Bitcoin is one of the newest and strangest ways to make money. “Making money” is such an odd phrase.
It gives the impression that the money is being printed, or made up, or fabricated in some wrong way.
The truth is, that is as much the case for stocks and foreign currency as it is for any cryptocurrency, Bitcoin or otherwise. The difference between stocks and Bitcoin is that Bitcoin is decentralised.
You need to keep this decentralisation in mind in order to keep hold of any amount of Bitcoin. If you want to buy Bitcoin and use it for either spending or making money, then you need a special tool to hold it. Bitcoin is held using a “wallet”. But this wallet works differently than the one in your pocket.
But let’s slow down—how is Bitcoin “decentralised”? What does that mean? How does it affect how Bitcoin is stored? What are the best wallets for storing Bitcoin? Let’s take these questions one at a time.
What are the best Bitcoin wallets out there? We have looked, and have ten to present to you.
Table of Contents:
The Best 10 Bitcoin Wallets in the UK 🇬🇧️
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1. Coinbase – Best Crypto Wallet for New Traders
There are two sides to the Coinbase coin. The first side is the consumer side. This is the place where you can buy and trade all kinds of currency.
It contains a huge resource library that will tell you everything you need to know about the cryptocurrency market. But it is not where you store your cryptocurrency.
The other side is the wallet side. This is technically insulated from the consumer side of Coinbase. The Coinbase Wallet is a crypto wallet you can use to store your Bitcoin even if you did not acquire that Bitcoin from Coinbase. This reflects the greater mission of Coinbase: To connect the world of crypto.
Coinbase is the most friendly wallet to beginners because it lets you work your way into the world of crypto at your own pace. Many apps, whether they are wallets, trading apps, or both, make it easy to get overwhelmed. They are trying to strike a difficult balance between features and ease of use.
The more features something has, the harder it becomes to use. But the easier it is to use, the less methods you have of maximising the value you get out of it. What is the solution to this?
Coinbase solves the problem by making the tool you need most a different tool from the ones that are the most complex. The wallet allows you to access any tool on Coinbase, but it does not give you constant access to them. The interface is simply designed to only show you what you want.
Because Coinbase is meant to be a hub for all crypto culture, it is also great at integrating other wallet tools. This means that if you have a device you want to use to store your keys, or if you have algorithms from other wallet software that you have found reliable, then you can combine them with Coinbase.
This usually amounts to using the same storage system for Bitcoin acquired through a variety of different platforms. In fact, it can even store things like normal currencies and NFTs.
Drawbacks 👎️
While most wallets have a pretty token account creation process, Coinbase Wallet shares its account creation with the main Coinbase site. While this has the advantage of giving you access to the main Coinbase site, it has the disadvantage of the main Coinbase site having stricter account requirements.
In short, a person with bad credit will not be able to make any kind of Coinbase account. Your credit has to be pretty bad for this to happen, but it can happen. This is to make sure that bots and scammers stay away from the platform, but has the downside of affecting the less fortunate as well.
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2. eToro – Best Bitcoin Wallet for Diversification
Bitcoin is a great currency with a lot of uses and an immense potential for value.
But the thing is, making money off of it does not mean buying it and sitting on it to wait for its price to increase over time. Or rather, that is one way to make money off of it. The problem is that it is the slowest way.
If you want to grow your Bitcoin holdings (or, more importantly, grow your liquidity) then you are going to need to be able to interact with more of the market. That means more crypto and more securities at least.
That is what eToro provides. It is a wallet, a trading platform, and a cryptocurrency community that allows the trade of crypto for the securities it connects you with.
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This means that you can invest your Bitcoin as if it were a normal currency and get your pay out in whatever form you choose to.
For this reason, eToro is known more as a trading platform for people who hold crypto more than a wallet. But its services as a wallet are well above average. It has tight security, tons of regulation due to all the markets it interacts with, and lots of tools for recovering your keys should you lose them.
It also has one of the better research and learning centres of all the wallets on this list. This is because it is, indeed, a trading platform first. Trading platforms need a lot of tools for learning and analysis in order to help people make the best trades they can. You can make use of all of that for free.
Drawbacks 👎️
The abundance of focus on trading will turn a lot of people off from eToro, however. The wallet tools are limited and clearly a secondary intention. There are recovery tools for your keys, but they are tied up in eToro’s customer service system rather than a dedicated key recovery tool.
This is both an inconvenience and a security issue. Their trading tools are also good, but all things considered they have more ways of trading than they have things to trade. What that means is that they do not have many stocks on offer compared to the different ways you can buy and sell those stocks.
None of this is going to be a deal breaker if you want to make use of a crypto-focused trading platform that has tools for acting as a wallet as well. Just remember that its use as a wallet is an afterthought.
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3. Coinmama – Best Bitcoin Wallet
If you are based in the United Kingdom, then you need a Bitcoin wallet that will allow you to acquire Bitcoin in either the British Pound or the Euro.
Coinmama allows for both, as well as the US Dollar.
But that is not your only need. Being able to buy cryptocurrency with whatever money you make or trade in is quite normal. If a wallet does not allow you to do that, then it is barely a wallet.
However, most wallets are going to require that you link your bank account to them. This means providing detailed personal information and going through a verification process that can take days.
You might not have days. The world of cryptocurrency moves fast, especially with high value currencies like Bitcoin. Luckily, Coinmama allows you to purchase Bitcoin without linking a bank account. How? By giving you access to the Bitcoin through purchase by credit or debit card. That is much less common.
Coinmama is protected by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a law enforcement agency based in the United States. This means that it is well-protected and highly official, lending it plenty of trust. As you will see, trust is one of the main things crypto brokers lack due to how new the industry is.
Drawbacks 👎️
The biggest issue with Coinmama is that it lacks a wider market. Many crypto wallets will allow you to trade crypto for other crypto, or even trade crypto for securities like stocks and options.
Coinmama’s main focus is on getting the crypto to you and keeping it safe. These are great goals, but mainly for beginners whose focus is more on getting the Bitcoin than maximising its value.
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4. Ledger – Best Physical Accessory
A Bitcoin wallet has to be able to connect to the internet in order to use the Bitcoin inside it.
But while it is easy to conflate the two, the function of the wallet is different from the function of Bitcoin.
In short, the job of accessing Bitcoin is different from the job of being able to access it. Let’s explain.
Imagine you have a treasure vault. The vault has a lock to keep it safe. The lock has a key to open it.
The wallet acts as the lock and must be connected to the internet in order for the blockchain to act as the vault. Obviously, Bitcoin is the treasure inside. But the key does not contain anything.
That means the key can be anything. It can be a slip of paper with a password on it. It can be a computer program that opens the wallet for you. It can even be an algorithm that produces a password.
Ledger offers one of the most secure keys to your treasure vault’s lock: A completely offline, physical data accessory that produces the password for accessing your crypto. But how does that even work?
Well, imagine a ridiculously complex math equation. The beautiful thing about math is that no matter how complex the equation, it will always give the same output. That means if the same equation is running in two different places, then it will produce the same result no matter what.
Ledger’s Nano S Plus is a device that does exactly that. While your online wallet runs one algorithm for what its password is, the Nano S Plus runs the same algorithm. But because the Nano S Plus is offline, it is far more secure on every level. It produces the password for you, but it does not transmit any data.
This means that the only way the password is leaving your device is by inputting yourself.
Drawbacks 👎️
Ledger has some of the best security of any Bitcoin wallet. This makes it all the more galling that its site requires a lot of personal information for you to do business with it.
This is partly required for its password recovery tools just in case you lose your device. But many people, especially the kind of people who get into Bitcoin, are uncomfortable with sharing this kind of data.
The data in question depends on the products you use. Not all wallet hardware will track your location, but some will, as it is part of their security functionality to let you know where you dropped them.
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5. KuCoin – Best Bitcoin Wallet for Trading
Bitcoin is a currency. That means it is meant to be spent, or at least traded. Most trading platforms are focused on stocks and their associated securities.
That means it can be hard to find where you can use your Bitcoin to make money.
Even harder is finding a place where you can spend it like normal money.
KuCoin is a Bitcoin wallet that allows for trades of this type. KuCoin allows you to buy Bitcoin (and tons of other cryptocurrencies directly. But once you have those currencies, you can then trade them with other currencies. But you might be wondering: How do other cryptocurrencies work?
Well, most cryptocurrencies use at least the same blockchain basis that Bitcoin does. That means they are compatible with the same wallet. They will usually use different apps to make sure that they do not end up sharing one network, but those apps will work pretty similarly between all of them.
KuCoin is also a social trading platform. That means that you do not just put your Bitcoin up for sale and wait for someone to come and buy it. You can actively seek out buyers and negotiate trades with them.
The advantage of this is that it means you can build trust. Repeated interactions are the foundation of trust, and you cannot make repeated trades with the same person if all trades are anonymous, as is the case with most trading apps. That means you can make trades that would otherwise not be possible.
Basically, if you can communicate with someone, then you can make promises. You can say, “We have traded before. We will trade again. Give me more Bitcoin than you usually would not, and I will make it worth it to you after my holdings pay out later.”
This sort of interaction is impossible on other platforms. It also creates a situation where reputation becomes important, meaning that you can get trades through people talking about how good you are to trade with.
Drawbacks 👎️
KuCoin is accessible from anywhere, but that is because it is unregulated everywhere. A lack of regulation is generally considered acceptable in crypto spaces. After all, once you have Bitcoin, it is ultimately stored on the blockchain. Even if KuCoin is closed down by regulators, you’ll be fine.
But while the lack of regulation does not impact its capacity as a wallet, it does mean that trading is open to more issues. Mostly, these issues are a matter of fraud. This does not mean the wallet is crawling with fraud or anything, but it does mean you should be careful who you trade with.
Of course, if a trade is set up automatically by the app, it will always be secure. It is the “social trades” that you have to watch out for, where someone can misrepresent themselves or their assets.
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6. Trezor – Best Security Hardware
Satoshi Labs, the minds behind Trezor, were the originators of the hardware wallet technology.
They were the first company to have the idea: Your keys can be offline even if your wallet is online.
Ever since that insight, they have been producing more and more brilliant ways of securing crypto.
While they started with Bitcoin, that is by no means the end of their ambition. Currently, their wallets serve more than 1800 different cryptocurrencies. This ranges from Bitcoin, to Doge, and far beyond.
But most people who are looking to store their Bitcoin are probably wondering: “Sure, they invented hardware wallets. But what do they provide other than the ability to store crypto I’m never buying?”
This is a harsh question to ask, but a fair one to answer. What Trezor provides is hardware security like you have never seen. They have all kinds of external devices for storing your keys, from password randomizers, to thumb drives that can only be opened with your fingerprint.
They have taken the devices a step further by enabling two-factor authentication for the devices. This means that the device will not, itself, serve as a security risk should you lose it. This is most people’s problem with Bitcoin wallet hardware. Trezor’s online and hardware integration solves that concern.
Drawbacks 👎️
Highly complex and secure tools like Trezor’s offer an obvious issue: They are hard to use.
Not only that, the more specialised a tool becomes, the more limited it becomes. Trezor is so hardware focused that all you will get is hardware. No way to buy crypto, and no way to trade it.
Trezor’s specialisation makes it the best in the business for wallet hardware. But it has the side effect of making it good at nothing else. You will only need Trezor to secure your holdings, but you will have to develop those holdings else. Trezor’s devices are also notoriously hard to use.
This means that in general, Trezor skews more towards experienced people than beginners.
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7. PancakeSwap – Best Bitcoin Wallet for Yield Farming
Lots of people are interested in Bitcoin trading, but not everyone has the capital to buy Bitcoin in the first place. Just like normal stock trading has “margin accounts” that allow for trading with loaned money, there are platforms that will loan you Bitcoin so you can get started trading that way.
But PancakeSwap is not the best wallet for getting Bitcoin loans. Rather, it is the best platform for being the person giving the loans. This is a passive income strategy called “yield farming”.
How it works is that you put your Bitcoin up for “yield”. Then, you either contribute to a loan someone is getting, or give out the loan wholesale. That person then must pay back the loan. They will usually do this by making monthly payments, though it is possible that it is a one time loan settled immediately.
In either case, you get your money back, plus interest. Just by putting your money up for yield, you earn a tiny amount of money without having to actually do anything. This whole process is automatic.
PancakeSwap makes this process easy and scalable. This means you can take Bitcoin out, put it in, adjust how much is up for yield, and all sorts of other tools to maximise the amount of value you are getting.
The wallet is also highly secure, well-regulated, and incorporates tons of different kinds of crypto, all of which is available to trade. So, with all that available… What is the downside?
Drawbacks 👎️
While PancakeSwap has an undeniably good interface, it is doing its best to seem far more friendly to beginners than it actually is. The problem they are running into is the fact that the act of yield farming is, itself, difficult to understand. This makes it worse that they do not have a substantial learning centre.
Moreover, while yield farming is good passive income, passive income is rarely all that big unless it is done in huge amounts. You would need several Bitcoins for your yield farming to even bring you minimum wage, and remember that a whole Bitcoin is worth more than £30,000.
The appeal of PancakeSwap really comes down to how much you want to yield farm, as there are better wallets for trading out there. Luckily, nothing PancakeSwap offers is that risky, so that is not a problem.
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8. UniSwap – Best Bitcoin Wallet for Integration
Bitcoin wallets are a booming business with a lot of competition. Many wallets will give you some kind of reward just for signing up, verifying a bank account, or depositing Bitcoin into them.
If you have seen enough of these offers, then you might start to wonder: Is there a way to make use of all of them?
UniSwap seeks to help you out with just that. UniSwap focuses on “integrating” the different Bitcoin wallets of the world. That means making it easy to find, access, and reap the rewards of these different wallets. It also provides wallet services of its own, including access to trade of different cryptocurrency.
Through use of UniSwap you can integrate the functionality and rewards of over 300 different crypto wallets. This will cover lots of different currencies, markets, and security schemes. But ultimately, UniSwap is compatible with all of them, which is quite a feat considering how many there are.
Drawbacks 👎️
UniSwap is a newer wallet, meaning that it is unregulated and, in some ways, unbuilt. It has all the functionality it says it has, and can even trade, so there is not a concern there. The functionality it is lacking is any kind of knowledgebase at all for helping you make trades intelligently.
To its credit, it's not like there is much being written about most of the cryptocurrencies it trades in. That can be perceived as another drawback as well: While it trades in tons of different currencies, a majority of them are pretty niche and basically only exist to be funnelled into currencies that actually have value.
This whole pipeline of getting value from these currencies is pretty complex. In fact, integrating all of the wallets that it integrates is quite the task in itself. You will rarely have access to all 300 of them unless you basically treat it like another job, as applying to and getting approved for all of them takes time.
In short, UniSwap is certainly good at what it does. But remember that the task it sets out to accomplish is pretty convoluted, as well as only being the beginning of actually generating value.
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9. Aave – Best Community Protocol
Most Bitcoin wallets are going to be welcoming to beginners.
This makes sense, as Bitcoin itself is the place you want to start if you are getting into the cryptocurrency marketplace for the first time.
But some wallets, such as Aave, are meant for getting value out of Bitcoin in far, far more esoteric ways.
In order to understand how Aave works, and how it relates to Bitcoin, let’s begin with talking about what a “protocol” is in relation to a cryptocurrency. A protocol is basically how data is shared between “nodes” in a network. The exact methodology behind a protocol gives a cryptocurrency its value.
Aave offers a community protocol. That means if you contribute enough capital to the protocol, then you get a say in how it is run. Aave does this by offering discussion spaces for putting forward ideas and innovations, and then a voting system for deciding what avenues they will actually follow through on.
The capital in question is usually Bitcoin, though other currencies are allowed as well. In short, Aave is a Bitcoin wallet that allows you to contribute in a highly direct way to the development of another cryptocurrency. The more Bitcoin you have, the more control you get over the currency.
Drawbacks 👎️
If Aave sounds strange, hard to use, and somewhat limited, then you are correct on all counts. It is an extremely niche realm of value creation. Even understanding what you would be doing is complicated.
But moreover, it basically supplants all of the normal methods for value creation with Aave’s own. That means there is limited trading, staking, and borrowing besides that in Aave’s own currency. Its security is good, but all of it is overshadowed by the fact that you will always be on a bleeding edge of technology.
Essentially, this means that Aave is in no one’s comfort zone. If you want to go somewhere daring and unusual, where the upper limit on the value you can create is enormous, then Aave is the wallet for you.
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10. Exodus Wallet – Best Bitcoin Wallet Apps
Most Bitcoin wallets will offer you all their services up front. This means that if they have the ability to secure your holdings in a certain way, trade in certain securities, or teach you how to do certain things, then they will tell you upfront that they can do that and show you where to go to do it.
Exodus has a different idea: What if the wallet was one thing, and then if you wanted to incorporate different functionality into that wallet, all you had to do was download an app? That way, people could expand the tools of the wallet by developing apps to do that, making an open-source wallet.
What this adds up to is a Bitcoin wallet that has a few features for certain, and a few more features that are being worked on even as you read this. Currently it has access to over 150 different currencies, trading between those currencies, and a slew of security features. But even more is being added.
Perhaps best of all, the entirety of the Exodus app suite can also be transferred to your phone.
Drawbacks 👎️
Of course, Exodus can only be as expansive as it is through being developed by other people. Some of those people will be employed by Exodus, and some will be supported by the app distribution platform Exodus creates. But if anything causes that support to dry up, then Exodus will have less features.
On top of that, it means Exodus can also get exponentially harder to use as more functionality is added to it. All of the current apps are well-designed, but it is only a matter of time before it suffers feature bloat.
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What are Centralised and Decentralised Currencies? 💸️
Normal securities—that is stocks, options, foreign currencies, and basically everything else that you can trade that is not cryptocurrency—are centralised.
That means at any time, the people who hold most of it can do something silly with it that affects its value. These silly things can also happen regularly.
That could mean spending it poorly, defaulting on a debt, or even just declaring its interest or inflation rate is higher. All of these things lower the value of a centralised currency. You could—and probably do—have money sitting in the bank right now that is losing value because of these external factors.
How is Bitcoin Different?
Bitcoin gets its value from a “proof of work” model. It works much like the authorization process your own money goes through when you make a purchase, either real life or online. When you make the purchase, the place from which you are buying asks your bank, “Do they have the money for this?”
Your bank then responds, “Yes, they do,” and the payment is authorised, or “No, they do not,” and the payment is declined. The place you are buying from is trusting your bank on their promise that the money is there, and that it is real. Bitcoin works similar to this system, but without the bank.
Bitcoin uses a technology called “blockchain technology”. This means that the promise of where each Bitcoin is at any time is made not by a single, big voice. Those promises are instead made by thousands and thousands of little voices. Together, these little voices amount to much more than one big voice.
The reason these little voices add up to so much is that even if one of them suddenly started saying, “Man, I sure have a lot of Bitcoin,” the other voices would override it.
If one voice says, “My Bitcoin is worth far more than the British Pound,” or, “My interest rates are so low,” then the other voices could quickly respond, “No it is not, because ours is not.”
And perhaps most importantly, these voices keeping individuals from lying about the value of their Bitcoins are not only constantly broadcasting. They are also visible to everyone else on the blockchain.
How the Blockchain Works
The blockchain is a computer network. Thousands of computers connect to it. All of them contribute to identifying where Bitcoin is. If you want to buy Bitcoin, then you need to be on the blockchain. That means that if someone is offering you Bitcoin that is overpriced, you can consult the blockchain.
It is almost impossible to defraud someone if they are connected to the blockchain. Bitcoin fraud basically has to happen separately from the blockchain. This makes the blockchain a storage system, a security system, and the method by which Bitcoin gets its value all at once.
How Does This Relate to Bitcoin Wallets? 👛️
Your Bitcoin always resides on the blockchain. But how do you know it's yours? How does anyone know it's yours? It is your Bitcoin because you can access it. The blockchain puts a lock on all the Bitcoin inside it. Ownership goes to whomever has the keys. A wallet keeps your keys safe.
But it does more than just that. A wallet can also help recover your keys if you ever lose them. They can also help you secure your keys should they be stolen by someone who should not have them.
Many wallets will even offer cryptocurrency trading services. These can give you access to other currencies, as well as cashing out your crypto and buying other securities with them.
Let’s Recap
So, Bitcoin is a decentralised currency. Like how you can spend money because a bank says it’s there, you can spend Bitcoin because the blockchain says it is there. But the Bitcoin that is there is only yours if you can access it. A Bitcoin wallet will help you access, regain access, and deny access to your Bitcoin.
Conclusion 💡️
What you might notice from that list is that most wallets do far more than just secure the keys to your Bitcoin
But remember: As tempting as it can be to do things like trade, invest, and offer up yield, you do so at your own risk.
Bitcoin is more stable than most currencies, but it is still new and unpredictable. Know what you are getting into. Take a few risks. Spend your money wisely. And be careful out there.
