Why did I receive less bitcoin than I expected?
Proton Wallet lets you quickly buy bitcoin (BTC) from three on-ramp partners:
The purchase details these on-ramp partners display can sometimes differ from your Proton Wallet account display. The important thing to note is that the BTC amount is the same, as this is what determines the transaction amount. This ensures you received the amount you expected.
Why are the network fees different?
Network fees are small amounts of BTC that exchanges or your wallet pay to incentivize miners and/or validators to add your transaction to the next block in the blockchain. Network fees can vary based on the volume of exchanges happening on the Bitcoin network: The more transactions that are happening, the higher your fee.
There are also exchange fees or commission fees, which you’ll sometimes see on BTC purchases from exchanges. These are fees the exchange itself charges any time you buy, sell, or trade coins.
When Proton Wallet displays network fees, we display the fee for the entire transaction that delivered you your BTC, which you can verify on the blockchain.
However, our on-ramp partners handle so many BTC transactions that they can batch transactions together (or fulfill several customers’ orders with a single transaction), allowing them to split the network fee among those customers. This means you only pay a fraction of that transaction’s network fee, leading to a network fee less than what Proton Wallet displays.
In the example below, the different network fees are labeled 1.
Why do you see two different fiat currency values for the bitcoin you purchased?
When Proton Wallet displays the exchange rate to BTC from your fiat currency, we display the market exchange rate.
Our on-ramp partners act like currency exchange services for BTC. Similar to the foreign exchange services you see in airports, they will change your fiat currency into BTC at a slightly higher exchange rate than the market rate. They use this higher rate to cover credit card or bank transfer fees and their commission.
Again, the important thing to verify is that the amount of BTC purchased is the same in both Proton Wallet and the on-ramp partner.
In the example below, the BTC amounts (which are the same), are labeled 2.
