Topic: Things to consider when choosing a Bitcoin wallet (Read 131 times)

You mention the importance of being open-source and then you recommend using trustwallet?
When it comes to security, I don't see any difference between Exodus and trustwallet. Both are close-course and we don't know whether they have access to the keys or not.

Exodus wallet sucks and that's a wrong wallet to advice newbies to use, do you know how important a decentralized and open source wallet is? Exodus isn't one of them, electrum and trust wallet are the best mobile wallets around and the biggest best is hardware wallet, period.

It is good when Beginners make this kind of educative posts about wallets and how to secure your bitcoin. Most at times, you see new members interested in the merit system or how to make money from the bounty section.How did you arrive at this knowledge?
Do you have any data to back up your claim.

Newbies should not be confused with this private key and seed phrase backup feature, it only means that the seed phrase and private keys generated by reputable hardware wallets are generated offline in a way it is yet practically impossible for online attack to extract the seed phrase and private keys.

Seed phrase should be well backup on paper, laminated paper or metallic sheet offline in a way it will be resistant to offline attacks. Two replica is necessary for backup in different locations.

I will prefer Electrum because it has more features like:

• lightning network
• coin control
• address freeze
• Can be used on airgapped devices for cold storage
• Can be used as watch-only wallet (watch-only wallets can not be used for spending, only for tracking transactions)

Coin control can aid in maintaining privacy. Mycelium wallet support ethereum and ERC20 tokens, I read about that, you can correct me if I am wrong about Mycelium wallet supported coins.

Trustwallet is close source wallet, there is nothing worst than that, the reason it is better to go for hardware wallets that support altcoins for altcoin purposes.

Do not always believe what you read online, Electrum is still easy to use for beginners.

For privacy, Bitcoin Core, using it with Tor.

Important/must have:
1. It has to be a reputable non-custodial wallet with source available.
2. It has to have completely customizable fee, coin control, all RBF functionalities (not only the flag)
3. Obviously SegWit.

Others (pretty much important to me)
* HD seed
* Support for HW
* LN
* Backward compatibility (legacy wallets)
* Relevant addresses should be visible


Although the list is not meant specifically to show what Electrum for desktop can do, unfortunately I don't think that any/many other wallets have all this.

Coin control, not cointrol  

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Some resources to share with you

• Recommended wallets
• Notyourkeys.org. Not your keys, not your coins. Read it to know how bad when hacks happen. How many hacks happen in history, etc.
• How do I choose a wallet?
• Bitcoin Q&A: Using a Password Manager to Backup Crypto Keys
• Crypto Security: Passwords and Authentication
• Don't trust, verify your wallet. Electrum is a light wallet to use and there is a guide How to verify Electrum wallet. Do verify for other wallets you want to use as well.

As a beginner it is required to have a particular need or a desiring purpose before choosing a particular bitcoin wallet as we have thousands of wallets but serving different purpose, basically we have four categories of wallets which are: Mobile wallets, Desktop wallet, Web wallets and Hardware wallets and my major area of focus for writing on this is to analyze the reasons for selecting a particular type of wallet to suit a purpose.

KEY AREAS OF CONSIDERATIONS:


EXPLANATION IN DETAILS

1. Wallet that supports coinjoin/coin control? there is a  wallet in this category as such, Wasabi wallet is worth recommendable.

2. Wallet suitable for multiple transaction at a time with lesser transaction fee and time.?  the lightening network focus on creating a solution to that and there are wallets suitable for such purpose like: Phoenix wallet and breez wallet.

3.  Multi-sig wallet where by two or more people termed co-signers can have access to the wallet? electrum wallet is the best and suitably applicable for this purpose.

4. Wallet with private keys/backup features? this is also one of the desiring features one can sought for, in this category HD wallet is considered.

5. Bitcoin only supporting wallet? here are some of the best suitable bitcoin wallet you could use, mycelium wallet and electrum wallet.

6. Bitcoin and multi currency wallet? in this category we have trezor and trust wallet.

7. Best wallet suitable for beginners: Exodus wallet and some mobile wallets.