Where do I store Cryptocurrency?

What is a wallet? Best wallet types and hardware wallet brands.

A cryptocurrency wallet, is essentially a unique bank account number where your balance is stored. It is a very long sequence of randomly generated numbers and letters. When a new wallet is created, two addresses are created. One is called your “public key”. Your public key is the address you give people so that they can send you cryptocurrency. The second address is called your “private key”. Your private key is the address you must keep secure, as it is how you can send cryptocurrency to other people. This is why you must not ever share your private key with anyone and keep it stored in a safe place. If someone gets ahold of your private key, they can send all of your cryptocurrency to their wallet and your funds will be lost.

There are many wallet types. Some exchanges allow you to store your cryptocurrency directly on their platform through what is called a “hot wallet”. This means that it is stored on the internet and can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection with only a few security features. We recommend everyone once they purchase cryptocurrency through an exchange, transfer their investment to an offline wallet, or “cold storage”.

There are also several types of “cold wallet”, such as a paper wallet. You can actually create a public and private key offline and print the information out on a piece of paper. This is very secure, however, you can probably see where either losing paper or the risk of damaging the paper and not being able to read the addresses is fairly high. That is why we recommend purchasing hardware to store your cryptocurrency.

The best and most secure place to store cryptocurrency is on a “hardware wallet”. This is a specially designed device that encrypts your private wallet keys. This will allow you to securely access your private key to send cryptocurrency, without actually having to enter the address anywhere. You also will be able to recover your assets at any time from another wallet should anything happen to your device. In order to send cryptocurrency from a hardware wallet, you must authorize transactions directly on the device.

This is what makes using a hardware wallet the safest and best option to store cryptocurrency. Not only are they the most secure, but they offer support for a wide range of assets. Below are the three of the best brands of hardware wallets. We recommend buying any of these wallets before buying your first cryptocurrency and will help keep your investment secure immediately.

Ledger – The most widely used hardware wallet, Ledger makes storing your cryptocurrency easy. They offer support for hundreds of different cryptocurrencies and tokens. With their new Ledger Live platform, viewing your portfolio is simple and makes securely sending and receiving multiple cryptocurrencies.

Cobo – Originally just one of the most popular mobile cryptocurrency wallets, Cobo is on the forefront of new highly secure hardware wallets. They offer three varieties of their tablet style hardware wallet, as well as, a steel tablet to store your recovery phrase for the hardware device. This offers a double layer of protection as you can place your recovery phrase on the fireproof tablet and rest easy that you will always be able to recover your assets even if something happens to your device.