"The principle is so simple it feels obvious. The thing you tap to pay should not be the thing that holds your money. When you use Apple Wallet, your real money sits in your bank or on a credit line at a card issuer. Apple Wallet is a key. The bank is the vault. When you check out with Stripe's Link, the funds are charged to your linked debit card or bank account. Link itself holds nothing. Revolut takes a hybrid approach: a small balance for daily spending, with the rest of your financial life parked in linked accounts and cards."
"In every case, the architecture is the same: the spending interface and the store of value live apart. The interface is exposed to the world. The vault stays sealed. Crypto's approach to wallets is decidedly the opposite. A crypto wallet, as the industry has built it, is not a wallet at all. It is a vault with a public-facing slot."
"Open MetaMask, Phantom, or any of the dozen consumer wallets that dominate the space, and what you are looking at is your entire net worth balance: Every token, every position, every digital deed, sitting at a single address controlled by a single private key. Each time you connect that wallet to an application, sign an approval, or send a transaction, you re-expose the whole thing to the open internet."
"The consequences are not theoretical. Last year, on-chain analytics firm Chainalysis tallied billions of dollars stolen through phishing signatures, malicious approvals, and so-called drainer kits. Pre-packaged scams that wait for a user to connect to a compromised site and empty the wallet in seconds. These are not edge cases. They are the predictable consequence of a category mistake."
Apple Wallet, Stripe Link, and Revolut separate the payment interface from the store of value. Apple Wallet acts as a key while banks or credit lines hold funds. Stripe Link charges linked debit or bank accounts and holds nothing itself. Revolut keeps a small balance for daily spending while parking most value in linked accounts and cards. In each case, the interface is exposed to users and services, while the vault remains sealed. Crypto wallets reverse this model by combining a public-facing slot with control of the entire net worth in one address tied to a private key. Connecting wallets to applications and signing approvals re-exposes holdings to the internet, leading to predictable theft through phishing signatures, malicious approvals, and drainer kits.
Read at Fortune
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