Your first wallet

After this lesson you can: hold bitcoin in a wallet only you control, and prove to yourself that you could restore it.

What you need

• A phone you control, with a lock screen.
• Pen and paper (metal later, if the amount grows).
• Twenty undisturbed minutes.

Choosing

For a first wallet, choose a well-known, open-source, non-custodial mobile wallet. The signs of a good one: it shows you a 12- or 24-word seed phrase at setup, it is open source, it has been around for years, and it lets you set your own fee. Avoid any app that asks you to create an "account" with email and password; that is a custodian.

Examples people use for a first wallet: BlueWallet (on-chain, simple), Aqua and Phoenix (on-chain plus Lightning), Blockstream Green (pairs later with a Jade signer), Bull Bitcoin Wallet (on-chain, Lightning, hardware support). Any of them will do for this lesson. Pick one, not several.

Steps

1. 01Download only from the developer's own website or the official app store listing linked from it. Check the developer name matches.
2. 02Create a new wallet. When the seed phrase appears, write every word in order, numbered, on paper. No screenshots, no photos, no notes app.
3. 03Complete the wallet's verification step, where it asks you to re-enter words. If it does not offer one, close the app, reopen it, and check the words yourself.
4. 04Tap Receive. Copy the address or show the QR code. Send a small amount from your brokerage (a few dollars). Watch it arrive and confirm.
5. 05Tap Send. Send a tiny amount back to the brokerage. Check the address character by character before confirming.
6. 06Store the paper somewhere safe, dry and private. Consider a second copy in a different location.

Check your work

You have received and sent. You know where the words are. If you deleted the app right now, you could restore it from the paper. That is a working wallet.