Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S3W3 - The Wallets by @preshymukel

Hello Great Steamians!! It is really good to be here again. Glad I’m participating in the Season 3, Week 3 of the Steemit Crypto Academy Contest. In this post I’ll be writing on Wallets

What are wallets? Why do you think wallets are important? Let's talk about it.

The normal wallets we know are flat cases or pouches used mostly for carrying or storing of small personal items such as driver’s licenses, business cards, identification cards etc.
But in this post I’ll be concentrating on digital wallets.

Digital Wallets are electronic application used for digital financial transactions. Digital Wallets are used for storing of funds, making of transactions, and even for tracking of payment histories.
Digital Wallets can be used to store all of one’s financial informations, some wallets can also allow you store informations such as driver’s licenses, identification cards, membership cards, event tickets, plane and transit tickets, loyalty cards, coupons etc.
These applications runs in both mobile devices, tablets and PC’s.

Now delving into Cryptocurrencies wallets; they are also digital wallets but do not technically stores funds like the normal wallet. They rather securely stores your private keys, the password that can give you access to your cryptocurrencies, with the access to your private keys, you can perform transactions such as sending and receiving of cryptocurrencies in your wallet. Ownership of one’s crypto asset on cryptocurrencies wallets is proven through the access of private keys. This means that if you by any means lose your private keys you’ll lose access to your crypto funds.
Crypto wallets are divided into two categories; Hot wallet and Cold wallet these will be discussed as we proceed further.

Importance of Wallets

• The beauty/advantage of digital wallets is that they are developed to take advantage of mobile devices abilities to allow one access financial services at any point in time. Digital wallets offers a very convenient way of carrying out transactions, it allows you make transactions without the use of cash or your debit card, all you need to make payment is your device and access to internet service.
• Digital wallets enhances security. Users financial informations are encrypted.
• Digital wallets eliminates physical banks and makes it easy for people to transfer funds to their friends and family in any part of the world.
• Transactions does not involve an intermediary, it uses the peer-to-peer method of transaction.

Which wallets do you own? Why did you choose those wallets? Talk about your experience, show screenshots of your wallets.

Trust Wallet

Trust wallet happens to be the first wallet I used as a crypto beginner. As a crypto beginner who doesn’t know much about crypto wallets, a friend recommended Trust Wallet and I’ve been using the wallet till date and there’s not been any any form of theft.

Trust wallet in my opinion is an extremely secure decentralized crypto wallet, and it is user friendly, I like the wallet because it supports many blockchains and cryptocurrencies, reason why it is preferred by many and also ranked as one of the best crypto wallets.
Trust wallet also offers other interesting features, they give interest to users who participate in staking on the platform, they allow users swap coins and also apply for IDOs and ICOs through smart contracts.

Some Online Reviews of Trust wallet

Source

Source

Screenshot of my Trust wallet account

Have you suffered any theft in any of your wallets? Tell us about your experience, what do you do to protect your cryptocurrencies?

I’ve not suffered any theft in any of my wallet.
The only thing I’ve experienced is the lose of a wallet recovery phase and that made me lose all the funds I had in that wallet. This happened some years back due to my ignorance of the importance of recovery phase. After that experience I always ensure to write down my recovery phase and save it in a secured place that can be accessed by me alone at any point in time.

Do you prefer hot wallets or cold wallets, give your opinion about.

Both cold and hot wallets have their respective pros and cons. Before picking a preference out of the two, one really has to consider the trade-offs of both wallets.
Hot wallet is an internet based wallet which cannot be accessed without the availability of internet. And this kind of wallet is known to be prone to online attacks which could thereby result to stolen funds. Hot wallet has an advantage of speed, it is very fast in carrying out transactions. For users that trade using their wallets, hot wallet is the right wallet for them because it executes trades faster.

Cold Wallet on the other hand is an offline wallet, it does not need internet service for it’s operations. It is a more secured wallet because it is not immune to online attacks, stealing from a cold wallet will require physical access to the wallet as well as passwords and PINs associated with the cold wallet which could be very difficult. The cold wallet is slow in carrying out transactions and therefore less convenient.
Cold wallet is a more secured wallet for holders of large amounts of cryptocurrencies.

Now after considering the above trade-offs, the big question is, which of the above mentioned wallets is the best? Should you use a cold wallet, a hot wallet, or combine both of them?
I think the combination of the two wallets will be ideal, thereby using one to compliment the other and also striking a balance.

But if I must choose one among the two I’ll go for hot wallet, reason is because hot wallets are faster and more convenient than cold wallets. Though cold wallets are more secure than hot wallets, cold wallets are less convenient in the sense that before the funds in a cold wallet can be accessed the wallet must be connected to an internet service where as; it is not so when it comes to hot wallets because hot wallets are internet based wallets.
Secondly, hardwares used as cold wallets are usually very expensive unlike hot wallets that are totally free.

Conclusion

Storing of cryptocurrencies requires taking of personal decisions. For users who prefers hot wallets for the storage of their large funds should make sure that they go for a hot wallet with high security reputation.

THANKS FOR READING THROUGH MY POST