A Bitcoin wallet is just like a wallet that helps a user to store/send/receive Bitcoin with other users. If we talk about the technical explanation of the Bitcoin wallet, then, Bitcoin is a specially designed node program that helps users to control the private key of a Bitcoin address.
Don’t confuse with a private key. It is just a combination of numbers & characters. If a user owns his private key then he is the owner of his Bitcoin otherwise not.
Types of Bitcoin Wallet
There are many types of Bitcoin wallets and there are mainly three categories of Bitcoin wallets.
Wallets On the Basis Of Provider
There are two types of wallets based on wallet Service providers. These are third-party wallets and official wallets.
Official wallets
Bitcoin core & blockchain.com is the official wallet of Bitcoin. And also other wallets that the Bitcoin community recommends is Electrum wallet. Usually, these types of wallets are developed by the team of crypto coins.
If a person has a better pc configuration or laptop system then he can go with Bitcoin core otherwise it is advised to go with Electrum because it is available for all platforms ( desktop & mobile). Alternative a user can go for a web-based Bitcoin wallet that is Blockchain.com
Official wallets give full access to private keys but third part wallets don’t provide any type of private key.
Non-Official Third Party Bitcoin wallet
There are many companies that have better developers & better management teams, so to expand their business in Crypto they are providing crypto wallets.
Through their wallet, a user can not only send/receive funds from others but also can do buy/sell/purchase of Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies easily which is not possible at official wallets because of security issues.
While blockchain.com is officially supported as a web Bitcoin wallet, earlier it didn’t allow their users to buy crypto assets from any fiat-based platform directly but now they are supporting 4 fiat currency right now.
Wallets based On Network Availability
There are mainly two types of wallets: offline or hardware wallet and online Bitcoin wallet or software wallet.
Online wallets
These are those wallets which we use on mobile or pc directly through their software/app/web access.
All third-party wallets are online wallets and also Electrum, Bitcoin core, Blockchain is online wallets.
Offline Wallets
These are those wallets that don’t remain in online mode. While all the data of these wallets are accessible on the blockchain Networks.
These can exist in the form of hardware or paper mode.
An example of a hardware wallet is Ledger wallet. While a paper wallet can be made manually by printing out the private key of the wallet.
Check the list of best hardware wallets
How to choose a perfect wallet?
Choosing a wallet is a very tedious task especially when a person is a newbie in the crypto field.
But still we can suggest people on the basis of ease and accessibility of the person.
If a person is expert in this field and has a better pc/laptop system then he can go with the Bitcoin core, Blockchain, Electrum.
And if a person is a newbie in this field then he should choose third party wallets which are famous in his country where he lives. For example, if a person belongs to U.S territories then he can go with a Coinbase wallet.
If a person wants a third party ( in actual an open source) best wallet that can give control on his Bitcoin then he can go with the Mycelium wallet. Mycelium is the best wallet for mobile users Because we can access our wallet on mobile with a slow internet connection and also we can export private keys.
A small Problem associated with Mycelium is the navigation Problem. If you are not able to understand the UI of Mycelium then probably you will face problems operating the wallet. And secondly, this wallet is not available in desktop mode.
Read also: What is Bitcoin?
Wallets