gianlucatassara on Nostr: MY LIST OF RECOMMENDED BITCOIN WALLETS: This is my opinion only. There are hundreds ...

MY LIST OF RECOMMENDED BITCOIN WALLETS:

This is my opinion only. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of bitcoin wallets out there. With that said, these are the ones I'm sticking with at the moment.

Before we begin, I would like to say one thing: I don't believe you need a hardware wallet if you have less than 0.10 BTC. Hot wallets in general are pretty safe as long as they're open source and/or reproducible. Having people buy hardware wallets when all they have is $800 worth of BTC or so is overkill IMO.

So don't bother with a hardware wallet unless 0.10 BTC represents a lot of money to you and it would be devastating to your well-being if you lose that money.

If you have much more than that, I would probably go with something like 95% cold storage and 5% mobile wallets for regular spending and receiving bitcoin.

With that said, these are the wallets I recommend...

Green Wallet (mobile): Developed by Blockstream. The ideal on-chain wallet for someone starting out. It is fully open source. Allows you to connect to your own node. Allows you to have several wallets (seeds). Very modern and intuitive UX. This is the wallet I have my friends and family members install when they want to begin stacking sats. So if you simply want to buy and hodl, start here.

Samourai Wallet (mobile): For intermediate/advanced users. It's a privacy-focused wallet. On-chain only. Fully open source. This is the wallet you use once you start going down the privacy rabbit hole. It lets you mix your coins with other people coins to eliminate traceability. It spends your coins in a way that make it harder for others to trace you. If you spend your bitcoin regularly and you really care about your privacy, use this wallet.

Phoenix Wallet (mobile): A self-custodial Lightning wallet. This is the one I use for lightning network. Amazing user experience. Intuitive. You control your own keys. Fully open source. Very up to date with bitcoin development. Fast and sexy. What else can I say? Try it out, it's pretty awesome.

BitBox02 Bitcoin Only Edition (hardware): My favorite hardware wallet, the one I recommend to all my friends. Very well designed and easy to use. The developers are extremely transparent and they put a lot of effort to make sure it's as secure as it can be. It has the "anti-klepto" feature which protects you against the nonce covert channel attack. You can create your own seed using dice. It simply ticks all the right boxes for me. The only thing I don't like is how they force you to use an SD card when setting it up. I prefer to store the 24 seed myself.

SeedSigner (hardware): For more advanced users that want to minimize trust as much as possible. It's a DIY wallet, which means you build it yourself using generic hardware. Completely airgapped. Fully open source. Great project overall. The best option if you don't want to "trust" any company. Also good if you want to avoid giving your personal information when purchasing a wallet online.

Sparrow Wallet (desktop): Oh boy, this one is something else. This is the wallet software you use along with your hardware wallet. Absolutely magnificient. Allows you to do pretty much everything, from managing your UTXOs, mixing coins, using multisignature, etc. So it doesn't matter if you have a Trezor, a Coldcard, a BitBox02 or any other device, you simply link it to Sparrow Wallet and voilá, the power is yours. Don't use the software that comes with your hardware wallet (for example, Ledger Live App). Use Sparrow Wallet. It's for intermediate/advanced users, but it's totally worth it. Watch YouTube tutorials if you need to.

That's it, that's the list.

Honorable mention to Zeus Wallet for those that run their own lightning nodes and want complete control and also to Trezor Model One for those that want a hardware wallet but aren't tech savvy at all (ie: boomers).

Hope you liked my post, what's your favorite wallet?

PS/ Before you ask me about Coldcard, I think it's a good option, but it's just not my favorite. It has way too many features that most users don't need. It also has a higher learning curve for the average person getting into bitcoin.

PS2/ I used to recommend Muun Wallet to beginners, but I don't do that anymore. Their lightning network implementation is buggy and problematic. Their backup system has 3 steps and you must do all 3 if you want true self custody. I love their UX and how they make it easier for everyone to use both on-chain and lightning, but I just don't feel it meets the requirements I'm looking for.