Microsoft Edge is testing a built-in crypto wallet

Microsoft is qui­et­ly test­ing a built-in cryp­to wal­let for its Edge brows­er, as report­ed by soft­ware preser­va­tion­ist Alba­core in a March 13 tweet.

Edge wallet is still in testing

Microsoft has not offi­cial­ly announced the wal­let project, and the wallet’s intro­duc­to­ry pages do not indi­cate which cryp­tocur­ren­cies are supported.

How­ev­er, those pages men­tion a “for­ay into cryp­tocur­ren­cy and NFTs,” and leaked screen­shots sug­gest that Ethereum, DAI, USDC, and USDT are at a min­i­mum sup­port­ed. Some of those tokens appear to be added by the user through a cus­tom token option.

Oth­er screen­shots sug­gest that the wal­let includes trad­ing inte­gra­tion with Coin­base and Moon­pay, sup­port for oth­er exten­sion wal­lets through its set­tings pan­el, and an “explore” tab that fea­tures cryp­to news sto­ries from around the web.

Microsoft says that users of the wal­let are “testers.” It adds that users must use their own cryp­to bal­ance and warns that it will not cov­er any lost funds.

The wal­let is non-cus­to­di­al, mean­ing that users have com­plete con­trol of their funds and that Microsoft can­not help users recov­er their wallet.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion is not avail­able due to the project’s con­fi­den­tial nature.

Other browser wallets

Microsoft Edge is not the first web brows­er to include cryp­to inte­gra­tion by default.

Opera has sup­port­ed cryp­tocur­ren­cy since 2018, ini­tial­ly adding the fea­ture on mobile before extend­ing it to the desk­top in 2019. As of 2022, Opera sup­port­ed sev­er­al blockchain ecosys­tems and was pro­duc­ing a cryp­to-focused ver­sion.

Else­where, Brave fea­tures its own cryp­to wal­let and native Basic Atten­tion Token (BAT). It has also inte­grat­ed with oth­er projects, such as Solana in 2021 and Binance in 2020.

Users of oth­er browsers like Mozil­la Fire­fox and Google Chrome can install third-par­ty cryp­tocur­ren­cy wal­lets such as Meta­mask or MEW.

Cer­tain brows­er projects have tak­en a stance against cryp­tocur­ren­cy. Opera com­peti­tor Vival­di has stat­ed it will nev­er cre­ate a cryp­tocur­ren­cy. Fire­fox cre­ator Mozil­la stopped accept­ing cryp­to dona­tions to its own orga­ni­za­tion in 2022 fol­low­ing backlash.