This post is a part of series on Crypto currencies and aspects around it.

Idea is to keep it short and in simple English.

Crypto Currency Wallets

Unlike a normal wallet, which can hold actual cash. Crypto wallets technically don’t store your crypto coins in the wallet.

Your holdings is live on the blockchain, but can only be accessed using a private key (a string of letter and numbers). Your keys prove your ownership of your digital money and allow you to make transactions. If you lose your private keys, you lose access to your money.

That’s why it’s important to keep your wallet safe by using trusted wallet provider like Coinbase, Gnosis, Coinswitch etc. or keep in safe custody if you are using hardware to store your private keys.

What are the options for Crypto wallets

There are variety of the option in the wallet, depending on your need like – security of the assets, accessibility of the assets, cost of the storage etc.

But there are three main kind of wallets which anyone can have and use it for storing their Crypto assets –

1. Paper

As mentioned in the starting, wallet only store the private keys. So, you can just write the private keys of your crypto assets and keep the paper safe with you.

Whenever you need to use the coins, just take the private key and get some kind of mobile digital wallet to import the token reference in your digital wallet and then it can be used.

Advantage – it is safe and no one can access it unless they can get the paper with private keys.

Disadvantage – Its offline, so cannot be used for buying, selling, trading unless it is linked to some digital mobile wallet.

2. Hardware Wallet

As the name suggest, you can use specific kind of hardware to record your private keys in the USB type of a devise (latest ones are know as “Nano X” which support many kind of tokens).

These are ideally kept offline and only connected to internet when you need to make an transactions.

Ideal for the long term purpose, where you want to keep you private keys away from the online network, which reduces the risk of hacking and misuse. But it has its challenges like physical storage, control of access, risk of loss.

3. Digital Wallets

Most commonly used and appropriate for people or institutions who trade in Crypto.

This is some kind of software or app which store your private keys. These are used to make the transaction of the coins easy i.e. you can send or receive tokens of any quantity at the click of button. You can think of it as online bank account or online demat account which can be used to buy things or linked to live market to sell and purchase different type of tokens.

It is ideal, to use the well renowned wallet service providers and always use to 2 step encryption feature, to keep you assets safe.

Hopefully this given you basic idea and the options you have to keep you digital assets safe, depending on your requirement.

Stay tuned, for more Crypto currency related topics will follow.

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