There are several ways to setup a crypto wallet, all with varying levels of complexity and ease of use.
Before we get to our recommendation its worth pointing out that most users believe their wallet lives on the device they install it on and this isn’t the case! The wallet is actually the private key which authorizes you as the owner of the transaction.
Types of Wallet
Broadly speaking there are two types of wallets … Hot and Cold.
Hot wallets include desktop applications, mobile apps and secure web apps.
Cold Wallets include hardware dedicated wallets and paper wallets … yes, you can store your private key on paper if you choose!
Options
Cold Wallet
(not recommended)
For the most robust and security conscious, we recommend the Ledger Nano (a cold store). The Ledger is a cold storage device that stores your private keys on an encrypted USB device and is a standard within the industry.
However for 99% of users, the ledger is overkill, requires an initial outlay and adds another level of complexity that is not needed for smaller monthly amounts. The majority of industry professionals will have a device such as a nano ledger as their vault and a soft wallet (see below) for their transactional wallet.
If you do choose to go down this route, Boxmining has a good Ledger Nano Tutorial you can review.
Hot Wallet
(best first step)
Instead of a cold wallet, you can use a soft wallet … essentially a wallet that lives on an electronic device. As above, there are a few options but the one we’ve consistently found to be the right balance of user friendly and secure is Trust Wallet with apps available for both iOS and Android.
One of the benefits of the trust wallet is its ability to store multiple different types of cryptocurrency in the same interface. We’re also fond of its deep integration with the device security features such as faceID on iOS.
Oh … and its free 🙂
Setup Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojux8tzbGrU
Trust Wallet Site and downloads: https://trustwallet.com
Once You Have Your Wallet
Once you have your wallet setup (congratulations by the way!), there are 2 CRUCIAL steps you need to do:
- Write down your seed phrase or recovery phrase. We cannot stress how important this is … if you lose your wallet you lose your crypto. There is no way around this!
However, any wallet can be restored on another device if you have the seed phrase stored somewhere.
DO NOT share this phrase with anyone for any reason … there is no good reason they need it or want it, the only reason would be to steal your crypto! - Copy and paste the wallet address and send it to your A3 Finance account manager. Note, your wallet address for each currency varies so make sure you provide the right one.
i.e. if you send an ETH wallet address for a BTC transaction your crypto will disappear into the void and become unrecoverable.
Each wallet has a slightly different interface, but in trust wallet (for example) you tap on the crypto e.g. BTC and then tap “receive”. This will show you a long hexadecimal string which you can copy and paste