Hello, again, David Tatera here with CryptoTutorials.org. Today I'm going to discuss my top five cryptocurrency wallets for 2021. I'm going to talk about some hardware wallets, some software wallets, and exchange wallets of different types. Why I like the ones that I do, what uses I think each of them has out there in the marketplace.
What Is A Cryptocurrency Wallet
So what exactly is a cryptocurrency wallet? Well, to understand that we need to make sure that you really understand what cryptocurrency is. Basically... Crypto is a string of numbers, letters, characters that exist out there on the blockchain that gives you ownership to a portion of that asset.
Whether it be a Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardona, whatever currency it is, it's the numbers and letters that tell what you own. Now, how do we know what you own? Well, that's based upon your private key. A private key is an even larger, more complicated string of numbers and letters virtually un-guessable, and it's used to unlock your crypto from the blockchain. It's used to control it and move it and transfer ownership of it.

Where you store these, long passphrases, that is your wallet. So it could be a sheet of paper. You could go with a very simple route and just write it down on a sheet of paper. In fact, one of my favorite tools for crypto is a black light marker. You can use this to write down passphrases, keys, tuck them in the corner of a book. Nobody's going to know what exists there. You light it up with a little black light and boom you're in business. It's a great way, very low tech version of wallet right here.
3 Most Common Crypto Wallets
But with that, there's a few other more high-tech versions of wallets that exist out there that are common. The most three most common are the software wallets, the hardware wallets, and then the exchange wallets software vault.
Whether it's Trust, MetaMask, Binance Chain Wallet, or Blocto. The top cryptocurrency wallets for 2021 are basically piecse of software that hide and encode that data, so that only you can access it with your password. Obviously these are only as secure as the software. So if the software gets hacked, theoretically, your passphrases could get taken away in the hack,
Different Cryptocurrency Wallets For 2021
Software wallets have shown to be quite secure, but that is the way that they work. Then you have a hardware wallet. This is an actual piece of physical hardware. It's like a USB drive that can either link through Bluetooth, or it can plug directly into your computer, but it is used to store the crypto offline,. Theoretically there's no way for someone to hack in and steal the information from it unless it's plugged in at the moment that you're using it. They would have to get the actual physical device, plug it into a computer in order to steal it. So much more secure.
This is the way that most people who have any large amount of crypto store it When you start talking about some serious money, most people will go to a hardware wallet. That's kind of the standard way to do it.
Then the last one is an exchange wallet. This is the wallet that you have in your exchange account. So when you first buy on Coinbase, Binance, KuCoin, Gemini, whatever exchange you're using, the moment you buy that it is in a wallet for you. It's just a wallet that's software and is stored in the exchange. So you don't have any real control to move that stuff around in the exchange. You can withdraw it, put it in this different wallet somewhere else, but in exchange wallet, it's where they tell it to be. Those are your three basic different kinds of wallets.
Blockchains Make A Big Difference
Each wallet operates on one or more blockchain. It is important to understand this when choosing a wallet. A Binance wallet wont work for Solana coins.
My Favorite Of Each Wallet Type
I'm going to go over an example of my favorite ones of each of these different ones and explain to you where I use them so that you can understand and know how to better use them with your coins. As far as software wallets go, you've got two major kinds. You've got mobile wallets and you've got browser extensions.
Cryptocurrency Mobile Wallets For 2021
As far as the mobile wallets go, my favorite is the trust wallet. This is the one that I've had the longest. I really like it. I think the interface is very clean. It's very simple. Stores lots of cryptos works with Binance, works with Ethereum and it's got a defi browser.

That's really wonderful because if you decide you want to swap for an alt coin on Sushiswap, Pancakeswap any of those Defi protocols, you're going to need to have a Defi browser. It's going to be really important. It's going to be necessary to get in there and access these. So it's great that it works with both major networks.
It is owned by Binance, but it's open source software, which is great. That means that anybody can look over the code can make sure that it's up and running well. Make sure that it's good and secure and evaluate it,. It is totally free andwell integrated. Knowing Binance, which is the largest exchange out there, this is their official wallet, gives me a little bit of an extra security boost.
Crypto Browser Extension Wallets
As the browser extensions go, I'm a big fan of Metamask. Now Metamask is designed to work on the Ethereum blockchain. It can be modified a little bit. In fact, I'll leave a link up there in the corner, it can be modified to work with Binance, which I tend to use the swaps more on Binance than I do with Ethereum. I'm usually swapping small amounts for videos, and the gas fees kill me on Ethereum, but on Binance they're much lower. So that's what I tend to use. Metamask is a great browser extension wallet. I prefer doing my swapping this way, over doing it on my phone.

I think it's much, much easier to swap in a browser window on my desktop or laptop than it is to try to do it on my phone. Phones are complicated, small, hard to read numbers, not as easy. So this is my number one wallet. This is the one that I use most often, but neither of these are terribly secure. If someone was to get into my computer, if someone was to get into my phone, one password, it's not terribly secure.
So I just use these to move my currencies around, swap them and then I store them elsewhere. I think they're great for small amounts of currency for currency that you're going to swap, or you're going to use on a Defi platform. I don't think they're the best place to store larger amounts of currency, that I leave to a hardware wallet. Also do check how to setup Phantom Wallet Extension Solana.
Top Hardware Cryptocurrency Wallets For 2021
There are a few different choices out on the market. I think by far the Ledger Nano X is the best one. If you want one, you're three weeks out to purchase a Ledger Nano X. I currently have one on ordered, and I'm waiting. I played with a friend of mine's. I absolutely love it. I think the interface is great. The security is great. This is a way to store your crypto safely off the internet.
The ledger does Bluetooth into your phone or USB into your computer. So that's what you're going to do when you decide to move the crypto somewhere else, you're going to connect it back to something that's on the internet and then move it from there. But by itself, it's completely offline so nobody could hack it. Nobody could steal it. They would have to physically get the device from your house, so it creates a high level of security there.
When you get it, you're going to have to set up a thing called Ledger live. It's a website like login that you're going to actually move all the different crypto things in there. You'll set up apps for each currency that you're going to have. You're going to have to set up some secure passwords and things for that. Then you're gonna set up a pin for your ledger. That's going to actually give you access to that device.

You have security both on the software end of it and in the device itself, but then there's a final layer of security too. You're going to set up a word phrase, 24 words in a row. And this is the most important one to keep, because this can actually recreate your wallet. It's got the information there to recreate your wallet with everything in it. So if there's a fire, if your kid throws it away in the trash, if something ends up happening to that Ledger wallet with all that crypto in it, and it vanishes, you can actually still retrieve all that information by knowing your passphrase. You can buy a brand new ledger and retrieve it.
Speaking of buying these do not buy them anywhere but from Ledger. I know, some people will take a chance and buy one on Amazon. I'm not even going that route. People try all the time to scam you. They will buy these things. They repackage them up. They'll make them look all nice and brand new, and they already have something on there where they can steal your private keys. So once you set it up, put your crypto on it, they've got access to it.
That's why you need to be very, very careful when buying a hardware wallet and make sure that you buy it directly from the manufacturer. That it comes in the box. That everything looks good in the box. It sets up exactly how it's supposed to. If anything seems funny along the way with a hardware wallet, I would just step aside and not use it. Okay. So, but once you get them set up wonderful, absolutely great, super, super secure, wonderful piece of hardware.
Top Crypto Exchange Wallets
Next are the exchange wallets. So every exchange inherently has wallets within it. It has to. It has to have somewhere to store the crypto that you're buying that other people are buying, that people are selling or that they're even just keeping for liquidity. There has to be some crypto. So what they do is, they keep it in their own wallet.
Now, if you've been into crypto very long, you probably have heard of the famous Mount GOK hack. This happened back in 2014, $460 million in Bitcoin stolen. Why? Because somebody figured out how to get into Mount GOC and how to get ahold of all those passphrases. And they pulled it. They pulled a ton of money out. It closed Mount GOK, caused all kinds of ripples in the crypto community. Things have gotten better than that since then, but these are still a major, major target for hackers.

In fact, just last fall in September KuCoin, which is another huge exchange, one out of four crypto holders hold something on coupon. They got hacked for $280 million. Fortunately things have gotten better. They were able to retrieve a large portion of it quickly, within a few weeks. And then they were able to use their insurance (They have insurance now for these types of hacks) to cover the rest of it, like $40 million of it I think was covered through insurance.
So the money got back, it got back into people's hands. But once again, this is something that happens with these exchanges. They are a target people want to try to get in there. People worry that it's even an inside job. There's so much money being dealt with in these wallets. It's really, a major, major target.
So I like to keep the money that I'm exchanging, that I'm trading around. I do some trading, I do some investing. So what I'm trading, stuff that I'm going to be buying and selling on a, on a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly basis. Fairly regularly. I keep that cryptocurrency in my wallet on KuCoin, and I trust that they will reimburse me if they get hacked. You can read my post Kucoin review to know more about it.
It's a little bit of a risk, but it's how I do it. Some of the crypto I bought at a good price and I know I just want to sit on it and let it go up for a long time. I don't want to trade it back and forth. Now that's the stuff that goes off into a hardware wallet.
Different Wallets For Different Tasks
Each of these wallets serves a purpose and no type is better than another. It just depends what you want to do with your tokens.
How To Use The Different Crypto Wallets
So it's nice to have some in each. And then I keep some for my alt coins, because I do like to buy some of these up and coming, defy things like, Pickle Finance, or Regel protocol, some of these different small Defi companies. I like to buy in a little bit and see where they go. I keep that in my MetaMask or Trust wallet.
So that's how I like to stack it and have it in different places and use it for the different purposes, because really each of these wallets is different and each of them fits a different part of your life. What you're going to exchange regularly, what you're going to trade, keep that in your exchange wallet. What you're going to swap, keep it in your software wallet. What you're going to hold, keep it in your hardware wallet. Kind of a quick rule of thumb for how to organize your crypto.
Blocto Wallet - New In The Space
All right. Finally, I do want to talk about one more thing, I've covered four. And I said, I was doing five today and that's the up and coming wallet. This is one that has a lot of promise. If you follow the channel for long, you've seen that I have talked about this many times. I'm a big Blocto fan. I'm a Blocto supporter. I think it is a really good technology that's coming up.
if you don't know, the biggest seller for me, is that it's the only flow mobile wallet out there. If you don't know what Flow is, Flow is another kind of protocol like Ethereum or Bitcoin or Cardona, but this one has been designed to work really heavily with NFTs.

The NBA top shots program, which is the NBA's NFT program, and has brought an enormous amount of money, is all going on Flow. Moto GPX, they've got an NFT program too for the motor racing circuits, that is all going on Flow. So has got some pretty big backers.
The wallet's great, the Blocto wallet is it's a little less secure in the passphrase department. It's a little more, easy user-friendly, designed for anybody who uses an app on a phone to use. But it's also powerful. It's got exchange capabilities in it, it's got Defi capabilities, Defi swaps and it's great for NFTs. So as far as up and coming wallets, that is one I think to keep an eye on. As more Flow stuff comes out, it will become more and more useful.
Summary Of Top Cryptocurrency Wallets For 2021
I hope you've enjoyed these 5 top cryptocurrency wallets for 2021. These are the ones that I think are the best to use right now. Do me a favor comment down below if there's one that I've missed, or if you have a question about one, you're not sure how to use one.
I will see you again soon. Aloha