Bitcoin wallets
My wallets
I personally use Zeus, Phoenix, Envoy, & Samourai on my phones and Sparrow on my desktop. For browser extension and using with podcasting2.0 I use Alby, but the backend is Zeus. I love that Samourai and Sparrow offer pay to paynym. And I love the @zeuspay that Zeus offers. Mine is expatriotic@zeuspay and the creator is eric@zeuspay. I'm about to start mining and a PayNym is a great way to receive sats in a privacy preserving way because you don't have to share an xpub or a static address with another party (e.g., the pool operator).
I suggest BTC Sessions tutorials if you want to dive deeper into any of these.
Pre-req knowledge: PayNyms | BitcoinQ+A guide
Mobile wallets
Envoy (Android and iOS) | GitHub | Twitter | Download | Description: Envoy is a slick mobile wallet that I use all the time with my Foundation PASSPORT hardware wallet. But it does allow for hot wallet creation. Possible to use an encrypted microsd for storing the private key. UTXO management supported.
Samourai Wallet (Android only) | Docs | Tutorial | Twitter | Download | Description: Samourai is a bitcoin wallet for the street. Keep your transactions private, your identity masked, and your funds secure. Implement BIP 47 PayNyms. Does not support multisig. However, due to advanced privacy spending tools, it is hands down the best Bitcoin wallet on Android for those who actually use bitcoin.
Stack Duo | Twitter | App Store | Play Store | F-Droid | Github | Stack Duo is a fully open source GitHub fork of the multi-coin Stack Wallet by the Cypher Stack Team. It's stripped down to only include Bitcoin and Monero. Allows for custom nodes. They are known for a smooth UI/UX and the first to implement BIP 47 PayNyms on iOS. Available on Android and Linux too. Whirlpool (Samourai's name for coinjoin) is on the way.
Blue Wallet (iOS, Android, & Desktop) | Tutorial | Twitter | GitHub | Very popular multi-platform Bitcoin only app that is extremely simple to use. Useful for spinning up new wallets. Samourai for example only allows one wallet per phone. It's also good for use as a watch-only wallet (cannot be used to sign, only to view balance and select receive addresses). Can be used to spin up a multisig vault using phones, which is more secure than holding funds on a single device. UTXO selection and using a custom network is available too. No BIP 47 PayNyms or whirlpool though. Easy to select miner fee or RBF (replace-by-fee).
Nunchuk | Multisig tutorial | Inheritance tutorial | Resources | Twitter | Slack | GitHub | If you don't pay anything, you have access to their DIY single-sig and multisig, DIY collaborative multisig, and "community support". After that is the Iron Hand for $120/year and lastly their new inheritance centric Honey Badger wallet for $450/year where you get three 2-of-4 assisted multisig wallets, cloud backups and assisted recovery, compatibility with both NFC and air-gapped keys, multiple beneficiaries support etc. The list goes on. Nunchuk's core library, desktop app, Android apps, and various architectures, are open source. So if your primary concern is ease of use (UX) or passing on a bitcoin inheritance to family in an assisted way (2:4 multisig quorum) then Nunchuk might be for you. Plus, I love the ballsy response they gave when the Ontario Superior Court demanded they freeze assets and disclose information on users --
“We do not collect any user identification information beyond email addresses. We also do not hold any keys,” the letter read. “Therefore: We cannot ‘freeze’ our users’ assets; We cannot ‘prevent’ them from being moved; We do not have knowledge of ‘the existence, nature, value and location’ of our users’ assets. This is by design. Please look up how self custody and private keys work. When the Canadian dollar becomes worthless, we will be here to serve you, too.” Source
Hardware wallets
If you already have a Trezor or Ledger, these are commonly used in multisig since in multisig, security is additive. No matter how poor the device, it will make your bitcoin that much harder to access. You can also upgrade the firmware on trezor to be Bitcoin only. This extends to hot wallets. A multisig using a mixture of hot wallets and HHWs is more secure than using either alone.
Foundation PASSPORT | GitHub | Tutorial | Twitter | $199 | Airgapped security, QR based, fully open source, assembled in the USA. UX is intuitive. All around great product. Paying for quality, security, and extremely convenient usability.
Jade | Tutorial | Twitter | $64.99 | QR based, airgapped, inexpensive, open-source wallet that works with on-chain bitcoin and liquid bitcoin.
Seedsigner | Hardware | Software | Tutorial | Twitter | Telegram | GitHub | GPG 🔑 | ≈$50 | A DIY air-gapped, stateless Bitcoin signing device (not a true HHW where one could read their balance). Generate private keys, sign transactions or use with Specter, Sparrow or Blue Wallet multisig vaults. QR based. Powered by a raspberry pi zero.
COLDCARD is not open source. They updated their website to say only "verifiable source code". So after borrowing Trezor's firmware repository (and then stripping it of the name Trezor, thus removing attribution), they didn't like Foundation repeating their trick. Good product, bit of a tosser of a founder IMO. Won't use 'em.
Desktop wallet
Sparrow | Docs | Tutorial | Twitter | Telegram | GitHub | GPG 🔑 | Download | Sparrow is a Bitcoin wallet for those who value financial self sovereignty. Full support for single sig and multisig wallets on common script types. A range of connection options: Public servers, Bitcoin Core and private Electrum servers. Standards based including full PSBT support. Support for all common hardware wallets in USB and airgapped modes. Full coin and fee control with comprehensive coin selection. Labeling of all transactions, inputs and outputs. Lightweight and multi platform. Send and receive to PayNyms, both directly (BIP47) and collaboratively. Built in Tor. Testnet, regtest and signet support. The Sparrow release binaries on GitHub and on https://sparrowwallet.com are signed using founder Craig Raw's GPG 🔑. The fingerprint is D4D0D3202FC06849A257B38DE94618334C674B40 & the 64-bit is E946 1833 4C67 4B40.
Electrum wallet is an OG in the space. A Swiss army knife wallet.
Specter wallet is FOSS free open source software under the MIT license.
Lightning
Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever he was, stated in the first line of his whitepaper that Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency... So this is why I emphasize fully non-custodial wallets for Lightning.