About a week ago, on October 22, 2022, one of our partners received a complaint regarding TrustWallet.com, therefore we decided to write a comprehensive Trust Wallet Review, a rather popular cryptocurrency wallet service.
According to the complaint, the complainant lost around $20,000 in Bitcoin. They write:
TRUST WALLET HACKED for 0.00631565 btc = 150.92 @ the time of theft .fcb2e22e7bad0c36a6cdd448f5d0af354ee7627b19428122b16c1df78dfca85c is transactio hash to the first address . The thiefs address is bc1qsgnc9tu027e6m9666zlgusmpj3pz2qzhc0ct68 stole my funds around 11;08 pm utc Aug 17th 20022 150.92 USD EQUAVILENCY I SHOULD BE ABLE TO THUMB PRINT ANY AND ALLL TRASACTION THAT ONLLY RIGHT I DO BLAME TRUST WALLET THEIR ARE HORRIBLE WITH TRUST PILOT .AND GOOGLE PLAY THE SHOULD REFUND AND ALSO DISCONTINUE UNTIL UPGRADES ARE ALL GOOD WITH GIT HUB AND ETC.
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What is Trust Wallet?
Trust Wallet is “The most trusted & secure crypto wallet.”
They claim they do not collect any personal information.
It’s an open-source service that allows their clients to buy, store, and collect NFTs, as well as exchange and earn crypto.
Trust Wallet is very popular, at least according to the website’s claim that more than 25 million people are using Trust Wallet.
Among Trust Wallet “private & secure” services:
- Buy cryptocurrency with a credit card (buying Bitcoin takes under 5 minutes)
- Exchange (buy and sell) crypto easily and instantly without leaving the app, no forms or selfies are required
- Earn interest in the crypto
- See your collectible Art & NFTs in one place
- Track charts and prices within the app
- Keep your crypto safe from hackers & scammers
- DApps Browser – Browse and use DApps (decentralized apps)
The platform is available in English, Russian, German, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Korean, Japanese, Turkish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Spanish.
The wallet supports more than 4.5M assets on 65 blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, Litecoin, Ripple, Dogecoin, Solana, Polygon, Thorchain, Polkadot, Zcash, Smartchain, Dash, TRON, Tezos, Cosmos, Stellar, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, Filecoin, Fio, Elrond, Nano, Fantom, and many more.
They also offer a staking coins service, which allows clients to generate an income, similar to receiving interest by allowing the bank to invest it.
According to Trust Wallet, their system “offers guaranteed returns and a predictable source of income.”
The way it works is that by holding coins in your wallet or locking them in a smart contract (masternodes), you may gain interest on your funds, with interest rates as high as 11% APR (annual percentage rate).
So clients may be able to make a profit of up to 11% on their investment per year.
This is not exceptionally high, so we wouldn’t call this promise too good to be true.
Though on their How to Earn BNB Using Trust Wallet, they claim you can earn more than 30% APY when staking BNB (Binance Coin).
However, remember that cryptocurrency staking is not without risk. There is always a chance to lose some or all of the cryptocurrency you’ve staked.
You can also earn money on Trust Wallet using dApps, such as Venus for earning ETH and BTCB or CAKE with the PancakeSwap dApp.
Who is Behind TrustWallet.com?
When putting your money in some place, it better be a trustworthy place. And to trust a company, you need to know who is behind the company, where they are located, and how they can be contacted.
Strangely, Trust Wallet does not have an About Us page.
We examine their Privacy and Policy page, which was last updated on April 8, 2022. It says:
This Privacy Notice describes the policies and procedures of DApps Platform, Inc., (“we,” “our,” or “us”) pertaining to the collection, use, and disclosure of your information on www.trustwallet.com and related mobile applications and products we offer (the “Services” or “Trust Wallet”).
Apparently, the company behind Trust Wallet is called DApps Platform, Inc.
DApps Platform, Inc. is an Android developer active since 2017.
An email address is mentioned: support@trustwallet.com.
There’s also a mailing address:
DApps Platform, Inc. 2810 N Church St, PMB 96630 Wilmington, Delaware 19802 US.
On social media, Trust Wallet can be found on:
However, according to Google Maps, this is the address of StreamYard, Inc., an app that creates professional live streams, turning your browser into a live streaming studio.
They can also be contacted via a ticket-based support system.
Moreover, while they claim they do not collect personal information, their privacy policy clearly states:
We will share personal information outside of Trust Wallet if we have a reasonable belief that access, use, preservation, or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request; to cooperate with law enforcement; to enforce or apply our Terms of Use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Trust Wallet, our employees, our users, or others.
Authors on the Trust Wallet blog include Alex Lielacher, Harsh Agrawal, Shafin Rizvi, Motolani Victor, Adrian Sandiford, Luke Pettit, Lito Coen, Emmanuel Chibuzor Precious, Ian Enanoria, Farhad Taheri, and Nicachu.
No LinkedIn profiles are mentioned, however, a LinkedIn search reveals the company uses this profile.
The company is said to be based in San Francisco, CA, and was founded in 2017, and at least 141 LinkedIn profiles are listed as working there.
The CEO since March 2022 is Eowyn (Wanxin) Chen, who was Binance Global VP beforehand.
TrustWallet.com Review – Domain Information
The domain TrustWallet.com was registered on October 14, 2005 (more than 17 years ago) via the MarkMonitor Inc. registrar. Unless renewed, it will expire in 2030. The registrant is DApps Platform, Inc. from California, USA.
So the domain has definitely been around long enough to allow us to ascertain whether they are legit or not, although the Trust Wallet app as it is today was only founded in 2017.
Their SimilarWeb global rank is 22,071; in the US, they are ranked 12,545, indicating they are quite popular. Apparently, they receive around 3.1M monthly visitors, especially from Russia, the United States, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and India.
According to Semrush, trustwallet.com’s Authority Score is 67, and they are linked to trustworthy domains such as decred.org, coingecko.com, etherscan.com, and binance.com.
Trust Wallet Reviews – Is Trust Wallet a Scam?
Until now, we could not find evidence that Trust Wallet is a scam. On the contrary, they seem to be a legitimate company, with the only red flags being a lack of a telephone number and an address, and perhaps also the lack of mention of the people behind the company on the website.
Time to check out what other people are saying about TrustWallet.com Scam.
TrustWallet Apps for Mobile Devices
On GooglePlay, more than 10 million people have downloaded the Trust: Crypto & Bitcoin Wallet app. 1.22 million reviews average a rating of 4.4 stars out of 5. Negative reviews report delays, technical issues, a lack of support, and even losing money unexplainably due to hacks.
For example, this review was posted on March 12, 2022:
App is horribly buggy and lagging as well. I couldn’t even get through the verification stage because the webpage takes long time to load up. It also wanted me to take a selfie, yet it asks to access camera a couple of time and still can’t show up my face on there after trying a couple of times. Ironically, seems I can’t “trust” this app for my transaction when it can’t get the basic things right. Better off going somewhere else. Can’t even get decent support in this issue either, smh.
Another review from July 30, 2022:
Never again, I’m not into this whole crypto world but was convinced that it’s the new $wave, so I gave it a shot and put $200 in, no problem. Lost a few dollars on a trade, no problem. Log back in a few days later, funds have dramatically decreased with no transactions made! A few days after that, again funds weren’t right. I may not know a lot but I know I didn’t make ANY purchases, trades, transactions, etc. This app either scams people or isn’t protected from scammers. Glad it was just $200!
In the AppStore, the iOS app was made by Six Days LLC and is ranked #49 in the Finance category. 187.5K reviewers have given it an average of 4.7/5 rating.
One review from November 2021 asks users to use extreme caution with this app. He writes:
I have been in crypto for several years now and surprisingly with all the fraud in crypto haven’t had as bad of an experience as I have with the Trust Wallet. I used the Trust Wallet to swap BNB for a token I couldn’t easily get elsewhere and lost over 20% on the transaction. It was not a small sum either. I did two smaller transactions first and they went fine. The exchange rate, slippage, and fees were all in line. When I swapped the larger sum I lost a large sum. There was no transaction ID or on chain data / swap data on either token I swapped. Both were blank and still are blank days later. Trust Wallet support has been nothing but automated messages with zero support at all. I can not get the transaction data to see where my funds went. This is straight up theft so please extreme caution with this wallet. I can only imagine how much they can steal daily from their users if they scrape these types of margins off of even half of their transactions while providing no chain data to the users. On chain data is the entire point of crypto and the use of a DEX. You’ve been warned!
Trust Wallet Scam Reviews
On TrustPilot.com, TrustWallet received a bad rating of 1.3 stars out of 5, based on 431 reviews.
On October 24, 2022, someone wrote:
[…] do not sign up with this site this is totally fake. It’s my personal experience that they are scammer. They can empty your Wallet. one of my friend lost his 20k last month. […]
Another review from the following day:
All my coin STOLEN. what did they do … no response at all no support they could not care less stay away from these grubs […]
There are many more complaints, let’s take a look at just one more from September 18, 2022:
SCAMMM!!! first time i used it i copied the receiving bitcoin address, i haven’t done any browsing or been on any other bitcoin sites or copied any other bitcoin addresses. i send my money and it disappeared. i checked the bitcoin receiving address and it had changed on trust wallet. i then checked the address i had sent it to and it is a valid bitcoin address. no doubt about it not even in the slightest. scammers. also, just to clarify i am using an up to date iphone, so there’s no way it was a type of malware from another source replacing my clipboard, this is 100% trust wallet scam most untrustworthy wallet out there then its very hard to prove so they stay running and only do it now and then
Complaints We Received
On August 10, 2023, one of our partners received the following complaint:
I invested in a Binance DeFi mining platform through TrustWallet. It seemed very legitimate since I could transfer funds to my brother, who was using the same platform and mining contract. We combined our funds to optimize our profits. I did this especially because I went on a desert trip with my husband and knew I wouldn’t have internet access to withdraw the profits daily, as required. After the 30-day contract ended, the funds were withdrawn from my brother’s wallet to the contract and were locked. The status showed as “locked.” I received a message from the mining contact who said we needed to pay an 18% tax into the wallet before the locked amount, our profits, and the initial investment would be released. However, TrustWallet’s platform mentions that they do not request or require tax payments. We had not signed any agreement, nor were we informed beforehand about this tax requirement. Our funds remain locked.
TrustWallet Scams
Whether or not TrustWallet is a scam, which we will determine by the end of this Trust Wallet review, there is one Trust Wallet scam that you should definitely beware of.
The way this baiting scam works is that the scammers send their victims messages on social media, revealing their (passphrase) and private key (password), and asking for assistance in making payments
When the victim accesses the account, he finds a significant amount of money there in USDT, and if he is tempted to withdraw it, he discovers he needs to pay a network fee in TRON (TRX). When he pays the fee, the money is automatically transferred to another wallet and lost for good.
A variation of this scam is when the scammer invites you to a giveaway or contest which allows you to withdraw any amount of UDST before others manage to withdraw the money. Then, when you deposit TRON, the money is transferred, and you lose it for good.
Another TrustWallet scam is a phishing scam in which you receive a phishing email claiming that your Trust Wallet account has not yet been verified. The victims then verify their accounts via the “Verify your wallet” button or a provided link to avoid losing access to their accounts. The link leads to a fake Trust Wallet website asking for your passphrases. If you enter your passphrase, this provides scammers access to your wallet and allows them to steal all your money.
You may also come across websites offering you to earn cryptocurrency, such as Shiba Inu, by filling in your Trust Wallet Recovery Phrase. If you do you will give the scammers access to your account.
For example, on April 20, 2023, one of our partners received the following complaint by a Vanuatu person who claims losing $6,700 for this scam:
I met Ms. Rosina Gobbi on Facebook, and she claimed to be a legitimate trader. She instructed me to download the Trust Wallet app to track my trading profits. CEO Leo Jackson contacted me through WhatsApp, and he assured me that they would guide me on how to withdraw my profits as long as I followed their instructions. However, I have not received my profits yet, and they keep asking me for money for upgrades, registration fees, cards, and other reasons.
TrustWallet themselves have published warnings against these types of scams.
One of the fake emails they present is sent from trustcryptoapp@gmail.com. They write: “Remember, we NEVER ask for any personal information. This includes your email address.” They will also never ask you to verify your account by emailing you, especially not from a Gmail address, on social media, or via an SMS text message.
They continue:
NEVER give out your secret phrase, to ANYONE, EVER. We cannot stress this enough. Not even a real member of the Trust Wallet team will ask you for them. If you fill this out, the scammer will have full access to your wallet. Once a scammer has access to your secret 12 word phrase, they can create a copy of your wallet anywhere and withdraw all of your funds without you even realising. If the above happens, sadly, there is nothing that the Trust Wallet team can do.
Trust Wallet also published a scam warning on their blog.
Trust Wallet Review Conclusion
To summarize our Trust Wallet scam review, we have concluded that Trust Wallet is not a scam, however obviously, many people are unhappy with the service.
If, therefore, you wish to use Trust Wallet for some reason, we recommend depositing only a small amount of money that you wouldn’t mind losing and checking out the platform. Once you have tried the app for a while and are happy with it, you can go ahead and deposit larger amounts.
More importantly, it is important to avoid falling for Trust Wallet scams, such as Advanced Fee Scams and Phishing Scams which can be encountered in emails, social media, and text messages.
If you have lost money to a scam, however, do not be worried. There is a way to recover the funds by working with a cryptocurrency tracing and recovery company.
If you have lost money for a Trust Wallet scam, please share your story with us by commenting below this Trust Wallet review.
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