Recovery Seed Backup Devices

Software Wallets for Bitcoin and Alt coins

Not everyone wants to use a hardware wallet.  Even if you do use a hardware wallet, you may want to use software like Metamask to interact with your wallet.

Metamask is probably the most universal wallet and if I was only to have one wallet, I would probably use a hardware wallet with Metamask.  Metamask makes it easy to use Ethereum Dapps.  Metamask was the first wallet I ever used.  It was a mainstay in 2017 and it is a bid deal now in 2021.  I have not had money in a Metamask wallet for a long time.  I am considering using my hardware wallet with Metamask so that I can use the Dapps.

Wallet by Coinbase - This wallet is awesome and super convenient if you use Coinbase and Coinbase Pro.  They work together well to move your money around.  This was my second wallet and the first wallet I used to enter the world of Dapps.  In case you didn't know it, there is a whole decentralized financial system ready for you to experience.  You just need a Coinbase Wallet and some Ether.  Once you have that you can use the dapp browser to check out dapps like Uniswap and Sushiswap.  Coinbase uses walletlink to connect to many of the most reputable Dapps.

Trust Wallet by Binance - This wallet appears to be owned by Binance.  They are the biggest name in blockchain and own the largest exchange and have one of the most valuable currencies the BNB.  Trust wallet allows you to convert Ether into various BEP2 tokens.  This would be a good wallet to use if you wanted to try providing liquidity to Cakeswap and if you want to stake BNB.  The rates on the Binance chain seem to be much much higher than on the Ethereum network.  It is less congersted and less expensive for transactions.  I highly suggest you check out Binance chain using the Trust Wallet or even better with one of our SafePal hardware wallets.  The SafePal interface is also fantastic.  It gives you super easy access to the Binance DEX and it allow you to stake and provide liquidity.

Argent Wallet - Argent has a really awesome feature that I wanted to mention on this page.  Argent doesn't use seed recovery words.  Almost all wallets use seed words.  For the Argent wallet, it is tied to your phone.  If you get a new phone, it will back up on the new phone and be reenabled by what they refer to as recovering with Guardians.  When you create your wallet, you also create guardian wallets that can help you get back into your funds when you lose or break a device.  It is a radical system and potentially an improvement upon our current system.  You can use Trezors and Ledgers as guardians so you may want to purchase a few of those if you decide to go with Argent.

Monero GUI - This is one of the more complicated wallets to figure out.  In order to send and receive Monero in the safest way possible, you need to download 100GB of data.  It is essentially the entire Monero blockchain with records of every single transaction.  There are other ways to send and receive with a partial node and using someone else's node.  After you have spent a day downloading software, you are maybe almost ready to send and receive funds.  Each time you reopen the software you need to download all the new trasactions.  It is much easer to keep the funds in Kraken but if you want to use a wallet, this is the one to consider.

We will continue writing about more wallets, but until we finish, here is a link to the Wallet Connect prototcol.  Wallet Connect allows you to connect your wallet to your PC using QR codes.  Why would you do this?  Let's say that you want to lend money to Compound but wanted to work off a computer rather than a tiny phone.  This lets you do it.  If you want a good list of wallets to consider, this link has all of the wallets that interact with the main protocol.  The only other one to consider would be coinbase because they created a competing WalletLink which works just as well.

https://walletconnect.org/wallets