Getting a bitcoin wallet

To start making payments with bitcoin, we need a bitcoin wallet. However, before we create a wallet, we should be aware of the following things:

• Security: We should take steps to secure our wallet. There are a lot of different features that come with different wallets. You should evaluate all of them and choose whichever is best for you.
• Volatility: The bitcoin price is volatile and goes up and down, depending on market conditions.

Note

There are a few more things that you need to be aware of. For more information, refer to https://bitcoin.org/en/you-need-to-know.

The different forms of bitcoin wallet

Bitcoin wallets come in a lot of different forms. Some of them are listed here:

• There are smartphone app wallets, there are online web wallets—for example, blockchain.info and coinbase.info—there are desktop-based wallets for macOS, Linux, and Windows operating systems, and there are also dedicated hardware-based wallets.
• Online web wallets can be accessed from any web browser and from any operating system, so that makes it quite platform-independent:
  • One of the most popular ones is coinbase.info, where you can purchase and send bitcoins.
  • There are a few others as well, such as BitGo, BTC.com, Coin.Space, GreenAddress, and so on. There are also mobile wallets that you can use from your smartphone. They are available for Android phones, Windows phones, Blackberries, and iOS phones. Some of the most popular ones are breadwallet, Coin.Space, Mycelium, and so on.
• There are also wallets that are available for desktop computers running on all operating systems. Some of the popular ones are bitcoin Core, GreenAddress, and BitGo, among others.
• Bitcoin wallets may require specific hardware solutions, for example, Trezor. Trezor is a hardware wallet that has a lot more security, and we can even sign transactions, connect to an online device, and spend bitcoins from this wallet. It is a separate device, so it's much more secure and less prone to hacking. It is also recommended that you use bitcoin cold storage for a large number of bitcoins. Bitcoin cold storage can be held offline, like in a paper-money wallet. For this purpose, you can get a bitcoin address from bitaddress.org, which can be used to send bitcoins and then store the details offline.