Since we’re living in a dynamic era, bringing the most important with you has become a must-have condition to feel comfortable. That’s why most of our laptops functions have become integrated into our mobiles. What I would like to talk about now is to basically wear your crypto wallet with you and access it anywhere at any time – right into your smartphone.
A mobile wallet is simply a smartphone application that stores and encrypts / decrypts your private key to be used when needed. In the crypto world, a wallet is not necessarily a wallet per say, as we understand it in the world of fiat currency. A wallet in crypto has two main function – to generate and store your private key and keep it secured by encrypting it.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
There are multiple important criteria when picking a mobile wallet, so I’ll stop by only on the most important things to consider. Check the following elements:
| General | Security and Privacy | Fees and support |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-currency functionality – some wallets only support one currency, while others allow you to use the same wallet for different cryptocurrencies. Depending on your usage and how you plan to make money a multi-currency feature is another thing to consider when choosing. | 2FA – obviously security is the most important feature of your wallet. You need a wallet to securely store your private key before all else. When choosing your wallet look for 2 factor-authentication, encryption of the private keys and where they store the private keys – in the phone’s memory or on the app’s server memory. | Custom transaction fees – this option is for more advanced people and allows you to set custom fees for the miners to validate the transaction. Beware, if you don’t know what you are doing you might set a fee to low so that your transaction wouldn’t get approved for blocks to come and your coins will be “stuck” in the blockchain for a while. |
| Open / closed source – being able to see and inspect the source code of a mobile cryptocurrency app makes all the difference for some people. Even if you are not one that can read and understand the source code, the fact the developer is giving it away speaks for transparency and openness and that play a role for people when choosing their wallet. | Multi-signature option (aka multi sig in crypto) – this option can be seen as an added security layer. The multisig feature refers to multiple people signing off before funds are transferred from your “account”. Unlike the traditional way where you decide to send coins and do it via the receiver’s public address, with multisig you need 2 or more people to also approve the transaction before it can be done. | Customer support – an important added feature for mobile wallets. Some mobile wallets have a line you can call for questions and help while bigger wallets even have a 24/7 hotline for questions and problem. With the rapid changes in cryptocurrencies and blockchain having someone to call as a last reserve makes all the difference. |
| Open / closed source – being able to see and inspect the source code of a mobile cryptocurrency app makes all the difference for some people. Even if you are not one that can read and understand the source code, the fact the developer is giving it away speaks for transparency and openness and that play a role for people when choosing their wallet. | Multi-signature option (aka multi sig in crypto) – this option can be seen as an added security layer. The multisig feature refers to multiple people signing off before funds are transferred from your “account”. Unlike the traditional way where you decide to send coins and do it via the receiver’s public address, with multisig you need 2 or more people to also approve the transaction before it can be done. | Customer support – an important added feature for mobile wallets. Some mobile wallets have a line you can call for questions and help while bigger wallets even have a 24/7 hotline for questions and problem. With the rapid changes in cryptocurrencies and blockchain having someone to call as a last reserve makes all the difference. |
| Software updates – if you’re willing to use the latest features available, you should always stay tuned with the most recent upgrade of your app. This will guarantee you security enhancements, which might be a crucial point to protect your funds. | HD wallets – here the couple of keys is generated by a seed, which lets you to easily backup and restore your credentials at some point. Something else to speak of the opportunity to have a new public address each time you receive a transaction, which will make them hard to track. | Community trust – this one is rather subjective but with the spotlight being on cryptocurrencies right now, everyone is talking, asking and reviewing stuff around it, and a lot of people have reviewed almost every mobile wallet on the market. Having a look at their comments, feedback and problems can also give you an idea of what the wallet is all about and if it’s worth it. |
Each wallet would have a slight deviation from the points below, but in general almost all the mobile wallets on the market will follow the same steps: