How to Choose a Bitcoin Wallet? | CryptoCompare.com

Bitcoin choose your wallet

Bitcoin Wallet / April 21, 2015

Bitcoin is significantly different from any financial tool we have ever used. For this reason, it is crucial to take the time to educate yourself about the special features and the dynamics of cryptographic environment. In order to start Bitcoin trading or mining, it is important to choose an appropriate wallet that would securely store your funds and fulfill all your requirements such as easiness of operation, anonymity, etc.

A bitcoin wallet helps you to store your bitcoins. From the technical point of view, it’s all about a private key, a special bitcoin address, that is saved in bitcoin wallet of the one who owns it. So the main purpose of the Bitcoin wallets lies in safely storing the private keys of your Bitcoin address and easily attaining it when signing transaction or spending the digital funds. All bitcoin wallets (bitcoin paper wallet, offline bitcoin wallet, bitcoin desktop wallet, bitcoin mobile wallet, bitcoin online wallet) helps to send and receive bitcoins and shows the bitcoin balance.

The question of “where to store bitcoins” is one of the most substantial decisions for a Bitcoin user. That’s why we have done this article with a thorough Bitcoin wallet review for all the Bitcoin wallets.

What are the main types of wallets?

Currently, Bitcoin enthusiasts can create Bitcoin wallets of the following kind: mobile Bitcoin wallet, desktop Bitcoin wallet, hardware Bitcoin wallet, Bitcoin paper wallet, offline Bitcoin wallet, and online Bitcoin wallet. This is how they work.

Bitcoin Desktop wallets

Bitcoiners, who have already installed the original Bitcoin client (Bitcoin-Qt), already have access to a wallet that relays transaction on the network. This software can also be used for creating a Bitcoin address for spending and receiving digital currency. Certain desktop wallets are known for the advanced levels of security — Armory is a good example. Hive (OS X based), MultiBit (Windows, OS X, and Linux), DarkWallet (anonymity-focused) are among the most popular desktop wallets.

Bitcoin Mobile wallets

Mobile wallets operate as apps on mobile phones and are considered to be more convenient than desktop wallets due to their advanced mobility. Owners of these wallets can pay for products with their smartphones. Some mobile wallets allow users to benefit from the near-field communication (NFC) feature that processes payment through tapping the phone against a reader without the necessity of entering any information. Most popular mobile wallets are Mycelium, Xapo, and Blockchain.

Bitcoin Paper wallets

One of the cheapest and most commonly used Bitcoin wallets is Bitcoin paper wallet, also known as offline Bitcoin wallet. These wallets do not allow the privet keys to having any contact with the digital world. A paper wallet implies an image with two QR codes — the first containing your Bitcoin address, the other one encrypting your private key. Bitcoin paper wallet as part of the offline Bitcoin wallet category is not subject to cyber hacking and are considered to be relatively secure. Several sites offer Bitcoin paper wallet services.

Source: blog.cex.io