Topic: Is It Normal For A Site To Ask For Your Wallet Address? (Read 348 times)

OP wants to purchase crypto using the fiat in his bank account. I am assuming via debit/credit cards. To be allowed to do that, he has to verify his identity with Atomic wallet and/or their exchange partners. Privacy concerns are, therefore, not something he can consider a priority because he will lose it dealing with fiat money. 

Wallet addresses are ok to give, just not the private keys and phrases. That would give them control to your wallet. It's definitely something that you could give but then if you do that, it would connect you to that account. This is worrisome if you are worried about your identity or something but if you are not doing anything bad or something to worry about, that's definitely ok.

That thread by theymos shouldn't be viewed as a recommendation of which brands to use. It's more of a general guideline of what is out there. The whole point of his thread was to warn users from staying clear of online accounts and custodial services. So when he does that, he mentions all other ways of storing coins that are better and safer than using online accounts. Unstoppable Wallet belongs on that list.

I seriously doubt theymos has done any testing of the Unstoppable Wallet either. I don't see him as an altcoin guy, which I believe he has stated many times. His recommendation is probably based on the fact that others recommended it also and he took note of that. When he talked about hardware wallets, he mentioned only Trezor and nothing else. I am sure many would agree that Trezor shouldn't be the first or second choice anymore and we have better options, like Coldcard or Foundataion Passport, but theymos doesn't mention those. There is also no mention of paper wallets or airgapped devices.

That topic of theymos is a general overview of the easiest ways to abandon custodial services and start controlling your own money.

Open source one of the most honest reasons when I recommend Unstoppable Wallet to anyone looking for a wallet that supports multiple coins.
Maybe a thorough test of the Unstoppable wallet lets us say there are people doing it on it, but we don't know how many.

Another possibility behind recommending Unstoppable Wallet occurred after the information submitted by theymos Reminder: do not keep your money in online accounts.
Within the reminder message there was mention of the Unstoppable Wallet.

How suspicious? Can you explain?

Have you read through the whole thread?

No it isn't. This looks really suspicious as well.

It is difficult to find an open source, well-reviewed wallet that collects most of all altcoins in one place. You can find good wallets for the main blockchains, and then buying a hardware wallet is a better option for 90% of altcoins. Sometimes laziness is the motivation for people to download a wallet with the largest number of altcoins. some altcoins may need to be upgraded and forked, I read some stories that have tokens that have been frozen or burned and they do not realize that, unless you have time to follow news about altcoin, try to avoid investing in them.

I don't think a wallet service that describes itself as a decentralized wallet is trustworthy or worth downloading.

It would have made sense to tell us about the questions you asked their support. That way we could tell you if their reply makes sense or not. USDC is a token that relies on a blockchain like Ethereum's or Tron's for transactions. To send USDC, you need the underlying network asset as well. So, if your are using the ERC (Ethereum) version of USDC, you will need to have ether to pay for the fees. The same is true for the other blockchains and their tokens. You will have to decide for yourself which of these networks and assets you want to use, and then purchase the needed USDC tokens + the native coins to pay for the transaction fees.

They are not a decentralized wallet. That support rep that answered OP doesn't know the difference between decentralized and non-custodial. Atomic Wallet is supposedly non-custodial. I am saying supposedly because it can't be verified, and we had those hacking incidents that lack explanation of what happened. But Atomic Wallet isn't decentralized. And since OP wants to purchase their coins with fiat, they will have to undergo KYC as well. 

It still makes sense using non-custodial wallets even if you are dealing with reversible coins/tokens like USDC. USDC and Circle as issuers can freeze your stablecoins in any address they please. It doesn't matter if the address belongs to a non-custodial wallet or it's from a centralized exchange. They can be frozen regardless. That's danger #1.

Danger #2 exists with custodial wallets where the owners/developers/staff can also take your coins and prevent you from spending them. One good example is in the numerous scams we have seen by Freewallet. So if you are using a custodial service, you can have issues from two different sides. Regular users don't get their USDT/USDC or similar stablecoins frozen by the issuers just like that. If they claim they are, there is something they aren't telling you or they don't know the source of their coins perhaps. Getting into problems due to using custodial services is much more common and easily avoidable.     

Let's be honest here. The people recommending Unstoppable Wallet do so because it's open-source. That's it. They have done none or very limited testing. I am not saying it's bad, but it's a very weird product that I personally didn't like.

USDC coin is a fiat backed coin and what you have on your atomic wallet app is the same number (wallet address) that's supported on the 7 networks. Here are examples: Ethereum network USDC (ETH), Binance Smart Chain USDC (BSC), Polygon network USDC (MATIC), Tron network USDC (TRX), Arbitrum network USDC (ARB), Optimistism network USDC (OP). You can choose the network you want your USDC coin by copying the address and the moment a deposit is made, it would reflect on your wallet.

But I wouldn't advise you to go for atomic wallet because it is closed source and was recently hacked and users funds were stolen. Buy and store your crypto funds using either a hardware wallet or open source wallets such as unstoppable wallet and only download from official website.
 

It might be because of this.

Op might be confused why he has 7 USD addresses instead of one and it could be a different network but I think 7 addresses is too much.
As I said above, there's nothing wrong if they asked a public address as long as your private key is safe, besides, it's their staff who asking for the public address.

I would suggest not to use Atomic wallets as it has been compromised in the past and people stopped recommending it now a days. There are much better secure wallets which you may use instead.

Secondly given them the USDC public wallet address is safe because no harm can be done if you give the public address to anyone. Only you need to safe guard your private key and i am sure you are already aware of it.

By the way, i still not get why did you got this email from the Atomic Wallet ? What will they make sure even if you tell them your public address  

Electrum and Bitcoin core are Bitcoin software wallets when you need to store BTC. Blue Wallet is also great.
When you need a wallet that supports more assets, use the Unstoppable wallet.
This is probably the recommendation of many users who have used.

Atomic wallet don't because it has been proven problematic.

Don't immediately believe in wallet offers to store Bitcoin assets from sources you don't know about including offers that come via email and messages from social media platforms (telegram, whatsapp etc).

You said half of correct information, but a non-custodial wallet must be open source and well-reviewed so that you review it yourself or ensure that at least several developers read every line, or at least most of the lines.
Closed-source wallets can claim to be safe, but the number of people who have reviewed the code is very limited, and it could be that one of the previous developers in the wallet found a bug and decided to exploit it in the future, this if you trust the developer team.


This is the argument that they defend themselves if you lose your money, which is that they do not have access to the private key, and therefore you bear all the risks.

Avoid it.  

USD is fiat whereas USDC is crypto and stored in blockchain so there is no way to transfer your fiat to USDC address unless you converted them via exchange, swap or by any means.

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Obviously, you asked a question that doesn't have any answer so the agent you are talking with is trying to understand you first and that is the reason why you have been asked about the addresses.

As others said they can't steal money from you with your address but it is a privacy concern that leads to many other threats so never expose your crypto address to anyone.

As long as you don't send them your private keys/seed words, they can't steal your coins from your public address. I don't think there will be any problems.

However, if they ask anything more "private", you should come to your senses pretty quickly and stop the conversation.

I agree with the users above, if you want to use a non-custodial wallet, use electrum. It is fast, works great and it is safe as long as you download it from the right source. >>> electrum.org

Just delete atomic wallet the moment you solved your problems with them.

OK, so it is quite clear that you shouldn't use Atomic wallet for the reasons explained above.

But, back to your question, I think that they are only asking your wallet address as a routine part of their customer services procedure. Just like when you call to your phone provider's support and they ask you what line is your query about. So I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Of course, if you are concerned about your privacy, linking your email to your address may not be the best practice, although as Atomic is not open source the damage in that sense could already be done.

People who say you should have a non-custodial wallet do not mean a wallet for USDCoins. USDC is a custodial financial product. You give your dollars to Circle, they store your dollars and give you USDC tokens instead. Does it make sense to look for a non-custodial wallet for an asset which is custodial in its nature?

You can just use Coinbase to store your USDCoins. Or the Coinbase Wallet (by the way, it’s non-custodial).

IMO, that's normal of course to see the 7 addresses that you have and which one the right you chose and use.
It might they will check the right one and suggest which one you're good to use but why there are 7 addresses of this coin? 
Are they using different blockchain networks?  If so, that's the purpose they asked for.

If you don't trust this wallet, there's no reason you keep using them.
Remember always that awareness is key to protecting yourself from potential risks that might you'll face in the future.

IMO, they are acting like isn't a noncustodial wallet it seems a centralized one.

I read their guide on buying crypto using CC, it looks like buying with fiat will be handled centrally. Asking for a wallet address is reasonable as exchanges are centralized, I think support would like to take security measures earlier as you seem to have no idea what you are doing.

I'm just suggesting, if your intention is ultimately to buy bitcoins or altcoins, you can save on trading fees by buying them outright instead of buying one of the USDcoins.

you should do is stop using this wallet, it is not completely safe and many people report that it has been hacked. A Non-Custodial wallet, Atomic Wallet, being compromised
There are some alternatives such as buying hardware wallets or using an unstoppable wallet:

Links:

• URL: https://unstoppable.money/
• Github: https://github.com/horizontalsystems
• Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/horizontal_systems/unstoppable-wallet-ios
• APP store: https://apps.apple.com/app/bank-bitcoin-wallet/id1447619907?ls=1
• Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.horizontalsystems.bankwallet

It is open source, supports many alt-currency pairs, and is safer.

USDCoins can be found on several blockchains, the safest of which is Ethereum, but the fees are slightly higher and its name is ERC20 or on polygon, which is cheaper in terms of fees and faster, and it can be close to ERC20 security, so it is the best option.