Choosing and installing your wallet

Today you're going to set up your first real Bitcoin wallet. By the end of this lesson, you'll have a wallet installed, opened, and ready to use. We're not putting any Bitcoin in it yet — that comes later. Right now, we're just building the container.

First — which wallet should you use?

There are dozens of Bitcoin wallets. Most of them are fine. A few of them are bad. To make this simple, I'm going to recommend two wallets — one for your phone and one for your computer — that I trust, that I use myself, and that have been around long enough to have a real track record.

For mobile, I recommend BlueWallet. It's free, it's open source, it works on both iPhone and Android, and it doesn't try to sell you anything. Importantly: BlueWallet does not hold your Bitcoin. You hold your Bitcoin. The app is just the interface.

For desktop, I recommend Sparrow Wallet. Same story — free, open source, no upsells, works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

You only need one of these. Pick mobile if your phone is where you do most things, and pick desktop if you'd rather use your laptop. If you can't decide — go with BlueWallet on your phone. It's the one most beginners stick with.

Two things to watch out for when you download a wallet.

First: get it from the official source only. Search results sometimes show fake wallet apps that steal Bitcoin. For BlueWallet, go to the official website — bluewallet dot io — and follow the link to the App Store or Play Store from there. Don't trust the first search result on Google or the App Store.

Second: when you install the wallet, it will give you a screen of twelve or twenty-four words. These are your seed phrase. Do not write them down yet. Do not screenshot them. Do not photograph them. We're going to spend the next entire lesson on how to write these down properly — because most beginners do this part wrong and it costs them everything later.

For now, just open the wallet, follow the "create new wallet" flow, and when you see the seed phrase — leave the screen open, and come back for lesson five.

If you have to close the app or the screen before lesson five, that's fine — just be ready to create a fresh wallet at the start of lesson five. We'll do it together.

One more important note: your wallet shows a Bitcoin balance somewhere on its main screen. Right now it's zero. That's correct. We haven't moved any Bitcoin in yet — your Bitcoin from Lesson 1 is still sitting on the exchange. We move it across in Lesson 7.

In the next lesson, we write down your seed phrase. It's eight minutes — and it's the most important eight minutes of the entire course.