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Tangem - Hardware Wallet

Google Play App Store Website

Latest release found by WalletScrutiny: 5.38.1

Our wallet review process

We examine wallets starting at the code level and continue all the way up to the finished app that lives on your device. Provided below is an outline of each of these steps along with security tips for you and general test results.

Developer

Tangem (Android)
Tangem AG (iPhone)

Website X LinkedIn

Released

Android: 24th October 2018
iPhone: 28th April 2018

Custody

Self-custodial: The user holds the keys

As part of our Methodology, we ask: Does the product allow self-custody?

The answer is "yes". The user has control of their own keys.
Read more

Source code

Passed all 7 tests

We answered the following questions in this order:

Is this product the original?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Fake" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "Fake".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Fake" and the following would apply:

The bigger wallets often get imitated by scammers that abuse the reputation of the product by imitating its name, logo or both.

Imitating a competitor is a huge red flag and we urge you to not put any money into this product!

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.
Is it a wallet?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Not a wallet" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "Not a wallet".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Not a wallet" and the following would apply:

If it’s called “wallet” but is actually only a portfolio tracker, we don’t look any deeper, assuming it is not meant to control funds. What has no funds, can’t lose your coins. It might still leak your financial history!

If you can buy Bitcoins with this app but only into another wallet, it’s not a wallet itself.

Is it for bitcoins?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "A wallet but not for Bitcoin" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "A wallet but not for Bitcoin".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "A wallet but not for Bitcoin" and the following would apply:

At this point we only look into wallets that at least also support BTC.

Can it send and receive bitcoins?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Can't send or receive bitcoins" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "Can't send or receive bitcoins".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Can't send or receive bitcoins" and the following would apply:

If it is for holding BTC but you can’t actually send or receive them with this product then it doesn’t function like a wallet for BTC but you might still be using it to hold your bitcoins with the intention to convert back to fiat when you “cash out”.

All products in this category are custodial and thus funds are at the mercy of the provider.

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.
Does the product allow self-custody?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Custodial: The provider holds the keys" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "Custodial: The provider holds the keys".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Custodial: The provider holds the keys" and the following would apply:

A custodial service is a service where the funds are held by a third party like the provider. The custodial service can at any point steal all the funds of all the users at their discretion. Our investigations stop there.

Some services might claim their setup is super secure, that they don’t actually have access to the funds, or that the access is shared between multiple parties. For our evaluation of it being a wallet, these details are irrelevant. They might be a trustworthy Bitcoin bank and they might be a better fit for certain users than being your own bank but our investigation still stops there as we are only interested in wallets.

Products that claim to be non-custodial but feature custodial accounts without very clearly marking those as custodial are also considered “custodial” as a whole to avoid misguiding users that follow our assessment.

We have to acknowledge that a huge majority of Bitcoiners are currently using custodial Bitcoin banks. If you do, please:

  • Do your own research if the provider is trust-worthy!
  • Check if you know at least enough about them so you can sue them when you have to!
  • Check if the provider is under a jurisdiction that will allow them to release your funds when you need them?
  • Check if the provider is taking security measures proportional to the amount of funds secured? If they have a million users and don’t use cold storage, that hot wallet is a million times more valuable for hackers to attack. A million times more effort will be taken by hackers to infiltrate their security systems.
The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.
Is the source code publicly available?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "No source for current release found" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "No source for current release found".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "No source for current release found" and the following would apply:

A wallet that claims to not give the provider the means to steal the users’ funds might actually be lying. In the spirit of “Don’t trust - verify!” you don’t want to take the provider at his word, but trust that people hunting for fame and bug bounties could actually find flaws and back-doors in the wallet so the provider doesn’t dare to put these in.

Back-doors and flaws are frequently found in closed source products but some remain hidden for years. And even in open source security software there might be catastrophic flaws undiscovered for years.

An evil wallet provider would certainly prefer not to publish the code, as hiding it makes audits orders of magnitude harder.

For your security, you thus want the code to be available for review.

If the wallet provider doesn’t share up to date code, our analysis stops there as the wallet could steal your funds at any time, and there is no protection except the provider’s word.

“Up to date” strictly means that any instance of the product being updated without the source code being updated counts as closed source. This puts the burden on the provider to always first release the source code before releasing the product’s update. This paragraph is a clarification to our rules following a little poll.

We are not concerned about the license as long as it allows us to perform our analysis. For a security audit, it is not necessary that the provider allows others to use their code for a competing wallet. You should still prefer actual open source licenses as a competing wallet won’t use the code without giving it careful scrutiny.

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.
Is the decompiled binary legible?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Obfuscated" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "Obfuscated".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Obfuscated" and the following would apply:

When compiling source code to binary, usually a lot of meta information is retained. A variable storing a masterseed would usually still be called masterseed, so an auditor could inspect what happens to the masterseed. Does it get sent to some server? But obfuscation would rename it for example to _t12, making it harder to find what the product is doing with the masterseed.

In benign cases, code symbols are replaced by short strings to make the binary smaller but for the sake of transparency this should not be done for non-reproducible Bitcoin wallets. (Reproducible wallets could obfuscate the binary for size improvements as the reproducibility would assure the link between code and binary.)

Especially in the public source cases, obfuscation is a red flag. If the code is public, why obfuscate it?

As obfuscation is such a red flag when looking for transparency, we do also sometimes inspect the binaries of closed source apps.

As looking for code obfuscation is a more involved task, we do not inspect many apps but if we see other red flags, we might test this to then put the product into this red-flag category.

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.

Distribution

Google Play Website

Application build

Build cannot be done because the source code is not publicly available.

Platform notes

On the Google Play Store, there are many apps that have Bitcoin in their name or description but don’t allow the user to use Bitcoin or they don’t look like Bitcoin wallets but turn out to be. We run our tests and document our findings.

Android

Update 2025-10-28 New Verdict

After receiving some communication, we decided to give the Tangem android build another try. Good news: the repo finally ships without any submodules, so the long-standing blocker is gone. Our containerized verifier is now at v0.4.1, with tighter SDK provisioning and runtime-detection refinements baked directly into the script. We still have to feed Gradle a GitHub PAT because several dependencies live in GitHub’s package registry. Decompiling the official APK shows the shipping build is the Google flavor, so reproductions must target that variant to have any chance of matching. Gradle currently shouts that every Google/Huawei variant is missing its google-services.json, which explains why the google release task stalls out.

But suffice to say, the Android app can now be viewed as source available

Update 2025-03-21

We conducted another attempt to build the Tangem Wallet app from source. The main repository at https://github.com/tangem/tangem-app-android is publicly available, but the build process fails when trying to initialize the required submodules:

git submodule update --init --recursive
Cloning into '/workspace/tangem-app-android/app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config'...
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

The app depends on two critical submodules that are private:

  • tangem-app-config at git@github.com:tangem/tangem-app-config.git
  • tangem-android-tools at git@github.com:tangem/tangem-android-tools.git

These submodules use SSH URLs (git@github.com:…) rather than HTTPS URLs, which indicates they require SSH authentication to access. Without these components, it’s impossible to build the app from the available source code.

This confirms our previous findings that the app should be classified as nosource since essential components remain private.

Update 2024-08-20

I messaged them on x.com and on reddit.

They responded via x but want to collaborate via email.

Update 2024-08-19: After a while, we saw it fit to retry the build to assuage the concerns of some that it is indeed source-available.

So I begin with a basic docker template with some basic dependencies, with the cloning and building portions commented out.

# Use an official image as a base
FROM ubuntu:22.04

# Install dependencies
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    openjdk-11-jdk \
    curl \
    wget \
    git \
    unzip \
    lib32stdc++6 \
    lib32z1 \
    gradle \
    && apt-get clean

# Set environment variables
ENV ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=/opt/android-sdk
ENV PATH=$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools/latest/bin:$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/platform-tools:$PATH
ENV GRADLE_USER_HOME=/opt/gradle

# Download and install Android SDK command line tools
RUN mkdir -p $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools && \
    wget https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-9477386_latest.zip -O sdk-tools.zip && \
    unzip sdk-tools.zip -d $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools && \
    mv $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools/cmdline-tools $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools/latest && \
    rm sdk-tools.zip

# Set up Android SDK
RUN yes | sdkmanager --licenses && \
    sdkmanager "platform-tools" "platforms;android-31" "build-tools;31.0.0"

# Clone the Tangem Android app repository
WORKDIR /workspace
# RUN git clone https://github.com/tangem/tangem-app-android.git .

# Update submodules to use HTTPS instead of SSH
# RUN sed -i 's/git@github.com:/https:\/\/github.com\//g' .gitmodules

# Initialize and update submodules
# RUN git submodule init && git submodule update

# Build the app
# RUN ./gradlew clean assembleDebug

# Set entrypoint for manual build
CMD ["/bin/bash"]

Clone the repository

danny@lw10:~/work/builds/com.tangem/5.13.1/3$ docker run -it --name tangem-container tangem-build:tag
root@0247199e5fcb:/workspace# git clone https://github.com/tangem/tangem-app-android
Cloning into 'tangem-app-android'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 188271, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (12854/12854), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3895/3895), done.
remote: Total 188271 (delta 5023), reused 11890 (delta 4508), pack-reused 175417 (from 1)
Receiving objects: 100% (188271/188271), 75.74 MiB | 23.40 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (102715/102715), done.
root@0247199e5fcb:/workspace#

Checkout to hotfix/5.13.1 and then update submodules

Tangem’s releases and tags are not updated regularly. Instead they have branches which is where their most recent updates are made.

root@0247199e5fcb:/workspace# cd tangem-app-android/
root@0247199e5fcb:/workspace/tangem-app-android# git checkout hotfix/5.13.1
Branch 'hotfix/5.13.1' set up to track remote branch 'hotfix/5.13.1' from 'origin'.
Switched to a new branch 'hotfix/5.13.1'
root@0247199e5fcb:/workspace/tangem-app-android# git submodule init
Submodule 'app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config' (git@github.com:tangem/tangem-app-config.git) registered for path 'app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config'
Submodule 'tangem-android-tools' (git@github.com:tangem/tangem-android-tools.git) registered for path 'tangem-android-tools'
root@0247199e5fcb:/workspace/tangem-app-android#

git submodule update –init –recursive

root@0247199e5fcb:/workspace/tangem-app-android# git submodule update --init --recursive
Cloning into '/workspace/tangem-app-android/app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config'...
The authenticity of host 'github.com (140.82.121.3)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:+DiY3wvvV6TuJJhbpZisF/zLDA0zPMSvHdkr4UvCOqU.
This key is not known by any other names
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'github.com' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
fatal: clone of 'git@github.com:tangem/tangem-app-config.git' into submodule path '/workspace/tangem-app-android/app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config' failed
Failed to clone 'app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config'. Retry scheduled
Cloning into '/workspace/tangem-app-android/tangem-android-tools'...
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
fatal: clone of 'git@github.com:tangem/tangem-android-tools.git' into submodule path '/workspace/tangem-app-android/tangem-android-tools' failed
Failed to clone 'tangem-android-tools'. Retry scheduled
Cloning into '/workspace/tangem-app-android/app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config'...
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
fatal: clone of 'git@github.com:tangem/tangem-app-config.git' into submodule path '/workspace/tangem-app-android/app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config' failed
Failed to clone 'app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config' a second time, aborting

Like in the previous review, this failure is indicative of a private repository/submodule (or nonexistent one). This means that the project is not source-available, or more completely, not 100% available. Since the build step fails very near to the part where we clone the repository, a failure in this shouldn’t be considered a failure to build, since we’ve barely begun the build process.

Previous Review 2024-02-09

Yes, there is a repository but it has neither documentation nor an issue tracker to ask how to build it. But it doesn’t look too complicated. Let’s see how it goes …

v5.5.1 is the currently available version on Google Play.

root@a05bfbe4d44c:/mnt# apt update
root@a05bfbe4d44c:/mnt# apt full-upgrade -y
root@a05bfbe4d44c:/mnt# git clone https://github.com/tangem/tangem-app-android
root@a05bfbe4d44c:/mnt# cd tangem-app-android/
root@a05bfbe4d44c:/mnt/tangem-app-android# git tag | grep '5\.'
4.5.1
root@a05bfbe4d44c:/mnt/tangem-app-android# git branch --all | grep '5\.5\.1'
  remotes/origin/5.5.1_pre_release
  remotes/origin/hotfix/5.5.1
  remotes/origin/merge/hotfix_5.5.1_to_release

So there is something about a v5.5.1 release but it’s not tagged correctly. Is the app configured to be version 5.5.1?

root@a05bfbe4d44c:/mnt/tangem-app-android# rgrep '5\.5\.1' .
./.git/packed-refs:a40b26faa3a13d82d40a81574391ebc0afad2390 refs/remotes/origin/5.5.1_pre_release
./.git/packed-refs:23d54ea5894c630ef36e020520d4a5e6f0eb0dcf refs/remotes/origin/hotfix/5.5.1
./.git/packed-refs:05a4b8af12e9bd7b4f9497e84db47961bff8ab4a refs/remotes/origin/merge/hotfix_5.5.1_to_release

Not really.

Can we compile the app? We see it has git submodules. Let’s get those, first:

root@a05bfbe4d44c:/mnt/tangem-app-android# git submodule update --init --recursive
Cloning into '/mnt/tangem-app-android/app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config'...
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
fatal: clone of 'git@github.com:tangem/tangem-app-config.git' into submodule path '/mnt/tangem-app-android/app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config' failed
Failed to clone 'app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config'. Retry scheduled
Cloning into '/mnt/tangem-app-android/tangem-android-tools'...
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
fatal: clone of 'git@github.com:tangem/tangem-android-tools.git' into submodule path '/mnt/tangem-app-android/tangem-android-tools' failed
Failed to clone 'tangem-android-tools'. Retry scheduled
Cloning into '/mnt/tangem-app-android/app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config'...
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
fatal: clone of 'git@github.com:tangem/tangem-app-config.git' into submodule path '/mnt/tangem-app-android/app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config' failed
Failed to clone 'app/src/main/assets/tangem-app-config' a second time, aborting

It fails to clone from git@github.com:tangem/tangem-app-config.git. As it turns out this is a private repository. So while the name suggest it’s only some configuration, we cannot verify that. This project is not verifiable.

Sadly we cannot file an issue with them but we will try to reach them on social media.

iPhone

Updated Analysis 2025-10-28

The Android version of the app

Tangem - Hardware Wallet      has been reclassified as source-available. So we decided to give a quick cursory check if the ios app merits the same change. Here’s what we gathered:

What Looks Solid

  • Real Xcode project and Swift sources are all there (TangemApp.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj:32560, Tangem/App/…).
  • bootstrap.sh actually unwraps a giant SwiftPM bundle so you can build offline (bootstrap.sh:18-42).
  • Schemes for Tangem/Tangem Alpha/Tangem Beta exist, so Xcode will open without hacking around.

Where It Breaks Down

  • Every config JSON is stuffed with “PLACEHOLDER” values (tangem-app-config/config_prod.json:1-38), and the Firebase plist is literally empty (tangem-app-config/ios/GoogleService-Info-Production.plist:1-5). Without the real API keys you can’t reproduce the shipping binary.
  • The packaged dependencies include a private SSH repo (Package.swift:24-33), but they sneak in a prebuilt archive at SPM_dependencies.part00*. It works, yet we can’t verify what’s inside, and there are no checksums given.
  • I couldn’t find any CI scripts, fastlane lanes, or release automation—recent commits are bland “Updated on …” messages from a bot (git show –stat, README.md:9-44). Nothing links a tag to an App Store build we could match.

Bottom Line

So the source is technically there, but the missing keys plus opaque dependency blobs keep it from being “source available” in a WalletScrutiny sense. You can’t rebuild and compare against the App Store IPA without extra info.

Previous Analysis 2021-04-10

This app is the companion app to an NFC card that is promoted as something like a hardware wallet but without a screen or a button it can only do what the companion app - this app - tells it to do. As such, this app is very crucial if you use these cards as your Bitcoin wallet. It has to be trustworthy and thus we consider it a Bitcoin wallet. Our mission is to look for the potential of all the users of an app lose all their funds at once which arguably cannot happen in the given configuration. The app could not collect the private keys from the cards if the cards do what they claim which cannot be publicly verified neither but even if the card does as advertised, the app could still steal a lot of funds of a lot of users if it would switch to evil-mode for all users at once. It would still require users’ interaction but the window of opportunity could easily be days to weeks before Google would remote-wipe the app or the app would get stopped from emptying wallets of unsuspecting users upon their next use.

The description on the App Store is not explaining much and neither does their website explain in clear words what this app is but I found this demo video and it clearly shows that the app is crucial for the security of your funds.

The next question would be: “Is the code public?” … but as far as I can see there is no source code available that one could inspect. That leaves us with the verdict not verifiable.

NFC (Near Field Communication)
Tangem is a self-custody hardware and mobile wallet designed to give you secure access to digital assets and blockchain networks. The Tangem app works together with Tangem cards to provide a technical interface for sending, receiving, and interacting with cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications.

Store description confirms NFC card interaction; further confirmed by 'NFC-enabled smartphone' mention.

Source: Store

Secure Elements
Tangem cards contain a secure chip designed for strong protection of private keys. The chip is certified to Common Criteria EAL6+, a high security assurance level used in secure hardware products (such as biometric passports).

Source: Store

Multi Signature
Users can connect up to three Tangem cards to one wallet setup.

Three cards to one wallet setup implies multi-signature or multi-card authorization scheme.

Source: Store

Trade from and to other crypto currencies
connect to third-party services for crypto-related transactions, and interact with decentralized exchanges and applications.

Source: Store

Buy with Credit Card
connect to third-party services for crypto-related transactions

Insufficient — omitting; no explicit credit card mention.

Source: Store

Product page updated by Leo Wandersleb, Daniel Andrei R. Garcia

>

Do your own research

In addition to reading our analysis, it is important to do your own checks. Before transferring any bitcoin to your wallet, look up reviews for the wallet you want to use. They should be easy to find. If they aren't, that itself is a reason to be extra careful.

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