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As cryptocurrencies – especially Bitcoin – explode into mainstream popularity, it is important for crypto investors and traders to find the cheapest Bitcoin wallets to store their cryptos. It is no secret that crypto transactions have notoriously high fees, especially for traders. This makes having the cheapest Bitcoin wallets with low transaction fees more important.
Here is our recommended Crypto Wallets With Lowest Fees:
Before we give you our review of the cheapest Bitcoin wallets, let’s first take a look at the types of wallets available on the market.
These crypto wallets are software stored in the cloud, meaning that you can access your software any time, anywhere, provided you have an internet connection. You do not need to downline an app. However, since third parties host online crypto wallets, it increases the chances of your funds being stolen if the host suffers a malicious attack. The majority of crypto theft often happens when online crypto wallets are compromised.
This is a crypto wallet in the form of an app run from your smartphone such as iOS. While it provides a convenient mode to access your crypto, it is not the safest crypto wallet. However, mobile wallets are typically one of the cheapest crypto wallets with the lowest fees.
This is a crypto wallet in the form of an app you download and install on your PC. A desktop crypto wallet can only be accessed from that particular computer, meaning if you lose your PC or a virus corrupts it, you will lose your cryptos. Always remember to create a backup and store your coins safely.
These wallets come in the form of hardware such as an external computer drive or a USB stick. Such wallets can specifically be designed to hold particular crypto or specific multiple cryptos. To access the cryptos stored in the hardware wallet, you’ll have to connect to the internet wirelessly or plugin. Hardware crypto wallets are considered the safest since your cryptos are stored online and cannot be hacked, but they are not the cheapest bitcoin wallets in the market. The only risk you face is if you lose or irreparably damage the wallet.
This wallet involves getting a QR code printout of both your public and private keys. It allows you to avoid storing any data digitally and be able to send and receive cryptos. Just make sure not to lose that paper!
Technically, the cryptos aren’t exactly stored in a wallet. They are stored on the coin’s blockchain. Here’s how it works. The public key keeps all the records of all transactions, and that’s how it maintains your crypto balance. For example, if you have a BTC wallet, the wallet doesn’t have BTC since BTC is on bitcoin’s blockchain. The crypto wallet is designed to interact with the blockchain. It stores crypto addresses and allows cryptos to be transferred between these addresses. Cryptocurrency wallets have private and public keys.
To find a crypto wallet with lowest fees, it is important to understand the fee structure. Typically, bitcoin transaction fees are included when making a transaction with BTC. However, although these fees are not mandatory, they are encouraged since they ensure that your transaction gets processed faster by a Bitcoin miner. Miners are generally rewarded when they add a new block – as of April 2021, the reward is 6.25 BTC per block mined. The transaction fees incurred by bitcoin users is to encourage the miners to process and verify these transactions.
The transaction fees are necessary due to bitcoin halving. This means that after every four years, the rewards received by miners are cut in half, so the fees are an extra incentive. However, unlike transaction fees in the fiat monetary system, the bitcoin network fees are not a fixed percentage of a particular transaction.
Instead, these fees are arbitrarily set by the users. You might obviously wonder if users set the transaction fees, then why not set them as low as possible? Well, while users can do this, miners will prioritise transactions with higher fees. This means that transaction that has lower than average fees risk not being included in the next block or take much longer to be processed.
So, why don’t bitcoin users band together and set the transaction fees as low as possible to ensure that the average network fees are low?
Well, that’s because most modern BTC wallets will examine the blockchain’s level of activity and then automatically recommend the optimal fees. Moreover, users who want their transactions to be completed faster can choose to pay higher than the recommended network fees.
One bitcoin block contains data whose size is only 1MB. This means that there is a limited number of different transactions that can be included in one block. Thus, when many users send BTC over the network at a given time, there will be congestion in the network with several transactions remaining pending confirmation.
Typically, when a transaction is initiated, it is broadcasted into the memory pool before it’s confirmed into a block. Miners – whose job is to confirm transactions and add them into blocks – select which transactions to include in a particular block from the memory pool. They, as expected, prioritise transactions with the highest fees attached. Therefore, bitcoin fees tend to be higher when there is congestion in the network and drop when there are fewer transactions to process.
The impact of the transaction on the bitcoin fees is almost the same as that of the network conditions. The transaction size is still subject to the fact that one block in the bitcoin blockchain can contain no more than 1 MB of information. In this case, smaller transactions get validated easily, while larger Bitcoin transactions take more time and space in the block. Even when using the cheapest bitcoin wallets, users sending a lot of BTC or processing bulky transactions will have to pay more bitcoin fees than those processing smaller transactions.
The company behind the Blockchain wallet was launched in 2011 and is headquartered in Luxembourg. It is a software wallet available for Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS users.
The wallet only supports eight cryptos so far, including BTC, ETH, BCH, XLM, ALGO, USDT, and USD-D. It also supports the conversion of up to 22 fiat currencies and is available in 25 different languages.
There are over 71 million registered users with the Blockchain wallet, and they have transacted over $6.2 trillion since launching. The fees for Bitcoin transactions using this wallet is dynamic. It depends on factors such as transaction size and network conditions.
The Blockchain.com Wallet determines the bitcoin fees payable by automatically scanning the market conditions and calculating the transaction size. It then suggests an appropriate fee for the particular transaction. This is a dynamic fee structure, and users can select between a Priority fee and a Regular fee structure.
Despite the different fee structures, the Blockchain.com bitcoin wallet is one of the cheapest crypto wallets with the lowest fees.
The Bitcoin Core Wallet is a software crypto wallet and is the pioneer of crypto wallets. It is was created by the Bitcoin Network and is often considered the main gateway into the bitcoin blockchain.
Bitcoin Core Wallet only supports BTC.
The wallet is available for Windows, macOS, Linus, and Ubuntu users. The wallet is directly connected to the full Bitcoin network node. More so, users have full control of their private keys.
One of the primary advantages of using the Bitcoin Core wallet is that users have full control over the network fees they pay per transaction. It is the cheapest bitcoin wallet since users can freely set the bitcoin network fee they wish to pay as low as they wish.
The primary fee structure here is entirely based on transaction priority, and users can determine this using a sliding scale on the wallet.
Note that Bitcoin Core guarantees that every transaction and block accepted on the network is fully valid. This ensures maximum security for your BTC.
Coinbase is among the cheapest crypto exchanges and has one of the most popular and also comparatively cheap BTC wallets. The Coinbase wallet is available for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android users.
Coinbase wallet supports BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, ZRX, BAT, USDC, ZEC, LINK, XRP, REP, XLM, DAI and EOS.
The wallet also supports at least 50 fiat currencies and is integrated with Coinbase crypto exchange, where you can purchase and exchange the cryptos for fiat.
Coinbase sending fee between Coinbase wallets is free. However, sending BTC to other wallets attracts a network fee between 1.49% and 3.99%. This depends on your location, the transaction size and network activity.
The Mycelium Bitcoin wallet was first used to send and receive BTC in 2009. The wallet is entirely designed to run on mobile and supports Android and iOS. One of the primary advantages of the wallet is that users do not need to download the entire blockchain on their mobile devices.
Mycelium wallet was specifically designed for BTC. As of this writing, the wallet only supported BTC.
However, one of the most attractive features of the Mycelium Bitcoin wallet is its interoperability with hardware crypto wallets like Trezor, KeepKey, and Ledger. This means that users can store their BTC in cold storage and access them at any time.
This integration implies that users can instantly exchange their BTC for any altcoin. More so, users can also make payments and transactions directly from their Mycelium wallets.
This wallet has a priority fee structure that allows users to choose the bitcoin network fee they wish to pay per transaction. Although the wallet recommends the fees by scanning the Bitcoin network and the size of your transaction, the ultimate decision regarding the fees payable lies with the user.
Although Mycelium Bitcoin wallet is among the cheapest bitcoin wallets, additional commissions might be imposed on users who opt to use the Marketplace service within the wallet. Typically, the fees are capped at 1% of the transaction size.
Armory bitcoin wallet was officially launched in 2013. It is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Raspberry Pi users.
The Armory wallet only supports BTC. However, for users to use the Armory wallet, they must have Bitcoin Core installed and have an entire blockchain downloaded. Despite this, the Armory Bitcoin wallet offers the highest safety since it’s an open-source wallet that allows users cold storage with offline functionalities. More so, they generate their private keys and distributed multi-signature, implying that they have full control of the BTC in their wallet.
Armour wallet users have total control over the fees they pay per transaction on the network. This entirely depends on their urgency and the priority of the transaction.
Since the wallet automatically calculates and recommends the fee based on the prevailing network activity and the transaction size, it makes it one of the cheapest bitcoin wallets.
GreenAddress Bitcoin wallet was launched in 2013, and it’s currently only available to Android users, iOS users, and desktop users via Chrome.
GreenAddress wallet is designed solely to support BTC.
The wallet provides unparalleled convenience and security to the users. For BTC HODLers, GreenAddress offers a watch-only mode that lets users only view their BTC balance on third party computers without exposing their wallets to unnecessary risks.
The wallet is hierarchical deterministic, which means new addresses are used for incoming transactions and storing change, ensuring your wallet’s privacy.
The transaction fee on GreenAddress entirely depends on the users need to prioritise their transactions. The recommended Bitcoin Network fee is determined by the size of the transaction and the network activity at the transaction time. This makes GreenAddress one of the best crypto wallet with lowest fees possible.
It is worth noting that there is no crypto wallet with lowest fees that allow you to send BTC for free. As we explained earlier, the fees charged are necessary to ensure that miners are incentivised to confirm your transaction and add it to the next block.
Using the cheapest bitcoin wallets, we have reviewed here, you can lower the BTC transaction fees. That’s because these wallets allow you to choose the fees you want to pay for a transaction. But remember, the lower the fees, the longer it might take for your transaction to be validated. Coinbase can be considered as a free Bitcoin wallet with no fees as they operate via email or QR code.