Frequently Asked Questions

I'm an accountant or tax preparer. Do I need an enterprise license?

No. Your clients use Clams directly to manage their Bitcoin accounting and generate reports to share with you. If a client's annual revenue exceeds $1M, they need an enterprise license—not you.

We're building a hosted service specifically for accounting firms with multi-client management features. Contact enterprise@clams.tech to learn more.

What personal information do I need to provide to use Clams?

None. You just need an email address to sign in via magic link. You can also use Google or Apple SSO.

Can I still use Clams if I don't see my wallet on the integration list?

Yes. Clams supports importing transaction data in JSON or CSV format using clams connections import. If there is a wallet you'd like us to support natively, use the feedback functionality to let us know.

Where is my data stored?

By default, data is stored directly on your device. You can also point Clams to a remote server you run yourself, or use Clams Cloud, our public hosted instance.

What is Clams Cloud?

Clams Cloud is a public hosted instance of Clams Server that we run for convenience. It's useful if you want multi-device access or a backup without self-hosting. Install Clams, point it at our public endpoint using the command clams backends use cloud and you're set. Your books stay yours, we just provide the infrastructure. Learn more

Does Clams have access to spend funds from my wallets?

No. Clams requires only read access to your wallets and never has access to spending your funds.

Is Clams open-source?

No, it isn't. We are major proponents of open source, and you can view all of our open-source work on our GitHub. We want to build Clams into a long-term sustainable business, and we think that open sourcing it at this time does not contribute to that. Since Clams does not have access to user funds, we do not think that open sourcing it is critical.

Does Clams leak metadata or make requests to external services that contain any of my private data?

If you connect to your own on-chain source, nothing is leaked. Configure your data source: Electrum Server, Esplora Server, or Bitcoin RPC. All options have full Tor support.

If you use a public server, in some cases Clams does need to make requests to external services to maintain a complete data set for deriving journal entries. The current external requests that are made are the following:

  • Older Core Lightning on-chain transactions sometimes do not have a timestamp, so we need to look up a block by its height to get the timestamp. No real metadata is leaked here other than that you are interested in a particular block.
  • LND nodes will often not have the on-chain transaction details of a channel close, so we need to look up the full transaction by its hash. This leaks that this hash is of interest to you.

How can I verify that my data remains private and never leaves my device?

This video demonstrates monitoring Clams' network activity with Little Snitch. It shows the desktop app (now deprecated), but the same principle applies with any traffic inspection tool. Read about our commitment to user privacy in this blog post.

Does Clams include any trackers or analytics scripts?

No. As much as we want to be able to gain insight into how people are using Clams and where they are running into issues, we simply do not want to compromise on user privacy through tracking and analytics. Instead, we hope that you will use the feedback functionality to share your experience with us directly.

If you are not monetizing user data, have no ads, and Clams is free, how is that sustainable long term?

Clams is free for individuals and small businesses under $1M in annual revenue. Organizations above that threshold require an enterprise license, which funds ongoing development while keeping Clams accessible to the Bitcoin community.

We're also launching Hosted by Clams, a service where we deploy and manage a private Clams Server instance on your behalf. Learn more.

We're building a sustainable business that aligns incentives between us and our customers without compromising our values.