ProtonMail is holding bitcoin since 2014

[bitmover]

Yesterday Protonmail announced on twitter that they are holding bitcoin since 2014

https://twitter.com/ProtonMail/status/1195790533769203712


ProtonMail
‏Verified account @ProtonMail
Replying to @TokenAlgo @BitcoinErrorLog

No worries, we will HODL for you (we actually don't sell our BTC and haven't for years).

later on they said they were holding are payments since 2014! They must be rich ny now! lol
God for us that they are making nice money to provide good service.

[mk4]

Been using ProtonMail for a year already for some of my emails. Great privacy-friendly email service along with Tutanota.

With that said, props to them, but as a business, if they actually did hold the bitcoin they receive, that's one risky business move. Bitcoin could crash in price and the capital they're holding would be worth a lot less. But I guess if they hold long enough it's probably fine. Still though, risky af.

[Lucius]

Given that they just hold BTC all these years means they have income from other forms of payments. I do not use their service, but I notice that they have PayPal and BTC as ways to make donations, so these are probably the ways how users can pay for premium accounts.

I check their address (donation button) and it show Total Received 216.25926871 BTC - https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1Q1nhq1NbxPYAbw1BppwKbCqg58ZqMb9A8?page=1

It is possible that this is just a donation address and the amount they own is actually much higher.

[fiulpro]

I have heard the reviews about pronto mail and how it is so much safer and better than Gmail , there even if it got breached the users are somewhat safe till an extent and considering they are providing their services for the free makes me wonder why people don't use it much.
Good thing they are investing in cryptocurrencies since it always is a good thing to see people put faith in something which is supported by something they like .

[BigBoom3599]

Protonmail is great, I've been using it for a while now and can not say anything bad about it. Can't wait for them to finally release their calendar service soon!

It is interesting that they aren't selling their BTC. They must have enough income from other payments to pay their expenses. Maybe they just don't get that much BTC payments? It is a rather risky business move though. Oh well, it seems to have paid off 

I'm curious if they are planning on accepting other cryptos in the future..

[mk4]

considering they are providing their services for the free makes me wonder why people don't use it much.

It's mostly due to convenience. If a certain person has a Google account, he/she can use that single Google account to have access to multiple Google services like Google Drive, YouTube, Google Calendar, Gmail, you name it. And a long with that, unfortunately, it's simply because not everyone cares about personal privacy. It all mostly comes down to user-friendliness and convenience.

[avikz]

Protonmail and bitcoin, both have created for one major feature - Privacy!

One of Protonmail's USP is Anonymous Email service. Bitcoin's one of the major pillars of strength is anonymity. It's no wonder that they have been accepting bitcoin as a method of payment. However, I doubt that they are accepting it since 2014. See the below link,

https://protonmail.com/blog/bitcoin-secure-email/

It's Protonmail's own blog where they have announced that bitcoin is officially added as one of their payment methods. See the date of posting the article, it show as August 2017. Now if they are saying 2014, they are contradicting their own announcement. But yes, more such service will definitely help bitcoin to become the official currency of Internet as envisaged by Satoshi himself!

[boltz]

Yesterday Protonmail announced on twitter that they are holding bitcoin since 2014

https://twitter.com/ProtonMail/status/1195790533769203712


ProtonMail
‏Verified account @ProtonMail
Replying to @TokenAlgo @BitcoinErrorLog

No worries, we will HODL for you (we actually don't sell our BTC and haven't for years).

later on they said they were holding are payments since 2014! They must be rich ny now! lol
God for us that they are making nice money to provide good service.

I'm guessing a big promo campaign is on-going for protonmail and I do hope it will be like this. I never used protonmail but I head only positive things and read positive reviews about them so I'm thinking in the next year they will make a huge step forward when it comes to promo their service if they hold a lot of Bitcoin's. With what is going with google lately and gmail there are some predictions that some services they provide it will go unavailable in 2020/2021 so another chance for ProtonMail to rise like Bitcoin does.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

With that said, props to them, but as a business, if they actually did hold the bitcoin they receive, that's one risky business move.

Definitely a risky move if they actually did this.  The only other business I know of that actually accepts bitcoin (as opposed to using a payment processor which converts crypto to fiat) is overstock.com, and I think I remember reading that the CEO had said they had kept a lot of the crypto that they received as payment--and given how volatile bitcoin is, that's a crazy thing to do.

I check their address (donation button) and it show Total Received 216.25926871 BTC - https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1Q1nhq1NbxPYAbw1BppwKbCqg58ZqMb9A8?page=1

Wow, that's a lot of donations--but if all of that came from 2014-present, it doesn't sound so outrageous.  It's still a hell of a lot of money, and I guess in hindsight they were smart to hold onto the bitcoin they received, but things could easily have gone the other way.

Anyway, I've heard of protonmail but I don't know much about it.  I think I may have to check them out if they're privacy-friendly.

[hatshepsut93]

With that said, props to them, but as a business, if they actually did hold the bitcoin they receive, that's one risky business move. Bitcoin could crash in price and the capital they're holding would be worth a lot less. But I guess if they hold long enough it's probably fine. Still though, risky af.

We don't know how large was Bitcoin's portion of donations/payments for Protonmail. If we assume that it was just a few percents, than this move isn't too crazy, even if Bitcoin went to zero, Protonmail wouldn't suffer too much. And because they say that they hold it all since 2014, I assume it was indeed just a small portion of their income, otherwise they would have to sell at least some of it, to cover their operational costs.

[hello_good_sir]

Given that they just hold BTC all these years means they have income from other forms of payments. I do not use their service, but I notice that they have PayPal and BTC as ways to make donations, so these are probably the ways how users can pay for premium accounts.

I check their address (donation button) and it show Total Received 216.25926871 BTC - https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1Q1nhq1NbxPYAbw1BppwKbCqg58ZqMb9A8?page=1

It is possible that this is just a donation address and the amount they own is actually much higher.

I believe so, most of their users must be using fiat forms of payment in order to pay for their services, which is weird, because a service providing secure emails and privacy, you would expect them to use crypto-currencies mostly, but I guess some people like the convenience.

With that said, props to them, but as a business, if they actually did hold the bitcoin they receive, that's one risky business move. Bitcoin could crash in price and the capital they're holding would be worth a lot less. But I guess if they hold long enough it's probably fine. Still though, risky af.

They probably have a target in mind - everyone does, but if they aren't desperate for income and make enough, it's fine.

It's Protonmail's own blog where they have announced that bitcoin is officially added as one of their payment methods. See the date of posting the article, it show as August 2017. Now if they are saying 2014, they are contradicting their own announcement. But yes, more such service will definitely help bitcoin to become the official currency of Internet as envisaged by Satoshi himself!

I think they've been accepting BTC donations since the very start, but have only recently added it as an actual payment method. This, or they could have just bought some BTC previously.

[Willitivity]

ProtonMails seems to be another good email service when privacy is a must.  If they have been holding their BTC since 2014, then that means they have other ways to offset their bills.

I check their address (donation button) and it show Total Received 216.25926871 BTC - https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1Q1nhq1NbxPYAbw1BppwKbCqg58ZqMb9A8?page=1

It is possible that this is just a donation address and the amount they own is actually much higher.

With this, I believe the Bitcoins they are holding are the ones from donation, I'm sure that service payments made in Bitcoin are converted to USD immediately to avoid loss.

[bL4nkcode]

With this, I believe the Bitcoins they are holding are the ones from donation

I wonder as well, with this tweet of them https://twitter.com/ProtonMail/status/1196049729655918593 so it's somewhere on there cold wallets.

I'm sure that service payments made in Bitcoin are converted to USD immediately to avoid loss.

This is not necessary if they're into hodling, I'm sure their team knows what they're doing and waiting the right time to sell it, well, not for now.

[rdluffy]

Interesting to know, I use Protonmail and I really like it
It's nice because they priorize security and privacy, it's not a surprise they are pro BTC and are holding some, probably donations of users satisfied with their services

[o_e_l_e_o]

[I think they've been accepting BTC donations since the very start, but have only recently added it as an actual payment method.

This is correct. You can see their blog posts from back in 2014 when their Indiegogo fundraiser was still ongoing thanking people for bitcoin donations here: https://protonmail.com/blog/indiegogo/.

I'm sure that service payments made in Bitcoin are converted to USD immediately to avoid loss.

Whose to say that's true? I'm sure a company filled with people who are interested in security and privacy, and who have been exposed to bitcoin since at least 2014, would have at least a few employees who would be interested in accepting their salary (or part thereof) in bitcoin. They've also been pretty clear that they used bitcoin to fund a lot of their costs after Paypal cut off their main source of funding (see the tweet linked to by bl4nkcode).

[CryptoBry]

later on they said they were holding are payments since 2014! They must be rich ny now! lol
God for us that they are making nice money to provide good service.

Okay, I am not so sure but I think there are ways to make money from Bitcoin you are holding. You can loan it to a lending cryptocurrency platform while you are still some control of the assets. Anyway, happy to see that ProtonMail can be considered as a good managed company which I believe is credible enough not to waste the trust bestowed on it from its loyal users.

With that said, props to them, but as a business, if they actually did hold the bitcoin they receive, that's one risky business move. Bitcoin could crash in price and the capital they're holding would be worth a lot less. But I guess if they hold long enough it's probably fine. Still though, risky af.

Maybe as long as they don't go panicking and sell the assets when Bitcoin is under the bears then probably their Bitcoin can be safe. The key is really long-term and maybe ProtonMail is looking for another ATH because they failed to dispose of them in 2017 thinking it can still continue to grow.

[Yaunfitda]

Yeah I also saw that tweet a couple of days ago.

And I was surprised that they're a HOLDer, Lol, obviously the people behind ProtonMail knows that time that BTC will be huge. No wonder that their product is also very successful as I have been using them since 2016.

[Kakmakr]

Protonmail was a great webmail provider until it become evident that the Swiss government are working with the US government on sharing sensitive information. Previously anything in Switzerland provided very good privacy, because they had a strong emphasis on their own sovereignty, but after 911 and all the terrorist attacks, they change their stance on this.

https://protonmail.com/law-enforcement

I still use Protonmail and with all the donations it received after the DoS attacks they had, the service is a lot faster and more stable. Why did they hoard those Bitcoin donations and not use it to buy more software and hardware?    

https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/27/protonmail-suffers-ddos-attack-that-takes-its-email-service-down-for-minutes/

[bitmover]

Protonmail was a great webmail provider until it become evident that the Swiss government are working with the US government on sharing sensitive information. Previously anything in Switzerland provided very good privacy, because they had a strong emphasis on their own sovereignty, but after 911 and all the terrorist attacks, they change their stance on this.

https://protonmail.com/law-enforcement

I still use Protonmail and with all the donations it received after the DoS attacks they had, the service is a lot faster and more stable. Why did they hoard those Bitcoin donations and not use it to buy more software and hardware?    

https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/27/protonmail-suffers-ddos-attack-that-takes-its-email-service-down-for-minutes/

It isn't clear which data they provide.
As it was end to end encryption, they couldn't be able to provide anything. Something is wrong here... They didn't clearly specified which data they give to authorities

[gentlemand]

https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/dxngoh/protonmail_reveals_its_been_hodling_its_bitcoin/f7uigse/

From the source.

They've said nothing about differentiating between donations and payments so they hold all of it, though I don't know how long they've been taking payments alongside donations.