Bitcoin Wallet Options

We have compiled the best of all Bitcoin wallet options available. Some are good in security aspects and some boast about their easy to use interface and other facilities. Take a good look and decide which one best suits your requirement.

Online Wallets

BTCfaucet                 Ease of use: 5/5                       Security: 3/5

BTCfaucet is one of the most easy to use online wallets. Just go to the site and click create wallet, you will get your bitcoin address and unique URL for that address. You should not lose that address otherwise you will lose all your BTC in it. You can set a password for additional security.

           
 Last and the best thing about BTCfaucet I that it gives away 0.002 BTC as a bonus for verifying your email address.

Coinbase                    Ease of use: 4.5/5                       Security: 5/5

You can signup in Coinbase using an email. It facilitates user to create multiple bitcoin address in a single account. You can see direct conversion of what you have in your account to various currencies (You can select one in your account settings).Transaction internally having Coinbase accounts is possible through email to avoid Bitcoin transaction delay.

Blockchain                 Ease of use: 4/5                       Security: 4/5

Blockchain offers convenience of online wallets and security of desktop clients. Though it is an online wallet but the encryption is all done within the user’s internet browser before it is saved on the server. Blockchain operators have no access to your account. Blockchain has simple interface and gives an easy way to backup your wallet.

Walletbit                     Ease of use: 3/5                       Security: 3.5/5

You can signup in Walletbit using an email account. Walletbit has built in converter for bitcoins to USD conversion similar to Coinbase. Dashboard also has monthly overview chart showing attributes like deposits, withdraw, sales, redeem, exchange etc. It has business tools and is also a merchant service provider. Thus it’s a good option for businesses dealing with bitcoins.

Desktop Clients

Bitcoin-Qt                  Ease of use: 1/5                       Security: 5/5

This desktop client was originally developed by Satoshi Nagamoto founder of Bitcoin, and is the first bitcoin client ever created. Desktop clients give maximum security but needs to be installed on PC. ‘Wallet.dat’ file of the application contain important information about your Bitcoin address thus user is encourage to backup this file to avoid any accidental loss of account. This client provides basic features like sending and receiving bitcoins. It allows multiple addresses. The biggest drawback of this wallet is, it requires a block chain of around 6GB to be downloaded on your desktop before start operating which can take a lot of time as well as bandwidth.

Armory                        Ease of use: 2/5                       Security: 4/5

Armory is an advanced desktop client offering a lot of feature additional to basic sending and receiving bitcoin option. It allows you to manage multiple wallets, store your wallet encrypted, import private keys, sign transaction offline.

Armory requires Satoshi client to be running besides it, to operate. Though it offer additional features but same drawback of Satoshi Client of downloading whole block chain comes along with it.

Electrum                    Ease of use: 3/5                       Security: 3.5/5

Another nice desktop client is electrum. Electrum is better than its alternatives in a way that it does not download the full block chain. Instead it depends on servers for the processing and transactions. Electrum is one of the best desktop clients and offers simple and easy to use interface.

Multibit                       Ease of use: 3/5                       Security: 4/5

Multibit does not need to download whole block chain neither it relies on servers. Multibit downloads a small subset of block chain. The main feature of Multibit is multiple address and wallet management.

Mobile Wallets

Although all online wallets can be used on mobiles using internet browser, but there are some applications specifically built for mobile. They need to be installed on mobile and work similar to desktop clients. Most of the mobile wallets are developed for Android platform.

Bitcoin Wallet by Andreas Schildbach     Ease of use: 2/5                       Security: 5/5

The prominent of all mobile wallets is Andreas Schildbach’s Bitcoin Wallet which is available for android platform. It can be downloaded from Google Play store. You can send and receive bitcoins via NFC, QR-code or bitcoin URLs. The Bitcoin Wallet is designed to be easy to use and reliable, which also being secure and fast. It features app widget for bitcoin balance and transaction notification and address book for regularly used bitcoin addresses.

Bitcoin Spinner         Ease of use: 3/5                       Security: 4.5/5

Bitcoin spinner is another popular mobile wallet. Block chain management is done on server side so no need to download bitcoin block chain. It is ready to use wallet. Its features include high security wallet backup using QR-code, address book transaction history, low bandwidth and CPU requirement.