Wallet Basics

The custody model behind Alphio wallets, what's supported, and how to manage them day to day.

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Is Alphio custodial? It depends on which wallet:

• SnapTrade brokers (Stock Trading) — assets are custodied by the broker (e.g. Robinhood, IBKR). Alphio talks to the broker via SnapTrade and never holds your shares or cash.
• On-chain wallets (Privy, MetaMask, WalletConnect, external) — non-custodial. You control the private key; Alphio only sees the public address and signed transactions you authorize.

Alphio never sees user private keys — not for any wallet type. Privy keys are user-controlled and exportable; external wallets keep their keys inside the wallet app itself.

Which wallets are supported? Alphio supports several wallet types, each with different setup and recovery paths:

• Privy — embedded wallet provisioned through OAuth login. Keys are user-controlled and exportable.
• MetaMask — browser extension / mobile wallet via connection prompt.
• WalletConnect — standardized connection protocol that supports many mobile wallets (Rainbow, Trust Wallet, etc.).
• External wallets — by pasting the address for read-only views (no signing capability without one of the above).

All of these are managed at /account/wallets. The connection prompt at trade time also offers any of these.

My wallet shows wrong balance. Wallet balance is read from the chain (or from the broker, for stock accounts) and surfaced on Alphio. "Wrong balance" usually means one of:

• Indexer lag — recent on-chain activity hasn't been indexed yet. Refresh after a minute.
• Different chain selected — the wallet has balance on chain A but you're viewing chain B. Switch chain in the wallet view.
• Different wallet selected — you may be looking at a different bound wallet. Open the wallet selector and verify.
• Token not displayed — some non-standard tokens may not auto-display. Add the token by contract address if your wallet supports it.

For broker accounts, balance reflects the broker's last sync. Force a broker refresh from /account/connections if the value seems stale.

How do I switch default wallet? The default wallet is the wallet pre-selected on the Trade Modal and other trading surfaces. Open /account/wallets and:

• Mark the wallet you want as default.
• The selection persists across sessions.

At trade time, the Trade Modal still lets you switch to any bound wallet for the specific order — the default is only the starting selection.

Can I use a hardware wallet (Ledger / Trezor)?

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Hardware wallet support depends on the connection method:

• Via WalletConnect — many hardware wallets that are accessible through a software wallet (e.g. Ledger via MetaMask, Ledger via Rabby, Trezor via MetaMask) can be reached through that software wallet's WalletConnect session. Signing happens on the hardware device.
• Direct USB / native — not currently a supported connection path inside Alphio.

If your hardware wallet is reachable through a software wallet you can connect to Alphio, you get hardware-wallet-grade key protection in practice. Native direct hardware support may be added later.