A secure easy to use wallet is the first crucial step to owning crypto currency. Beginners tend to keep their coins on the exchange. When they bought them, they basically gave up control, trusting the exchange to keep the coins safe for them.

A wallet that doesn’t allow you complete control over your coins is known as a custodial wallet. However, the recommended way to store crypto currencies is to move your coins off the exchange and onto a non-custodial wallet, a wallet that you and only you can control.

One of the best beginner friendly non-custodial wallet is exodus. Exodus is a free software wallet that can be installed on your computer or mobile phone is beautifully designed and intuitive to use. Also, it supports over a hundred crypto currencies and tokens. Exodus allows you to trade coins from within the wallet and earn interest on your crypto holdings. Its main disadvantage is that it’s not open source, meaning it’s code isn’t publicly visible and therefore doesn’t get reviewed by community members to evaluate its quality.

If you want to take security up a notch, you can use a hardware wallet, a physical device that stores your coins offline in a secure manner, away from most possible hacking and theft attempts our number one pick for the best hardware wallet is the ledger. Nano x. The nano x is easy to use, supports over a thousand coins and tokens and can be controlled from your mobile phone as well as from your computer. On the downside, the nano code isn’t completely open source either, and it’s a bit pricey. But if you’re serious about security, the nano x gives you the optimal mix between security and usability.

If you’re looking for an affordable alternative to the nana x, we would suggest the Trezor one at less than half the price of Nano X. The Trezor One is a battle tested, open source, intuitive hardware wallet that supports a wide variety of coins. Its main downside is that it doesn’t support Monero, XRP or EOS.