Why do you need a multi-currency crypto wallet?
Alt-coins are gaining considerable popularity, and this is seen in the market cap growth rates of all alt-coins recently.
This is reflected in the steadily declining index dominance of Bitcoin. There are so many other alt-coins on the market now, and some of these have already exceeded $1 billion. Many alt-coins are interesting not just because of the technology they use, but the ideas that lie at their base. They represent an attractive target for portfolio investment too. The next question that arises is - where do we store these varieties of digital assets?
Why a separate wallet for each alt-coin?
Most users have a separate cryptocurrency wallet for each cryptocoin (e.g., Electrum-Dash or Ethereum Wallet ). This approach undoubtedly provides a safe way to store your digital assets, because each of these wallets ensures control of the private key.
If the latter is stored in a secure location (e.g., written on a piece of paper and / or stored in a flash device located offline), you can be 100% certain of the preservation of your digital assets. However, this method has some drawbacks.
Firstly, a lot of disparate wallets can be uncomfortable. Second, for each of them you need to preserve the unique key seed-phrase (which will be the private key).
There are so many digital currencies and so many unique phrases to store! If you lose one of them, all will be lost and all digital currency in that wallet will vaporise into thin air.
Why not keep large sums on the crypto-exchanges?
Many prefer to keep alt-coins on exchanges. It is very convenient, since modern trading platforms support dozens or even hundreds of different alt-coins. However, such an approach has a number of significant deficiencies, since users have to trust funds to a third party.
Most crypto-coins are centralized, they are completely uninsured against hacking and are regularly subjected to DDoS-attacks . All of this poses a threat to the safety of your funds. Therefore, users who trade in large volumes on crypto-exchanges should consider other options for the long-term storage of their digital assets which provides control over their private keys.
Hardware wallets
This type of crypto wallet can be the most reliable, because such devices provide a safe maximum, "cold storage" of your digital assets in a secure and isolated environment. This is perhaps the best way for the long-term storage of large amounts of your funds.
The hardware crypto wallet has firmly embedded private keys used to sign transactions. Among the most popular of these hardware wallets include the Nano S , Trezor and KeepKey . Each of these supports the most popular alt-coins including ETH, LTC, DASH, and so on.
Online wallets
As is the case with the crypto-exchanges, this option is hardly reliable since it also means private keys flowing to a third party. On the other hand, online wallets can often support a variety of popular cryptocurrencies and even allow you to conduct transactions with lower commission costs
Mobile wallets
With the growing number of smartphones and there was a variety of different services of mobile wallets for Android, and for iOS. Many online services also have a mobile version (for example https://www.cryptonator.com/).
Some mobile wallets are highly reliable (because they provide the ability to save the seed-sentence) and have an intuitive interface. Such applications for example, include the mobile wallet Coinomi -https://coinomi.com/ The latest version of this wallet offers to save the key phrase for you.
Desktop wallets
A good tool for storing crypto coins are multi wallets installed on your computer. Among them are the Exodus , which features an intuitive and attractive interface, control over your private keys and an built-in exchange in the ShapeShift platform.
@craig-grant and myself are big fans of this platform. At the moment, the wallet supports 7 cryptocurrencies including ETH, DASH, LTC, REP, GNT and DOGE.
Stay secure whatever method of wallet you choose!