4 Best Bitcoin Wallets in South Africa

Whether you’re an avid crypto investor or seasoned crypto trader, a secure crypto wallet is an essential device to have to secure your digital assets. It’s only natural to seek out the best Bitcoin wallets in South Africa. 

In this article, we’ll be covering Bitcoin wallets – commonly also known as crypto wallets – and what options can be had at your disposal.

What are the best Bitcoin wallets to use?

There are many candidates for the best Bitcoin wallets in South Africa. To help you get started, we’ve narrowed down the selections to the following wallets:

• Trezor: Best Bitcoin hardware wallet for security.
• Coldcard: Best Bitcoin-only wallet.
• Exodus: Best cross-platform Bitcoin wallet.
• Blue Wallet: Best Bitcoin wallet with Lightning support.

When it comes to deciding which Bitcoin wallet is best for you, it’s important to identify the applications for which you will be using it as well as what features are more important to you.

For beginners, the Exodus is an excellent choice. It offers the essential features to help you get started with investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Those who want wallets with the highest security features may opt to get the hardware wallets from the likes of Ledger and Trezor.

1. Trezor: Bitcoin hardware wallet for security

The Trezor One and its newer predecessor the Model T are excellent options when it comes to Bitcoin wallets.

These wallets are compatible with Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and thousands of other cryptocurrencies out there. This makes it useful should you want to expand your crypto investment portfolio

Both the Trezor One and Trezor Model T are known as hardware wallets – physical devices that store your private keys and allow you to verify every incoming transaction before they are processed.

Additionally, Trezor has a unique transparency policy where they publish known security flaws publicly on their website along with the details such as the impact, models affected, and the corresponding fix. This, combined with their extensive list of security features makes them an excellent choice to store your digital assets.

2. Coldcard: Bitcoin-only wallet

Another excellent Bitcoin wallet is Coldcard. Similar to Trezor, this is another hardware wallet that is advertised as being open-source and packed with security features to safe-keep your digital crypto assets.

With the use of an SD card, you can broadcast Bitcoin transactions without ever plugging it into a computer, also known as air gap operation. The latest cold card (MK3) will cost you $120, and you can pay in Bitcoin!

Learn more: Visit their official website for more details.

3. Exodus: Cross-platform Bitcoin wallet

The Exodus crypto wallet is often considered to be one of the best choices especially for those just beginning to get into the world of cryptocurrency.

Unlike the two previous wallets above, Exodus is purely a software wallet that runs on your computer or mobile device. You can also sync your Trezor hardware wallet to manage your assets from the device for the best of both worlds.

The multi cross-platform support, combined with the hundreds of cryptocurrencies supported makes Exodus one of the best Bitcoin wallets to get you started investing crypto in South Africa.

Considering the Exodus? Read our review on the Exodus Crypto Wallet.

4. Blue Wallet: Bitcoin wallet with Lightning support

Blue wallet is another software wallet that features user-friendly interfaces to help you manage your crypto assets. Blue Wallet has a modern look and is really easy to use. It allows you to create multiple Bitcoin wallets, all with different private keys.

The wallet is packed with cool features such as view-only wallets, PSBT, and bump or cancel transactions with multisig support. It also supports the lightning network, allowing you to open a lightning wallet.

Bitcoin wallet basics

With that said, choosing the best Bitcoin wallet in South Africa requires a better understanding of Bitcoin wallets and the different types that are available out there.

Essentially, a Bitcoin wallet can be thought of as a normal wallet that stores your money, except it stores, you guessed it, your Bitcoin – and other cryptocurrencies. 

The main difference is that a Bitcoin wallet is not a traditional wallet where you keep physical cash, or in this case physical Bitcoins, but rather it is a device running software or program that securely stores your Bitcoins there.

Technically, the wallet doesn’t ‘store’ any Bitcoin, it stores your private key, which allows you to spend your Bitcoin. I will go more into that now. 

Learn more: Complete guide to cryptocurrency wallets.

Public Key / Wallet Address

Bitcoin wallets have something called a ‘public key’ and a ‘private key.’ The public key is also known as a wallet address and can be given out to people so that they may send Bitcoin to you.

Bitcoin currently has 3 types of addresses, these aren’t important to know, but I will include them so you can become familiar with them:

Legacy – 12c6DSiU4Rq3P4ZxziKxzrL5LmMBrzjrJX

Nested Segwit – 3J98t1WpEZ73CNmQviecrnyiWrnqRhWNLy

Native Segwit – bc1qqeq6pvxr0dx2khweps0pcqm2j3ev7544435qr3

Private Key 

The private key is a secret key that is used to spend Bitcoin that belongs to a public key. As long as you own the private key, you can spend those bitcoins. Private keys are a long string of random characters. However, most wallets today convert this into 12 or 24 words, as these are easier to read for humans.

For demonstration purposes we’ll be taking a look at the following example:

The public key or address here is: 1M3RLrXve5wcT2ZcJu8WXoXjdh4WXcWQA9. The owner would give this away to receive Bitcoin.

The private key is: 5K8BwE76VsatQiRa5wJpGng7758FAz4vLkMXAry8QnyZTdQJXPn

With this private key, the owner can spend any Bitcoin that is in that address. 

Types of Bitcoin wallets 

Now that you have a general idea of what a Bitcoin wallet is, it’s time to talk about the different types of wallets available out there. 

Hardware wallets

Hardware wallets are physical devices that store your private keys and allow you to send and receive Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. These wallets are also known as cold wallets.

These types of wallets store your private on the actual device, and not on the internet. This makes them much more secure and private. The downside is that they cost money, and are harder to use.

You can buy hardware wallets directly from the manufacturer or from a certified reseller, popular hardware wallets include:

• Trezor: Trezor One and Model T
• Coldcard: Coldcard Mk3

Software wallets

Amongst the many Bitcoin wallets in South Africa, mobile wallets are some of the most intuitive and user-friendly options. Essentially these are applications that are installed onto a phone to store your Bitcoin.

Mobile wallets have the advantage of being easy to use and are accessible to anyone with a smartphone. Software wallets are also commonly referred to as hot wallets.

You can easily download one of these wallets on your app store, Mobile wallets include:

• Exodus
• Blue Wallet

More on Exodus Wallet: Click here for our review on the Exodus wallet.

How to send and receive Bitcoin

Sending and receiving Bitcoin is very simple with most wallets. It takes less than a few minutes, and the best part is you don’t have to involve banks or other financial institutions which make the whole process faster, more secure, and with minimum fees.

Below are the general steps to receive and send bitcoins on most software wallets, both mobile and desktop.

How to receive Bitcoins in South Africa:

1. Open your Bitcoin wallet of choice.
2. Navigate to the receive Bitcoin option.
3. Copy the address that is provided.
4. Send this address to the sender or crypto exchange.

How to send Bitcoins in South Africa:

1. Get the receiver’s address.
2. Open your wallet.
3. Click on the Bitcoin wallet you would like to send from.
4. Click “send”.
5. Fill in the amount to send, and the address you got from the receiver.
6. Choose a fee (the higher the fee, the faster the transaction).
7. Click send to confirm.

With that said, when it comes to choosing Bitcoin wallets in South Africa it’s best to consider your use cases and which one fits your budget.

Those just starting their crypto journey can try the free wallet options we mentioned above from Electrum or Exodus. Serious investors with larger amounts of crypto assets will want to invest in the more robust hardware crypto wallets for their increased security features.