The power of cryptocurrency is that you can manage it yourself. You don’t need a third party like a bank or an exchange to store your coins and manage them. This applies to all the cryptocurrencies we offer on our platform: you are in charge.

To store your coins you will need a wallet. Wallets come in all different shapes and sizes: there are wallets for PC or Mac, mobile wallets, and physical hardware wallets. In this article we cover mobile wallets. With this type of wallet you can manage your coins from the device you nearly always carry with you, namely your smartphone.

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What is a mobile wallet?

A mobile wallet is an app on your smartphone that you can use to manage your coins. Just like every other app, you can download a mobile wallet from the App Store or Google Play Store. It might seem like your coins are being stored on your phone, but that’s not the case. Your coins will always be stored on the blockchain. You should see your wallet as a sort of keychain that stores the keys that give you access to your coins.

It works like this: once you create a new wallet you will be provided with a key called the private key, which proves you own certain coins on the blockchain.This is a long series of letters and digits, not very convenient if you want to set up a wallet quickly. That’s why the private key is converted into 12 or 24 (depends on the wallet provider) randomly generated words. In crypto lingo, these words are referred to as the seed phrase, or the the recovery seed. The word sequence functions as a backup for your wallet.
Essentially, a wallet makes it possible to manage and view your coins on the blockchain.

If you search for wallets in the App Store or Play Store, you will find loads of different providers. We always recommend our users to conduct their own research. When you see a wallet that you like, make sure to check them out on Google and read a couple of reviews.

For those of you that don’t have the time to conduct their own research, we’ve listed some of our favourite providers below. All of these wallets can be downloaded for free on your iOS or Android device.

Coinomi wallet: supports (among others) bitcoin, ether and bitcoin cash

A very popular mobile wallet is the Coinomi wallet. Coinomi doesn’t run on the servers of a company, but on your smartphone only. The app connects directly with the network of several coins, which makes Coinomi a completely decentralized wallet.

The private keys and PIN codes are only visible for the user of the wallet; the company itself is unable to access this data. This also means the company is unable to view your balance and transaction history.

Coinomi supports, among others, bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether, and most popular ERC-20 tokens. Do you want to get a certain coin from an exchange to save for yourself? There is a good chance that Coinomi supports this coin.

Tip: You can use the Coinomi mobile wallet to buy your crypto’s at BTC Direct, without ever having to switch between tabs and applications. And since you don’t have to copy and paste your receiving address anymore, it’s way more simple and safe as well!

Toast wallet: supports XRP (Ripple)

There aren’t many mobile wallet providers that support XRP. That’s because the XRP software protocol is very different from most coins.

We’ve tested the Toast wallet for you. A big difference with other wallets is that its seed phrase is a lot shorter. You only need to write down six ‘words’ that seem to be randomly generated and aren’t based on words from the English dictionary.

The Toast wallet software is completely open-source and available for Mac and Windows as well. This means you can manage your coins from other devices as well. Once you create a new Toast wallet you will receive a warning that the company doesn’t save your codes on a server. It is very important that you write them down yourself and store them in a safe place. We would recommend to store your seed phrase in a safe.

Did you install the Toast wallet? You will find your XRP receiving address within the wallet. Enter the address on our order form and you are ready to purchase your first ripple!

Jaxx Liberty: supports litecoin

Just like with XRP, there aren’t many mobile wallet providers that support litecoin. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing though, you just need one that does! Using the Canadian Jaxx Liberty wallet, you are able to manage your litecoins in an easy manner.

Jaxx Liberty isn’t Jaxx’s first wallet, it’s a further developed version of their previous wallet (Jaxx). This new version is built by experienced developers and user feedback has been taken into account. What also speaks for the wallet is the fact that its owner Anthony Di lorio co-founded Ethereum.

The Jaxx Liberty wallet is very user-friendly. Immediately after download it’s ready to use, and you can navigate the wallet’s different functions effortlessly. It has a built-in block explorer which makes it very easy to track your transactions. With this wallet, you are in charge of your private keys yourself. The company behind it does not store your keys and is unable to access it. Privacy is guaranteed.

Jaxx supports over 85 different coins, for example bitcoin and ether. Unfortunately you can’t store XRP in the Jaxx Liberty wallet.

Blue Wallet: ready for the Lightning Network

Blue Wallet is designed to facilitate transactions on the Lightning Network. You don’t need much technical knowledge to use this wallet, so it’s suitable for anyone who wants to get acquainted with the Lightning Network.

With the Blue Wallet you are able to manage bitcoin. The smallest unit of a bitcoin is a satoshi, which is used as payment unit on the Lightning Network. Note that you do not own your private keys with this wallet. You can compare this to the way coins are managed on a cryptocurrency exchange like Binance for example.

The wallet is available for both iOS and Android. If you’ve got any questions about managing your cryptocurrencies, our support team is here to help!