Crypto Wallets For Beginners Reviews: Best Crypto Wallets Guide 2022

So you’ve had it on your mind for some time and decided to finally go ahead and get some cryptocurrency tucked away into a crypto wallet to save for a rainy day. Or maybe you even want to be more adventurous and play around with spending it at one of the many and growing list of merchants accepting crypto for payment online.

You can even toy around with sending bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), tether (USDT), or dogecoin (DOGE) to a friend or roommate to split rent or dinner if they get a crypto wallet too. The only question from here is how to pick the right wallet for you out of the dizzying array of options out there in the fast-growing crypto markets of today!

Well, you landed on the right article. I’ve been a journalist covering the cryptocurrency industry since 2017. Many crypto wallets and exchanges have come and gone since then and using my instincts to spot reputable businesses, and my decade-plus experience covering the overall traditional finance industry, I’ve developed a knack for spotting the best products out there by reviewing the products, researching the development team and venture capital behind them, seeing what’s popular with users and why, and comparing reviews from across the cryptosphere online.

Here are six recommendations for crypto wallets for beginners. They are all friendly and easy to use if you’re not super tech-savvy. All six wallets differ in their offering of features and benefits. There are some trade-offs you’ll want to know about to pick your first starter wallet to suit your individual use case. I’ll review these in the list below.

Top Pick: CoinStats Crypto Wallet

CoinStats crypto wallet is my top pick for beginners because it gives new crypto investors an easy-to-use, all-in-one app that gives users wide access to all the crypto coins and tokens in this fast-evolving space. CoinStats wallet’s support for Defi token trading is especially valuable since it’s still so early in the Defi development and adoption curve.

That means the potential for huge rewards along with carefully taking calculated risks while supporting cutting-edge new blockchain technology that fully realizes Bitcoin’s original vision of complete decentralization. The wallet has support for all the tokens on Ethereum Mainnet, Binance Smart Chain, Bitcoin Network, Polygon Network, and Avalanche Network. It’s among the only apps out there that support multiple wallets, and that can consolidate crypto holdings in one place for handy management of a diverse portfolio.

Runner up: Exodus Wallet

Heading into 2022, one of the leading reputable investment news and education websites, Investopedia, named the Exodus software wallet (not to be confused with its very nice line of blockchain smartphones/crypto phones) a Top 3 pick for crypto holders in 2022.

Investopedia’s independent review panel picked Exodus wallet as the best crypto wallet for beginners in 2022, and it’s not hard to see why. Like CoinStats wallet, it’s free to use, lets you buy crypto with your bank card, and has good customer support. It has a desktop and mobile version with an easy-to-use interface.

Best Crypto Wallet for Total Newbs: CoinBase Wallet

CoinBase is a trusted, reputable cryptocurrency exchange with a long history in the blockchain industry. It’s been around since 2012 when it was co-founded in a Y-Combinator startup incubator by a former Airbnb engineer and a Goldman Sachs trader.

The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ under the stock ticker “COIN.” So it has American institutional-grade standards of regulatory compliance and data security. San Francisco Bay area newspaper SFGate ranked Coinbase wallet “Best for Beginners” in 2022. It’s available on hot and mobile wallets, as well as through a Google Chrome extension.

Best Hardware Wallet: Ledger Nano X

Beginning crypto investors and traders researching crypto wallets quickly learn the difference between a “hot” wallet and a “cold” one. A hot wallet stores your crypto private keys or account access to a custodian who keeps the keys secure for you on an Internet-connected device. If the company behind the wallet is managed by a trustworthy development team and backed with a strong balance sheet and investors to afford the best data security, this isn’t a problem for millions of hot wallet users.

But if you are extra careful and want another layer of security, you can store your crypto keys yourself in an offline storage device. For $149.99 shipped to your door from their website, Ledger Nano X is my recommendation for beginners.

Bottom Line

If you are willing to undertake the personal risk and responsibility of storing your own crypto private keys offline in a cold storage wallet, Ledger Nano X is a flagship product in that segment of crypto wallets. If you want a simple, easy-to-use, hot wallet app, with institutional support and U.S. regulatory compliance, CoinBase and Exodus wallet are excellent. Nebraska-based Exodus is also a U.S. SEC-registered public company that trades in OTC markets under the ticker “EXOD.”

But crypto wallet users should also understand these wallets come with the trade-off of the quarterly profit-chasing Wall Street mentality. They are at the same time relatively less agile and slower to offer support for the industry’s exciting new products that are being launched every month. That goes especially for disruptive ones like those rocking the blockchain in the Defi space.

That’s why CoinStats is my top pick for beginners looking for a user-friendly, reliable crypto wallet app, managed by a trustworthy name in the blockchain industry. While providing access to all the “classic” cryptocurrencies that potentially have massive upside left for investors, the CoinStats wallet is currently the industry-leading door to Defi for new users. And the multi-wallet, all-in-one-place support on one app is very convenient.