How Can I Store My Bitcoin or any Cryptocurrency

There are many options to store coins, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Storing your bitcoin on Exchange

A custodial solution refers to storage where the user doesn’t actually hold the coins themselves but trusts a third party to do so. To make transactions, they would log in to the third party’s platform. Exchanges like Binance often use this model as it’s vastly more efficient for trades. Storing your coins on Binance allows you to easily access them for the purposes of trading or lending.

Storing your coins in a Cryptocurrency/Token wallet

Non-custodial solutions are the opposite — they put the user in control of their funds. To store funds with such a solution, you use something called a wallet. A wallet doesn’t hold your coins directly — rather, it holds cryptographic keys that unlock them on the blockchain. You have two main options on this front:

Hot wallets

A hot wallet is software that connects in some way to the Internet. Generally, it will take the form of a mobile or desktop application that allows you to easily send and receive coins. An easy to use example of a mobile wallet with a lot of supported coins is Trust Wallet. Because they’re online, hot wallets are generally more convenient for payments, but they’re also more vulnerable to attack.

Cold wallets

Cryptocurrency wallets that are not exposed to the Internet are known as cold wallets. They’re less prone to attack because there is no online attack vector, but they consequently tend to provide a clunkier user experience. Examples include hardware wallets or paper wallets.