Top 7 Most Recommended Cryptocurrency Wallets For Storing Bitcoin

Recommended Cryptocurrency Wallets

The rapid growth in the world of cryptocurrencies is constantly expanding, bringing in more users every day, thereby making the crypto space more interesting than ever. Many interesting use cases of the blockchain technology are erupting, resulting in new altcoins emerging in the market every now and then.

However, cryptocurrencies being digital in nature often expose users to digital attacks, the like of what was experienced in the almighty Mt. Gox hack, also the recent brutal attack experienced by most of the users of the popular MyEtherWallet

The question of why you should purchase a wallet becomes the more pertinent question of which wallet should a cryptocurrency investor use. As do all forms of insurance, security comes at the cost of money and convenience. How should we balance it in a way that suits our risk profile?

With the constant increase in the number of coins and tokens, the need for a safe and secured wallet to store these digital assets is on the high demand. From experiences, sometimes ease-of-use may come at the cost of security, while additional features may come at the cost of a steeper learning curve. Getting to know the best few ones for a wide variety might to time consuming and tedious.

An all-in-one package wallet does not exist. It is important that you manage to find the wallet that addresses your greatest concern, be it security from theft, ease of transfer, convenience, monetary cost, or even style. A wallet may turn out to be your greatest investment decision, financial wise and emotional health wise. Therefore, in this write-up, we educate you on the criteria for selecting the very good ones.

Top 4 Features To Check Before Using

Also, we give a list of the recommended ones based on their features and users’ experiences.

1. Security:

The number one feature to check in any wallet is its security. You need to check if the company has a track record of security excellence. The recent research has shown that some of the wallets that were claimed to be secure are actually vulnerable to hacks. An example is a recent discovery made by a 15-year old young boy on the Ledger Nano S wallet.

2. Convenience:

It is essential for the wallet to be convenient to use without sacrificing any security protocol of the wallet. Users must make sure there is no complexity in the usage of the wallet from the start on transaction till it ends. Most times, it’s often difficult to get a secured wallet without wasting too much time on security verifications and validations before gaining complete access to funds on-the-go.

3. Cost:

Depending on the user’s purchasing power, the user needs to carefully select the wallet that goes with the budget without compromising the security of the wallet or blindly going for a wallet with bad users’ review just for being cheap. Always be careful of cheap things!

4. Mobility:

The wallet should be accessible anytime anywhere you need it.

Best Recommended Cryptocurrency Wallets

Below are some of the recommended wallets users can get out there:

Trezor

Trezor was the first cryptocurrency hardware wallet ever developed that sets the gold standard for crypto-wallets’ security. It is manufactured by SatoshiLabs, a Czech Republic-based company operating since 2013.Trezor has a reputation for providing top-notch security, protecting against both virtual and physical theft.

It is a small flash drive-like device with an OLED screen that connects to the phone or PC via a USB which you can also use to sign cryptocurrency transactions in an offline environment. Trezor is available in white, gray, and black color options, and it supports more than 10 cryptocurrencies and thousands of ERC20 tokens. Trezor supports the Windows, Mac and Linux Operating Systems, and it currently costs about $110 USD.

When using a cold storage hardware wallet like the TREZOR, your funds are stored offline and transactions can’t be tampered with. Cold storage refers to any type of wallet that is stored offline, independent of any internet connection, and the private key is controlled by the owner. Because of this feature, it cannot be hacked remotely. These funds can only be accessed and verified physically on the embedded screen by the wallet owner with the appropriate password information.

Even if your PC is compromised with malware, your private keys will still be safe with Trezor. In this sense, Trezor is more of a vault than a wallet.

At this moment TREZOR supports the following coins:

• Bitcoin
• Litecoin
• Dash
• Zcash
• BCash
• BGold
• Ethereum
• Ethereum Classic
• Expanse
• UBIQ
• NEM
• Namecoin
• Dogecoin
• All ERC-20 tokens

In case an unforeseen event arises where you lose or damage your TREZOR device, you can recover your funds by using your TREZOR seed and a seed compatible wallet. Some of the compatible wallets include:

• ArcBit for iOS devices
• Copay compatible with Linux, Windows, OSX, Android, and iOS devices
• Electrum for Linux, Windows, OSX, and Android devices, using a manual recovery manual
• Mycelium for only Android devices using a manual recovery.

KeepKey

KeepKey is another secure hardware wallet launched in 2015. It comes in a polished design, due to its effectiveness, it is said to be a port of Trezor’s code and firmware, so their main difference is the material.

As a Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallet, KeepKey can be thought of as a miniature computer designed specifically for storing private keys. As an HD wallet, KeepKey allows you to generate and store an unlimited number of private keys.

KeepKey integrates with the wallet software on your computer by taking over a private key generation, private key storage, and transaction signing.

KeepKey wallet enables the storage and transaction of a variety of cryptocurrencies, including:

• Bitcoin
• Ethereum
• Litecoin
• Dash
• Dogecoin
• Namecoin

Like the TREZOR, it is also easy to setup, and it comes with more advanced features. Also, KeepKey integrates with the wallet software on your computer by taking over a private key generation, private key storage, and transaction signing. Users can also recover funds should in case the device is missing, using the following compatible wallets:

• Electrum
• MultiBit

The device works perfectly with Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. However, the Keepkey wallet might be a little on the heavy side and hence more susceptible to drops.

Currently, the cost of getting a keepkey is about $100 USD.

Ledger Nano S

Ledger has been creating hardware for Bitcoin security since 2014. It is a very popular HD wallet crafted with love in France, a European country well-known for its art and design aesthetics. It is a very sleek flash drive-like device. It also comes with an OLED screen for easy handling and two side buttons for confirming transactions. In order to confirm a payment, you need to physically press both buttons at the same time, making it a hack-proof device.

The Nano S also lets you create backups of your wallet by writing down a 24-word phrase on the paper that comes with the device out of the box. This phrase can be used to recreate your wallet in the event that your Nano S is lost, damaged or stolen.

Also, the screen provides an extra layer of verification when sending payments, to confirm that the payment you’d like to send is for the correct amount and to the right address.

The wallet comes at a price of about $70 USD and works well with Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. The Ledger Nano S is also compatible with Electrum and Mycellium wallets.

Unlike other hardware wallets, the Ledger Nano S wallet supports much more cryptocurrencies including:

• Ark
• Bitcoin
• Bitcoin Gold
• Bcash
• Dash
• Digibyte
• Dogecoin
• Ethereum
• Ethereum Classic
• Expanse
• Hcash
• Komodo
• Litecoin
• NEO
• PIVX
• PoSW
• Qtum
• Ripple
• Starts
• Stealthcoin
• Stellar
• Stratis
• Ubiq
• Vertcoin
• Viacoin
• Zcash
• ERC20 tokens

Exodus

Exodus is a very popular multi-currency software wallet that provides a client interface for you to access and transfer your cryptocurrency holdings. It was officially launched on July 29, 2016, the Exodus wallet is one of the newer options to store your cryptocurrency. Exodus is a software wallet that provides a client interface for you to access and transfer your cryptocurrency holdings.

As a software wallet that is sometimes connected to the internet (in case of sending or receiving funds), Exodus is inherently riskier to use than hardware wallet alternatives such as Ledger or Trezor. It is a free to use, desktop-only HD wallet designed with a stylish and intuitive interface. Ultimately, the developers are known for top-notch security standards of the crypto world.

Exodus is integrated with ShapeShift exchange making it super easy to swap coins directly in the wallet without having to send them to an exchange. At present, it supports more than 30 cryptocurrencies including:

• Bitcoin
• Litecoin
• Ethereum
• Dash
• Golem
• Augur
• EOS
• OmiseGo
• And others.

The wallet is compatible with Mac, Linux, and Windows operating systems

Jaxx

Jaxx is known to be the world’s first mobile multi-currency wallet solution serving the crypto market since its inception in 2014. Jaxx is also an HD wallet that provides seed words so that users can be in total control of their funds as well as use this seed to recover their funds just in case something goes wrong with the device. The wallet is available in both Android and iOS.

With the integration of shapeshift, switching between currencies, sending and receiving money, entering addresses, while scanning QR codes are all easy to do. Jaxx uses a mnemonic seed to back up your wallet or transfer it to a different device.

Jaxx employs strong security practices meant to ensure maximum safety of user funds. Jaxx stores private keys directly on user devices, thus making it impossible for a third party to remotely control user’s funds. The wallet automatically generates a mnemonic seed which users can write down and keep safe.

Currently, Jaxx supports more than 55 digital currencies including:

• Bitcoin
• Ethereum
• Ethereum Classic
• Augur
• Litecoin
• Zcash
• RSK Testnet
• Doge
• Iconomi
• Gnosis
• DigixDAO
• BlockchainCapita
• Civic
• Stox
• And others.

Jaxx is available on a multitude of platforms, including Android, iOS, OS X, Chrome, Windows, and Linux, via apps.

Download the Jaxx app here

Coinomi

Coinomi is another multi-currency HD wallet mobile wallet. It was built by a team of software engineers based in London, UK, since the year 2015. Due to its robust privacy features and an intuitive user-interface, Coinomi is widely respected in the crypto wallet community.

Coinomi wallet is one of the most popular crypto-wallet amongst Android users, and it’s widely known for its secure storage platform with support for a wide variety of digital assets and a built-in exchange for fast and easy trading.

Coinomi is known for its strong encryption. Also, being an HD wallet, Coinomi uses a special type of algorithm to create its 12-word backup seed phrase displayed as a series of seemingly random words. As discussed above, the seed phrase allows users to restore access to stolen or lost accounts.

Another interesting feature of the wallet is that it protects users’ identity by anonymizing IP addresses through their servers, shielding users’ personal information and transaction details from Preying eyes.

For easy exchange of digital assets, Coinomi supports both ShapeShift & Changelly integrations, giving users the freedom of making the exchange of coins or tokens without transferring the coins out of the wallet.

Its free, you can download your Coinomi wallet for your Android or iOS device.

Electrum

Electrum is a fast, lightweight wallet for desktop and mobile users. Founded in 2011, it has experienced a lot of developments from the open source community, making it the most flexible wallet today.

Electrum’s core features include the complete cold storage solutions, and its integration with the major hardware wallets, such as TREZOR, KeepKey and Ledger Nano S.

Electrum is considered one of the most secure bitcoin wallets available today, it enables multi-sig support, and it is not tied to a centralized server, so server downtime will not be an issue. The software wallet is widely known for its encryption techniques used in securing its users’ private keys.

Electrum supports only the Bitcoin. It was estimated that some 10% of all bitcoin transactions occur on Electrum, credit to being the earliest in the game since the very beginning.

The software is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. It also supports the Android as its platform for mobile users.

Download your Electrum wallet here

Crypto Wallet Best Practices

Selecting a good wallet is essential, however it is not enough to selecting a good wallet is not enough. It is also essential to follow some best practices in securing your hard-earned digital assets. There are a number of important safety and security practices that can help to protect your private keys and therefore protect your funds. Some of the best practices include:

Always Double-check your public address before sending funds

It’s compulsory to double check the address that you are sending any payment transaction to. There are have been cases of malicious programs integrated into user’s wallet that can edit a ‘copy and paste’ procedure in order to paste a different address that belongs to an attacker. To be sure enough, it is also recommended to send a micropayment as a verification, and then send the larger payment to the verified address.

Always use Two-factor authentication

The benefit of using two-factor authentication (2FA) can’t be overemphasized. 2FA can be done either using a third party application like the Google Authenticator and Authy apps or by adding a biometric identification or through the use of pin codes and SMS verifications. If your wallet allows for it, make sure you always use it.

Check the security signatures when accessing a website

It’s important when using a web wallet, to ensure that there is an SSL security mark in the address window of your web browser. This stands for secure site seal and ensures that your browsing is encrypted. Also, the website should begin with HTTPS, rather than HTTP and you should notice a lock sign next to the URL. This will prevent you from giving out your data willingly to attackers.

Avoid clicking unknown links from your mail

Many cases of phishing attacked have been reported. Phishing scams through Google Ads and through email are becoming more and more elaborate in the crypto world. Phishing scams, make sure email received from wallet companies have their domain spelled correctly and never look for their web address clicking on Google ads. Once you send a phishing website your private key you can say goodbye to your funds. Mistakenly sending your private data through untrusted links means your fund are close to being hijacked from you.

Avoid unnecessary updates

Application bugs downloaded from some updates can potentially create vulnerabilities into your wallet software, which could lead to massive losses for account holders. It’s best to wait 2-3 days after an update has been released to see if any bugs appear. Once the reviews by other users indicates a positive result in the use of the application, you can go ahead installing the update to your device. It’s always a good idea to turn off auto-updates for crypto-wallet applications.