

As long as your phone and wallet are password protected though, you can always download your wallet on another phone, restore it, and then change your passphrase. The downside, of course, is that phones are often stolen or misplaced, and can be hacked. If you’re in a particularly high-tech shop, you can even use NFC contactless payments to spend your Bitcoin with a simple tap. 📱 Mobile wallets are ideal for people who regularly use Bitcoin on a daily basis, whether that involves trading or paying for goods and services.Make sure you keep them well-secured, though, because there’s no defence if nefarious individuals come across them in real life. Paper wallets might sound strange in this digital world, but given their analog nature, they’re immune from online attacks, malware and keyloggers because, well, they’re pieces of paper. They’re normally printed out in the form of QR codes, letting you easily scan them to quickly and easily add them to a software wallet. 📝 A paper wallet is a document that contains a public address for receiving Bitcoin, along with a private key that lets you transfer or spend Bitcoin that’s stored in that address.Each has their advantages and disadvantages, from cost to security. There are several different types of Bitcoin wallet, ranging from simple printed paper ones, to more advanced hardware wallets. Your public key, on the other hand, is what you share with senders or recipients, and allows people to send Bitcoin to your wallet address (a hashed version of your public key). Not your keys, not your wallet, as the saying goes. If you lose or forget it, you’ll be locked out of your wallet with no way to access your funds, which is about as painful and as gut-wrenching an experience as you can imagine. Your private key is incredibly important, and should never be shared or haphazardly stored. It works by storing your private and public keys-which in most cases, including Bitcoin, are 256-bit numbers, viewed to us as 64 hexadecimal characters in the ranges 0-9 or A-F. In essence, it’s your private crypto bank account-but it’s completely under your control. A Bitcoin wallet, like other cryptocurrency wallets, is a piece of software that allows you to store digital currencies (in this case, Bitcoin), as well as giving you the ability to view your balance, send, and receive more.
