If you’re using Bitcoin, be that as a hobbyist, a business venture or as a genuine payment method, you are going to need a Bitcoin wallet to facilitate the uses of the cryptocurrency. If you’re unsure of what a Bitcoin wallet is, it is essentially a platform in which you can store your cryptocurrency, send it to other vendors and receive payments yourself. These tokens are stored safely through the wallet’s encryption and the use of private keys.

As of December 2018 according to Bitcoin Market Journal, there have been over 32 Million Bitcoin wallets that have been created, along with 7.1 Million global users of Bitcoin. As it stands, popularity in cryptocurrencies is increasing massively, even beyond Bitcoin with popular exchange and wallet service Coinbase has over 13 Million users.

A study conducted by Chainalysis has shown that a third of Bitcoin owners are actually active with their coins. They also discovered that as of August 2018, 2.3 Million people use their Bitcoin to make payments, with 4.8 Million keeping hold of their cryptocurrency holdings in the hope of a rise in value, so that they can sell them on.

There are also different types of wallets which we will be looking at today, Hardware Wallets (physical devices), Online Wallets, Android Wallets, IOS Wallets and Desktop Wallets. Each item has its own set of strengths and weaknesses which will also be covered.

With keeping your Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies in cold storage (storing them offline), there are a number of benefits over using a hot wallet, which is a wallet that is run on a device which is connected to the internet. Firstly, with hot wallets, due to the fact that they are connected to the internet, they are always going to be at some risk of theft due to cyber attack, no matter how good your security is. With cold storage solutions, the risk of loss is solely down to the caution and intelligence of the user and you should take care to make backups of your physical wallets wherever possible.

Here’s our list of the Top Ten Bitcoin Wallets of 2019.