked.

Taras - do you think there is a too much of a risk to use free, open source to create our wallet? Can it get hacked easier if we use that than if we let the software engineer program it from the ground up?

From the ground up!?  You will not get any competent developer to implement Bitcoin from scratch for you, for even ten times the quoted amount.  What’s next, asking for an operating system kernel “from the ground up”?  For under $10k, depending on requirements, you may get a competent developer to build something neatly customized for client needs on top of Bitcoin Core.

Open source software doesn’t “get hacked easier” by virtue of being open source.  The biggest websites and services on the Internet run on fully open-source stacks, from OS to applications.  As for Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core handles the exchange-value equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide.  Its developers take security seriously.  For those with either their own expertise, or with very high value to protect (and a commensurate security budget), the Core developers were some of the pioneers in reproducibile builds of binaries to enhance professional security auditing.

A developer who builds a custom solution on Bitcoin Core can implement features such as signing high-value transactions across an airgap, while keeping smaller amounts in the online “hot wallet”.  Also of course, a customized interface and/or integration with existing business software.

If security and mission-critical reliability are important to your client, I would not recommend anything other than Core.  It’s not only a matter of protecting from intrusion:  Running a Core full node provides full validation, which protects against various network attacks which can fool SPV or other “light” clients.  It also enhances privacy (thus, confidentiality of potentially proprietary business transactions).  I would not run a Bitcoin business on anything less than a full node.

[kudesnik]

The question is - what class of purse do you want to create from a free, to a professional wallet with protection against hacking. Multi-signature, Multicurrency, work with Fiat? This wallet costs about 1-1.5 M dollars for development and 4-6 months of professional team work. This is one of my ideas. If the funds that are there are chronically large, you need a cool purse

[audaciousbeing]

This is a general question. What is the average usual reasonable cost to have a bitcoin wallet created for a client? The wallet platform, not the website included.

Thanks.

The truth is that if you are not someone so techy and blockchain inclined the most shady job could be the best one from your own point of view and a little bug which might be intentional or not, might cost your client a whole lot of money just like someone pointed out that could even taint your own reputation and there is no way to stay clean in this situation.

An option is to look into a way to install an API for your website which will then connect like a merchant to an established and reputable wallet provider or even a peer-to-peer site. With that, you can all get what you needed.

[piotr_n]

specify what you mean? some software wallets are free, open source. you can do whatever you want with them without paying.

desmodiAN, thanks for replying. I am a marketer and have a client who runs a bitcoin investment business, and she wants me to help her get a wallet created, she wants her own. I contacted a reputable freelancer site who matched me with a software engineer. He says he can do it, and it will take him 4 weeks, 50 hours per week. Wanted $9000 but went down to $7000. That is the background to why I asked.

bad idea.

you don't want such a crucial piece software to be created by one guy earning $35/hour, in a month's time

[DannyHamilton]

desmodiAN, thanks for replying. I am a marketer and have a client who runs a bitcoin investment business, and she wants me to help her get a wallet created, she wants her own. I contacted a reputable freelancer site who matched me with a software engineer. He says he can do it, and it will take him 4 weeks, 50 hours per week. Wanted $9000 but went down to $7000. That is the background to why I asked.

You are going to need to explain exactly what features and use cases your client needs handled if you want a reasonable estimate of the work involved.

If you just need a secure bitcoin address generated offline that has never touched the internet where your client can receive and permanently store a single bitcoin transaction...

I can do that for her for $5

If your client needs an entire accounting system with the ability to generate a new address for every transaction and a way to keep track of which transactions were received from which users while being fully integrated with a proprietary legacy payment system, as well as a way to separate cold storage from a hot wallet where transactions are sent to users in an automated fashion on a regular basis. All easily able to be audited with alerts for unusual activity and multiple fiduciary authentication for accessing cold storage...

Then I'm going to need about 18 months, a team of 4 programmers, and $500,000.