World of Wallets - Electronic Cash

2-minute read
Bitcoin • Wallets

Bitcoin

Some examples which software can be used to handle your keys. Those tools are NOT A BACKUP!

For every setup you will need to be able to remember different passwords in a safe way. To store your keys in a secure way is another topic. Everyone needs to choose between hardware wallets or pure software wallets. Both ways got pros and cons. Now we will address the software to ACCESS your cash in a daily use.

Storage Types

  • Hot Wallet is stored on internet connected device. Mostly your android phone got some hot wallets installed or your using a wallet on your desktop which needs to sync data from internet and send transactions to other servers.

  • Cold Wallet is stored on an “air-gapped” device or USB-Stick and always needs to sign transactions as a security gate.

  • Paper Wallet is only available in plain text and stored pure digital or on paper. Free choice and maximum control and independency without any comfort.

Address Types

There are three address types:

  • Legacy (P2PKH): addresses start with a 1.
  • Nested SegWit (P2SH): addresses start with a 3.
  • Native SegWit (bech32): addresses start with bc1.

Electrum

Electrum is a very early wallet solution with fokus to support a lot of ways to access your keys and sign transactions with hardware wallets and electrum compatible clients. This software is highly maintained and a big userbase.

Samourai

Samourai is an alternative way to electrum but with more focus on privacy. For this purpose Samourai introduced great software solutions for PayNym and Whirlpool (CoinJoin/Mixer) within his samourai wallet. This wallet connects to a public dojo per default. To host your own dojo is possible like it is with electrum.

Sources:

Best way is to build it on your own as always. Second best way is to install specific APK and update yourself. Third method would be to simply use F-Droid and always trust the Samourai Domain.

Bitaddress

This is a pure javascript solution and can be used offline to generate legacy bitcoin paper wallets (WIF compressed and BIP38 encrypted) in a secure way