Even during bear market cycles in crypto prices more new first-time crypto adopters every year are always buying crypto for the first time to invest in or save their money. In fact during bear markets near market bottoms before the next bull market is the ideal entry point for buying any investment with hopes for high-performing ROI. At least that has been a winning investment strategy used by investors like Warren Buffett and his mentor Benjamin Graham.
To get started investing in, saving some of your money in, or day trading cryptocurrency, you will need to get a crypto wallet. You will also want to familiarize yourself with how your wallet works and how to use it to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Of course, to begin using cryptocurrency with your new crypto wallet you will have to choose a wallet from the wide selection of quality options available.
Why You Need A Crypto Wallet
A crypto wallet doesn’t hold your crypto. The blockchain does. It secures your crypto in massively parallel bookkeeping synchronization with depending on the crypto, dozens, hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of nodes or participants keeping up the books together so that your crypto accounts are safe and readily accessible—
Readily accessible, that is— if you have the private key public key pair that authorizes you to spend or do anything with your crypto. Your crypto wallet holds that for you in a secure app or non-Internet connected crypto wallet device.
You use your wallet to buy more crypto and create new accounts that are unique addresses on the blockchain that hold every participant’s records of the amount of crypto there and the private key public key pair that they can all instantly verify that they will accept to authorize and record a transaction request for crypto from that address.
Choosing A Crypto Wallet
There are many crypto wallets out there is a fast-growing and well-supplied market for secure access to crypto. Out of app wallets, I recommend the CoinStats crypto wallet among others below and give some pointers for getting the CoinStats wallet set up.
Crypto Wallet (Hardware)
A hardware crypto wallet is one popular solution to storing your public-private key pairs. Crypto investors like the hardware solution because it puts the keys in “cold storage.” That means they are completely inaccessible from the Internet.
This provides a high level of security by isolating the keys from any possible access points for cybercriminals, and Internet hackers, to exploit in order to steal your keys and run off with your crypto. This is most unlikely with a secure crypto hot wallet app available through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. But some crypto investors like the extra layer of absolutely pneumatic security for storing the keys to their cryptocurrency.
For very large amounts they have locked up in an address to hold for the long term, the cold wallet storage option may work best for them. That does come with certain trade-offs, however, as opposed to keeping your keys in a hot wallet app.
One example is an investor has now assumed the risk and responsibility of physically securing the hardware device itself. They could hide it out of the way somewhere in their house, or pay fees to a bank to store the crypto in a safe deposit box. Bear in mind safe deposit box contents are not insured by the bank or FDIC.
For these reasons, many crypto investors, savers, day traders, and users prefer one of the many fine hot crypto wallet apps. This keeps their crypto more liquid too so they can easily buy, sell, and trade their coins during times of high market activity.
Best Crypto Wallet (App)
Here is a short, but hardly exhaustive list of some popular crypto wallet apps with most of the basic features users need in no particular order:
- Mycelium for Bitcoin (BTC)
- MetaMask for DeFi and Ethereum (ETH)
- Exodus for 180 cryptocurrencies
- Coinbase for crypto n00bs
- CoinStats for all-in-one Bitcoin DeFi support (crypto wallet with 8,000+ cryptocurrencies supported)
How to Set Up A Crypto Wallet
CoinStats crypto wallet is available to run on Android and iOS. Here’s a quick start guide to get you up and running using your crypto wallet in under two minutes.
- You can search for it in the Google Play or App Store and download it to use on your device.
- Then sign up for an account with your email address. Go to your email and verify your email address to get started.
- Then select the wallet icon at the bottom of the screen in the middle. You will find a page that says “Add Funds To Your Wallet: Fund your account to get started with CoinStats Wallet and DeFi.”
- At the top of the page in the middle is a tiny button that is easy to miss because it is very neutral in the color scheme. Tap that to get a drop-down menu for:
- Ethereum Mainnet
- Binance Smart Chain
- Bitcoin Network
- Polygon Network
- Avalanche Network
- Then tap the icon with the plus sign (“+”) in the middle of it below this note. A menu will pop up with a note that says, “Add Funds: Buy coins through your Credit/Debit card or deposit from your wallet and exchange accounts.”
- Select the coin you want to buy and enter your Credit/Debit card info to buy some and hold it in your CoinStats wallet.