Best Bitcoin Wallet for Android

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The meteoric rise of Bitcoin has stunned most people. While some regret not investing spare change in 2010 that could have made them millionaires today, others have invested millions and lost it all.

Many early adopters and Bitcoin investors saved their Bitcoin private keys or seed phrases on so-called paper wallets or computers. It’s safe to say that many of those Bitcoin saving methods didn’t withstand the test of time and weren’t exactly practical for grocery shopping.

Thankfully, there are plenty of much safer and more practical methods for storing Bitcoin and using it for everyday spending. For that reason, we’ve written this article to help you find the best Bitcoin wallet for Android.

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Rating

Pros

Features

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1

5rating-star

Expert Review
  • First mobile Bitcoin app
  • Complete control over fees
  • Simplicity
  • SegWit
  • Bech32
  • Legacy
  • Rotating addresses
  • Tor

2

4.8rating-star

Expert Review
  • Support for Trezor and Ledger
  • Established replicable app
  • Address book
  • SegWit
  • Bech32
  • Legacy
  • Rotating addresses
  • Tor

3

4.7rating-star

Expert Review
  • Great UI design
  • Supports other cryptocurrencies
  • CoinGecko API used for fiat price
  • SegWit
  • Bech32
  • Legacy
  • Rotating Addresses
  • Tor

4

4.5rating-star

Expert Review
  • 2FA
  • Available on multiple platforms
  • Support for Trezor and Ledger
  • SegWit
  • Legacy
  • Hardware wallet integration

5

4.4rating-star

Expert Review
  • Great for long-term BTC storing
  • Hardware wallet replacement
  • Multiple supported cryptocurrencies
  • Legacy
  • Dual app transaction signing
  • Non-custodial exchange access

The convenience of having the best Bitcoin wallet in your back pocket for everyday purchases is excellent. With increased Bitcoin adoption, you are more likely to find vendors willing to exchange goods or services for Bitcoin. However, saving money on a mobile phone can be akin to carrying around all your fiat currency in your physical wallet: risky and impractical. But if you keep just enough for daily use, you minimize the chance of losing your life savings.

Like any other mobile payment application, using Bitcoin for payments is only going to increase in popularity. We have reviewed the market to compile this list of trusted community-accepted apps, all of which give you complete control over your funds.

Bitcoin Wallet

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If you’re looking for an app from the most established source, there’s no better solution than Bitcoin Wallet, which has been available on Google Play since 2011. Without a doubt in our minds, this is the best Bitcoin wallet for Android. It has been downloaded more than 5 million times and has proven itself to be the most reliable way of sending and receiving Bitcoin securely.

When you install the app, you’ll need to take specific security steps. Ensure that the wallet is backed up and set up a secure password.

Like most wallets built for mobile devices, Bitcoin Wallet uses SPV (simplified payment verification) to validate transactions. It effectively means that you don’t have to run a full Bitcoin node on your mobile device to validate it. It supports Bech32 and SegWit, and will automatically generate you a Bech32 Bitcoin address.

As with any other BTC wallet on Android, you can find the Bitcoin Wallet source code on GitHub available for peer review. The app’s developers are also quite transparent on what other libraries the software uses, like QR code scanning, cryptography, helpers, and framework. You can find all this data in the “about” section of the app.

The interface is intuitive and easy to use, even for newcomers to the crypto space. You can see your BTC balance at the top of the app next to the QR code for your Bitcoin address. The denomination options available are µBTC, mBTC, and BTC with four to eight decimal places.

You can also see your balance expressed in some of the world’s major fiat currencies. The Android Bitcoin Wallet app draws its prices from CoinGecko’s API, which the developers chose because the value it conveys doesn’t depend on a single exchange.

Pros IconPros

  • Largest user base
  • Security and transparency
  • CPFP and RBF available
  • User-friendly

Cons IconCons

  • No other functionalities

An overview of transactions you’ve made and received takes up most of the interface, while the buttons for requesting and sending coins are clearly labeled at the bottom. You can skip the “send coins” button altogether and just click on the camera to scan a QR code.

With Bitcoin Wallet, you have some inbuilt privacy features. For example, the app automatically rotates your addresses when making payments. However, developers do also recommend manually rotating addresses each time you receive a payment. Keep in mind that network peers can match your IP address with your transactions, so the best cryptocurrency wallet app does have to include some ways of mitigating that threat. It’s excellent to see that Bitcoin Wallet supports Tor, and you can set it up as a proxy to prevent your ISP or any bad actors from associating your IP and Bitcoin addresses.

The wallet gives you complete control over your transaction fees. If you’re not sure how much to allocate for the mining fee, the app itself can provide a suggestion based on the Bitcoin network’s current state. Thankfully, if your payment is stuck because you’ve allowed for too small a fee, you’ll be glad to know that Bitcoin Wallet supports both CPFP and RBF.

Even though the app is one of the top crypto wallets, its rating on Google Play doesn’t reflect that. The fact is that some users are not familiar with the concept of miner fees and don’t understand that the transactions are prioritized accordingly. That’s why it’s essential to familiarize yourself with the Bitcoin ecosystem and how it works. Having a transaction with a modest fee can see it remain unverified for a while.

Mycelium

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Mycelium is one of the best Bitcoin wallets on Android, and with more than a million downloads from Google Play, we can see why. It’s another app like Bitcoin Wallet with a long history and clean record. The app was released in 2013 for the Android platform, and it’s also ported to iOS.

Like any app from a responsible developer, Mycelium reminds you to keep your wallet backed up. That means that even if you lose the phone with BTC on it, you can restore it on another by using Mycelium’s backup feature. Due to Bitcoin’s nature, if you lose both the phone and the backup, your BTC is effectively lost forever. Aside from Bitcoin, Mycelium supports Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens, making it the easiest Bitcoin wallet if you own Ether as well.

Mycelium follows open-source standards; it’s deterministically coded and completely transparent, so you can be sure that there are no secret lines of code that will take control of your BTC. When you install the app on your phone, it runs in isolation from other apps. Running apps in isolation provides excellent protection against malware. However, remember that you need to keep your phone encrypted and your backup safe.

Pros IconPros

  • Support for Trezor and Ledger
  • Established replicable app
  • Address book
  • Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens

Cons IconCons

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By default, when you start the Mycelium app, it opens the balance page and gives you options to send and receive Bitcoin. The Android BTC wallet is compatible with legacy, SegWit, and Bech32 addresses, and if you let it create a new address for you, it will create all three.

New users may get confused and not understand the difference between these protocols. However, Mycelium makes it easy for users to choose a miner fee by giving them a rough estimate of the time it will require to be verified. SPV is implemented, as we’d expect. The wallet app doesn’t act as a full node but still allows for application confirmation.

The application is divided into tabs, with news, accounts, balance, transaction history, even address book for addresses you regularly send funds to. Even though it’s a top-rated bitcoin wallet, it has advertisements for crypto-related businesses and sports betting since it’s a free app.

It offers some important options like enabling Tor or rotating your payment address for privacy and security features. Enabling Tor is just a simple matter of turning the option on via the settings menu.

What makes Mycelium stand out from other Android wallets is that it supports Trezor, Ledger, and KeepKey hardware wallets. If you don’t have a hardware wallet, you can set up multiple layers of PIN protection.

Besides being a popular Bitcoin wallet for Android, Mycelium is also a part of the FIO network (Foundation for Interwallet Operability). The organization is building a decentralized blockchain protocol for more conventional asset payments. FIO addresses, for example, are much more readable than standard cryptocurrency public keys and are compatible with multiple currencies and tokens.

Unstoppable

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The next non-custodial wallet solution on our list is Unstoppable. As the name suggests, the app’s developers wanted to enable equal financial opportunity for their users and give them access to the cryptocurrency market. That’s the attitude required to create the best crypto wallet, and this app is not far from it.

Besides Bitcoin, Unstoppable can serve as a wallet for Litecoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Binance Chain, and Zcash. Besides these cryptocurrencies, it can also store ERC-20 and BEP2 tokens. However, since our primary focus is on Bitcoin, we’ll focus more on the technology the app uses for storage.

It supports the Bech32 and SegWit protocols and allows you to choose the format you prefer. Legacy addresses are supported as well. By default, it chooses SegWit, but it’s easy to change this in the wallet settings tab.

Unstoppable, like any other mobile Bitcoin wallet, uses SPV to verify payments, which is excellent, since running a full Bitcoin node isn’t the best use case for anyone’s smartphone. You’ll also find the seed phrase for your private key that you need to memorize and backup in settings.

Pros IconPros

  • Fantastic UI design
  • Cryptocurrency market overview
  • Price change notifications
  • Supports additional cryptocurrencies

Cons IconCons

  • Potentially overwhelming for new users

Unstoppable’s user interface stands out among the competition. You get an excellent summary of the current cryptocurrency market with data imported from the CoinGecko API. The overview shows the top three gainers and losers, as well as the currencies with the largest volume traded within the past 24 hours.

The discovery section lists all cryptocurrencies, and you can filter them out according to categories like decentralized exchanges, privacy, scaling, stablecoins, and others. We don’t see such features often among the best crypto wallets. You can also make a list of your favorites, so you can have an overview of coins you have within your portfolio and potential investment opportunities in one spot.

The balance page shows all cryptocurrencies you have on the Unstoppable wallet. It conveniently shows the total you have in fiat currency along with gains or losses for your portfolio. You can also set up notifications for price changes, a handy feature for anyone who likes to check out crypto prices often.

Like other top wallets on our list, Unstoppable is an open-source project that is completely reproducible from the GitHub repository. Inbuilt privacy features like Tor and rotating addresses are available for users.

In most cases, a Bitcoin wallet for Android will have an option for setting up a network fee. Unstoppable also has this feature, which new users will appreciate. Experienced Bitcoin investors will be able to set a custom fee amount and adjust it later.

We liked seeing extensive support available through the FAQ section and additional resources for learning about cryptocurrencies in the app’s Academy section. The dev team is also active on Twitter, Reddit, Telegram, and Medium, which are great ways to follow updates on the wallet’s development.

Blockstream Green Wallet

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It’s great to see consistent performance from Bitcoin wallets, where stability and trustworthiness are paramount. Blockstream Green (or Green: Bitcoin Wallet app as it’s listed on Google Play) is such an app. The app was launched in 2015 and currently has around 100,000 downloads on Google Play. While the number of users isn’t as impressive as with Bitcoin Wallet or Mycelium, it still has some nice features worth looking into.

When you boot up the application for the first time and create a new Bitcoin address, you’ll have to back up the 24-word seed phrase. Blockstream Green will give you a short test just to check that you’ve backed up the information correctly.

While researching our crypto wallets review, we’d usually skip this step since we don’t plan on using these wallets for a long time. However, we’re very aware of how easy it is to lose access to funds due to Bitcoin’s irreversible nature. It’s always better to be safe than sorry when you’re saving important information such as a seed phrase, private key, or other security credentials.

Pros IconPros

  • 2FA supported
  • Ledger and Trezor integration
  • Straightforward UI

Cons IconCons

  • Data collection
  • Tor or proxy unavailable

Security for Blockstream Green is a top priority. When we tested the app, we were able to set up a six-digit pin as well as two-factor authentication through email, SMS, call, or Google Authenticator. Two-factor authentication is enabled by Blockstream servers, essentially allowing you to use dual private keys as if you’re accessing a lockbox in a bank. This makes it the best cryptocurrency wallet for app security.

Android users can integrate Ledger and Trezor hardware wallets with Blockstream Green. The added layer of keeping your private key in cold storage is perfect for users who need to keep more substantial sums of BTC in their pocket.

When you’re sending BTC, the app automatically opens the camera to scan for a QR code and leaves a small bar to fill in the address manually. It isn’t the most elegant UI solution we’ve seen so far, but it gets the job done. The mobile Bitcoin wallet suggests a network fee and will give you a time estimate depending on the price. You can also set up a custom fee. Just keep in mind that the Bitcoin network will prioritize your transaction according to the fee you’re paying.

SPV synchronization isn’t enabled by default since the app relies on Blockstream server nodes for your address updates. The app uses SegWit and relies on RBF to push transactions that users set up with low fees.

Unlike other apps, Blockstream Green wallet does collect certain user information, which may discourage more privacy-oriented users. In that case, we suggest checking out the other wallets we’ve reviewed. However, this Bitcoin app for Android is open-source, replicable, and peer-reviewed, and peers haven’t reported anything malicious in the code.

AirGap Wallet

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AirGap is a hybrid between an Android wallet and a hardware wallet, making it an exciting entry on our list. It essentially needs two apps to work. AirGap Vault is a separate app that secures your private key. Simultaneously, AirGap Wallet is the app used for payments and doesn’t hold the information necessary to sign transactions digitally. The apps work in tandem to make your transactions secure. While it’s not the best Android crypto wallet on our list, it’s the most innovative.

Our testing found the most beneficial practice would be to have a dedicated offline phone with the Vault app. This means that the phone shouldn’t have a SIM card or connect to WiFi. This would make the private key inaccessible and airtight, hence the name of the app. It’s an exciting approach to securing your crypto without having to purchase a hardware wallet.

Assuming that you don’t have two smartphones, you can still use the app if you install both the Wallet and the Vault app on the same device. While the app doesn’t currently support SegWit, we will most likely see it in future updates.

Pros IconPros

  • Hardware wallet alternative
  • Private key security
  • Non-custodial crypto exchange integration

Cons IconCons

  • Lack of privacy features
  • Complicated for new users

AirGap’s Android crypto wallet can currently be used to store Bitcoin, Ether, and ERC-20 tokens. This is really convenient, as the wallet supports multiple cryptocurrencies that you can directly swap within the app through the ChangeNOW exchange. The fact that the exchange is non-custodial makes it interesting, especially since you control your portfolio and don’t have to store it on a third-party platform.

The main downside of the app is that it can be overwhelming for new users. Signing a transaction with a separate device or the initial setup is a bit more complicated than the other apps we’ve reviewed. However, it does provide an alternative to users without access to hardware wallets as a cheaper option if you have a spare smartphone that you aren’t using anymore. Who says that a Bitcoin wallet app for Android can’t be an alternative for Trezor or Ledger?

Privacy features like rotating addresses and Tor are not available on this app. However, you won’t find them necessary; you can still use the app as a storage device rather than an everyday spending wallet.

Unlike some apps with more downloads than AirGap Wallet, the source code in its GitHub repository does give a reproducible result when tested. However, trustworthiness and an innovative private key storing approach make AirGap an appealing choice for Bitcoin users.

Methodology

Your Keys, Your BTC

It’s crucial to differentiate the best Bitcoin wallet for Android from an exchange app. While you can hold BTC on a reputable exchange with relative certainty that it’s secure, you don’t own the private key for your funds. In the crypto community, you’ll often hear the phrase “not your keys, not your Bitcoin.” The moral of the story is that you don’t really control your BTC if you don’t control the private keys.

In the short span of cryptocurrency history, some exchanges have been hacked and lost billions in users’ funds. The most notable example is MT. Gox, a Tokyo-based exchange that handled more than 70% of BTC transactions in 2014. Hackers stole around 850,000 BTC, valued at $450 million at the time and more than $52 billion while writing this article.

Finding the best Bitcoin Android wallet is a more secure option than an exchange. If you’re the only one who knows the seed phrase or private key for your Bitcoin address (public key), you are the sole person controlling those funds. For the security of your funds, getting a decentralized app is crucial.
Open-Source, Transparent, Reproducible

When choosing a Bitcoin wallet, you need to make sure that the developer is trustworthy. That’s why we’ve only reviewed apps that are open-source, with code available for peer review on GitHub. Suppose the code matches what is available on Google Play and is reproducible from the GitHub repository. In that case, you can confirm beyond any doubt that there is no hidden, potentially malicious code. Otherwise, an Android cryptocurrency wallet would be a potential weak point for your BTC. At the time of writing this review, all apps listed are reproducible and peer-reviewed.

SegWit, Bech32, Legacy, SPV, CPFP, and RBF

Depending on the wallet app, it may or may not support significant upgrades made on the Bitcoin network like SegWit. Implementing these upgrades is essential for any wallet, since it improves the overall user experience.

The SegWit upgrade effectively increased block size and transaction speed. It did so by segregating signature data from blocks. Therefore, SegWit transactions require a smaller verification fee compared to “legacy addresses,” which is why you should use a Bitcoin wallet app that implements this upgrade.

Bech32 was another quality of life upgrade compatible with SegWit that simplified Bitcoin addresses and made them easier to read and generate QR codes for.

RBF or Replace-By-Fee is a method that replaces the same transaction with one that has a higher mining fee. This essentially allows users to increase the fee on a stuck transaction due to a low fee.

CPFP or “Child Pays For Parent” is a similar method to RBF. However, it includes creating a secondary transaction (Child) that needs to be confirmed with the previous one (Parent), giving miners a greater financial incentive to verify it.

SPV (Simplified Payment Verification) is another method that the best cryptocurrency wallet for Android will likely use. It validates transactions without downloading the complete Bitcoin blockchain. After all, even top-of-the-line mobile devices wouldn’t have enough resources to process that blockchain.

Privacy

Since all transactions are recorded on a public ledger, it can be a bit hard to keep your privacy. Some wallets allow for rotating addresses. Your IP address can be logged along with your payment, linking you with sent and received payments. Some wallets allow for easy use of privacy protocols like VPN or Tor.

Transaction Fees

Depending on the wallet’s features, the user’s transaction fees can be set or changed automatically by the app. Also, if your wallet only supports legacy transactions, additional costs may pile up.

User Interface

The best Bitcoin wallet app on Android will make it easy for users to learn the ropes. Having a well-designed user interface that users can learn intuitively is an advantage. QR code scanning is a standard feature for smartphone applications, and it’s no different for Bitcoin wallets. Scanning the recipient’s address as a QR code is much more convenient than typing the whole string of characters instead.

Downloading a Trusted App

Since there is a lot of money in cryptocurrencies, many bad actors are trying to take advantage of unsuspecting users. Some Bitcoin wallets choose similar names to competitors, most often on purpose.

The best practice for downloading a legitimate BTC wallet for Android is to go through the official link on the developer’s website or follow the links in our review. Millions of users have installed some of these apps and use them regularly. It’s not far-fetched to assume that billions of dollars are handled by these wallets, which can tempt anyone into stealing.

FAQ

?Which app is good for Bitcoin wallet?

All the apps listed in our review have great features that any Bitcoin user would feel comfortable using. As long the app is open-source, trustworthy, and non-custodial, it should serve as a tremendous hot wallet for everyday use.

?What is the best and safest Bitcoin wallet?

The best Bitcoin wallet for Android is an application that carries that same name since 2011, and that is the original Bitcoin Wallet app.

?Are mobile Bitcoin wallets safe?

Mobile wallets are known as “hot wallets” or “hot storage.” This means that they are effectively always online, making them less safe for long-term storage than hardware wallets (cold wallets). However, if you keep limited funds on them as you would in a physical wallet, they are perfect for everyday use.