Blink Wallet charges a monthly fee of 1 USD for idle custodial accounts, encouraging users to switch to self-custody

Blink Wallet, a Bitcoin wallet, announced a monthly idle fee of $1 for custodial accounts that have not logged into the app for 12 consecutive months. This adjustment was initiated at the beginning of September through a change in the terms of service and push notifications were sent to inactive users, with the first deduction completed in mid-October. According to a blog post released by the company, users who log back in within 12 months will have the deducted fees refunded.

This fee applies only to custodial accounts and aims to alleviate the burden that inactive accounts place on the startup. The announcement stated that these accounts incur ongoing costs related to ledger and infrastructure maintenance, record verification retention, compliance monitoring and reporting, as well as support for claims, which were previously shared by active users through regular in-app transaction fees. Sources told Bitcoin Magazine that approximately 100,000 accounts met the criteria for inactivity at the time of the first deduction, with a total balance exceeding $800,000. The first deduction collected about $45,000, primarily from accounts that had been idle for over a year with small Bitcoin balances. Blink Wallet originated from the Bitcoin adoption wave in El Salvador, initially named Bitcoin Beach Wallet, and was an early custodial Lightning Network wallet that introduced the Stable Sats feature to hedge value against the US dollar. The wallet was spun off from the founding company Galoy in October 2024, operated by Lukas Duczko and a new board, with Duczko holding a controlling stake, while Galoy continues as a service provider and minority shareholder, also establishing the Bitcoin Beach Fund.

In recent years, custodial wallets have faced overall pressure, with Wallet of Satoshi, Alby, and Blue Wallet successively halting custodial wallet services and shifting to self-custody infrastructures like Spark. The EU MiCA regulations regarding licensing and KYC compliance requirements are an important backdrop. Blink launched a self-custody wallet supported by Spark in June 2026, and its user base is still adapting to this transition. On September 19, hackers withdrew 6.61 Bitcoins from custodial wallet users through compromised management tools, and the company's investors subsequently announced that they would fully compensate affected users.