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The most definitive post on Bitcoin Wallets

How do you store bitcoin? Simple… By using a bitcoin wallet thats how. Here are our tips for which BTC wallet is best for your needs.

If you are a beginner on bitcoins and starting out to store your minute BTC deposits, it would be best to read our post here first. Having an online Wallet is the way to go. It’s easily accessible anywhere in the world plus you can opt to have security functions such as 2 Factor Authentication. We recommend these three wallet providers for online wallets:

Blockchain wallet

Blockchain.info is a user-friendly hybrid wallet. It stores an encrypted version of your wallet online but decryption happens in your browser. For security reasons, you should always use the browser extension and email backups (and keep that email secure).

At Blockchain, they build innovative software that makes using Bitcoin safe, easy, and secure for all consumers and businesses anywhere in the world. They have raised over 30 million in capital from top tier investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Wicklow Capital, and Sir Richard Branson.

Blockchain is currently the provider of the world’s most popular Bitcoin Wallet, the most widely used Bitcoin APIs, the most popular block explorer and search engine, and has what is widely recognized as the strongest, most trusted brand in Bitcoin. Experiencing a rapid expansion during the course of two years, Blockchain exploded from 100,000 users to over 3,500,000 users. Blockchain is one of the easiest and fastest wallets to use when selling stuff for bitcoins.

Bitgo

BitGo is a high-security multi-sig wallet, which protects your bitcoin from theft and loss. You maintain full custody; BitGo cannot spend or freeze funds. BitGo wallets are easy to use and offer advanced security features such as spending limits and multi-user access.

Trusted by leading BTC exchanges such as kraken.io, bitstamp and bitfinex. Some of the other exchanges like Paxful and Gemini are also rooting for Bitgo due to it’s security measures and ease of use.

Bitgo is currently offering Bitgo Enterprise, the first multi-signature and multi-user solution for financial institutions and corporations where they can manage their bitcoin properties in an enterprise level of security.

Coinkite

Coinkite is a powerful and easy to use web wallet. It has a lot of security features including memorable image which resist phishing and two factor authentication. It offers multisig and shared wallets with options for offline generation of keys.

Coinkite also offers a hardware device or a point-of-sale payment terminal, intended for a retail store setting. It includes a receipt printer and a QR scanner that can be used for bitcoin transactions without using a computer.

It also offers all its clients a Debit card which can be used at the payment terminals. It can also be used anywhere since it has a bitcoin address at the back of the card which links to the user’s Coinkite account.

Usually, online wallets are good for fast paced transactions if you want instant sending to your favorite online betting and online gambling sites. If you want a more secure Bitcoin wallet, you can opt for desktop or offline wallets. Unlike online wallets, desktop wallets are stored in the user’s computer, and not on a faraway network server. They are feature-rich Bitcoin clients and have the highest level of security. Desktop wallets are the most secure way of storing private keys.

Once installed in a computer, desktop wallets need to be updated by downloading the blockchain. This may take time in dowloading gigabytes of blockchain and it requires a powerful PC hardware. We recommend these three wallet providers for desktop wallets:

Bitcoin Armory

Armory is one of those bitcoin wallets that are rich in features and have secure platform. It has triple different modes which are the Standard, the Advanced and the Developer. Its security features include an illustrative keyboard that gives protection against keyloggers, support for deterministic Bitcoin wallets, offline transactions and options for wide range cold storage.

Doing transactions offline definetly increase security and protection for your wallet. Armory does not have any features for networking, so it does require the official Bitcoin Core wallet. Armory can be run on Windows, Linux and Mac. It can also be run as an Ubuntu PPA.

Multibit

Multibit wallet is a lightweight software. Compared to other software wallets, private keys are encrypted locally or through a USB stick. Multibit is very fast to use because it does not need to download the entire blockchain to send, receive and access funds. It connects to the Bitcoin network directly and downloads only few parts of the blockchain, thus giving also a lot of free space on the user’s hard drive. Multibit is available in 35 languages and can run ob Windows, Mac and Linux.

Electrum

Electrum is also a lightweight software wallet. It supports multiple wallets from a seed or, in other words, deterministic wallets. It allows offline transactions and ” root public key” which allows compatible applications to monitor your bitcoin wallet. Electrum also supports importing and exporting of private keys from other BTC wallets.

Electrum is also fast like Multibit and also available on Windows, Linux, Mac and Android platforms.

If you want to bring your Bitcoin wallet anywhere without using a computer, then you should buy for a hardware or mobile bitcoin wallet. Hardware Bitcoin wallets are devices that store a part of your software Bitcoin wallet securely. The private keys are stored securely in the microcontroller and cannot be moved out from the device easily in plaintext. It is also safe from computer viruses and attackerd which steal bitcoins from software wallets. We recommend these three wallet providers for hardware wallets:

Keepkey

Keepkey is one of the newest hardware wallet in the Cryptocurrency industry. It does not only supports Bitcoin but also Litecoin, Testnet, Namecoin, Dash and Dogecoin. It also offers a chrome interface (only for Bitcoin though). Getting started with it is easy. You only need to download two chrome apps, first is for generating the wallet and second is for connecting to Keepkey.

The keepkey hardware is a beautifully designed and user-friendly device making it the most expensive hardware wallet. If you do not mind the price, this would be the coolest device for you.

Trezor

Trezor was developed by Satoshilabs and is currently priced at 99 USD. It is USB dongle designed for adding extra authentication in sending bitcoins.

Trezor is designed to be used on any computers and is impermeable to keyloggers and any vector attack. So however unsafe your computer is, there is no way for attackers to get your private key.

In addition, Trezor does not use standard random algorithms. Instead, it uses deterministic signatures and various different sources in generating the ranfom seed.

Trezor offers minimal interface to users for fast processing of transactions. A PIN is required to access the wallet and transactions are approved on the device. For users’ convenience, Trezor now supports Electrum 2.0 and Multibit HD wallets.

Ledger Wallet Nano

Ledger Nano is also a deterministic multisignature wallet that uses second security layer as Trezor does. This type of security does not allow any attack vectors that steals private keys. This security is in form of a security card which is used to sign in every purchase, together with the codes that needs to be entered by the user.

Hardware wise, Ledger wallet nano is a smartcard based compact USB device about the size of a flash drive. When it comes to security, Ledger Nano, although physically similar to flash drives, does not use NAND memory used by most USB drives. Ledger Nano was offered a thirty-year guarantee by the developer of EEPROM memory used in the CC EAL5+ smartcard on data retention and 500,000 read or write cycles.

Installing Ledger Nano is also easy with the use of a Google Chrome application. Plug the Ledger device into a USB port and get access to my.ledgerwallet.com to install the Chrome app. The Chrome app then is connected to the Ledger’s API server which has access to the blockchain.

CoolWallet

CoolWallet is considered as the most convenient Bitcoin cold storage device. It can be used in storing, sending and spending Bitcoin. It is designed as a card-like device which is safe and easy to use. It has E-paper display, bends up to 15 degrees and is waterproof. Private keys are kept securely in the card without allowing it to be exposed in any situation.

It features an HD wallet which allows until five accounts with almost unlimited bitcoin addresses. It also uses seed in restoring accounts. Private keys are not stored in the cloud and only the user has the access on the private keys.

CoolWallet is the first wireless cold storage device. It uses Tap Tap function in sending OTP by tapping the card twice. It has also a Watchdog feature which alerts the user when the users phone and CoolWallet is apart at a certain distance or one to ten meters apart.

In comparison, each type of Bitcoin wallets offers its own different advantages to Bitcoin wallet users and each wallet providers gives unique and useful features and cool stuffs to entice users to try them. There are a lot of ways to buy and sell stuff using bitcoin nowadays. In the end, it depends upon the users’ preferences according to how do they use their Bitcoins. So we did recommend on the list above, the best Bitcoin wallets on each type of to help you choose the best that suits you.

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This post first appeared on Bitcoin Everything | Your #1 Bitcoin Resource, please read the originial post: here

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The most definitive post on Bitcoin Wallets

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