Bitcoin Wallet – Introduction

A Bitcoin wallet is necessary to send, receive or spend Bitcoins. Together with your private key, a Bitcoin wallet is your entry ticket to the world of Bitcoin.

A Bitcoin wallet can be a device, app, or a website that manages access to your Bitcoins with your private key.

There are literally thousands of Bitcoin wallets out there – keep reading to find the best one for you.

Hardware Bitcoin wallets are one of the safest Bitcoin wallets out there. They are physical devices that are manufactured to keep your Bitcoins safe. Similar to the Two-Step Authentication for your eWallet Accounts, the Hardware wallets combine something that you know (The PIN for the wallet) with something that you have in your hand (the hardware wallet).

This way, anyone who wants to gain access to your Bitcoins needs to have both – this greatly enhances the security of the wallet.

This Security comes at a price – these hardware wallets range from 70 EUR to 90 EUR. For anyone who wants to store at least one Bitcoin or who cannot afford to lose his Bitcoins, a hardware wallet is a must-buy.

The table on the left gives you a quick overview of the two best Bitcoin hardware wallets on the market.

My personal favorite is the Trezor, as it is overall the best made and thoroughly thought through – the usability is smooth, and the hardware is built reliably.

Naturally, it would be best if you kept your Hardware wallet PIN safe. The same is true for the recovery seed, in case you do not have physical access to your device anymore.

Storing your Bitcoin wallet on paper is another beautiful way of safely storing Bitcoin. You can write down your Bitcoin Address and your private key. This way, someone needs to obtain the paper wallet physically to be able to access your Bitcoins. But beware, if this piece of paper gets lost, so are your Bitcoins for all time – you need to store it safely, preferably in more than one version. Find out how to make a paper wallet here

Hot wallets are wallets that are stored only online, no matter if you access them through software, app, or website. This means there are two big risks: First, someone can obtain your private key and address by grabbing that information from your computer, internet traffic, or simply gaining access to your computer. Secondly, the website offering the hot wallet can be hacked, causing you to lose access to your wallet and, with it, your Bitcoins. While hot wallets are an okay way to store a small number of Bitcoins online temporarily, never store your Bitcoins on Bitcoin exchanges – they are constant targets of hacks. History (Mt. Gox cough) has shown that big Bitcoin thefts from Exchanges are possible and will happen again.

Hot wallets that we recommend due to the good usability and security features (Google Authenticator or phone verification) are:

• blockchain.info
• https://electrum.org/
• https://greenaddress.it/en/