Finance glossary
Wallet (Crypto)
Definition
Software or hardware that stores the private keys to access your cryptocurrency.
A crypto wallet does not store cryptocurrency itself; it stores the private keys that prove ownership of on-chain assets. Hot wallets are connected to the internet, convenient but less secure. Cold wallets like hardware devices are offline, more secure but less convenient. Lose your private key, lose your crypto.
In a sentence
She moved her coins into a hardware Wallet (Crypto) instead of leaving them on an exchange, knowing that losing the private key would mean losing them for good.
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