Once you’ve bought Bitcoins (BTC) or other cryptocurrencies via an exchange (like Bitstamp), if you plan to spend your cryptocurrency right away, you can do so directly from the exchange. If you prefer to hang on to your digital assets, you’ll need a secure wallet to which you can transfer your virtual coins.

In this guide, we’ll explore five of the very best cryptocurrency applications available today for storing your digital wealth. Each of these programs allow you to generate private keys, which you can store safely, rather than trusting an online exchange which can be hacked or go out of business.

All of these clients are known as ‘hot’ wallets in that by default they’re connected to the internet at all times. If you are moving large amounts of Bitcoin, consider creating a ‘cold’ offline wallet to store your assets (see our guide to creating a secure cold storage Bitcoin wallet).

1. Bitcoin Core

Bitcoin Core is the original BTC client and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Core is a ‘full node’ Bitcoin client, meaning that on first-run it will download the current version of the blockchain (currently around 160GB) by connecting to other nodes. It will then continue to download and process data about Bitcoin transactions.

One advantage of this is that it’s much more difficult to link a specific BTC payment address to your identity as Core downloads data about all Bitcoin transactions everywhere. This also protects you against certain types of fraud such as someone trying to spend the same BTC twice, or fooling you into believing you’ve received funds you haven’t actually got.

Core comes preconfigured to run through the Tor anonymizing network. This makes it very difficult for anyone to link sending or receiving BTC to your home IP address, ensuring your privacy. All this requires huge amounts of bandwidth – Core must be connected to the internet every day to stay in sync with the network.

On first launch, Core will create a wallet file (wallet.dat) containing your private keys. By default anyone can access it, but you can encrypt the wallet with a password if you wish. (We’ve got a handy guide on setting up Bitcoin Core).

2. Electrum

Electrum has been around since 2011 and works with Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. It’s one of the most popular ‘thin’ wallet clients, in that instead of downloading the entire Bitcoin blockchain, it connects securely to other servers to verify your BTC balance and process payments. This means you can set it up in minutes and it takes up very little space on your hard drive.

Electrum uses a ‘hierarchical deterministic wallet’, in that when you first launch the program it generates a random ‘seed’ of 12 dictionary words, from which it derives the keys necessary to spend and receive BTC. Electrum displays the seed as you create your wallet and requires you to write it down. This means that if you lose access to this version of Electrum, you can easily reinstall it on another machine and use the seed to restore your BTC.

Unlike the Bitcoin Core client, Electrum offers you the option to encrypt your wallet file during setup, although you can choose to leave it unencrypted if you wish. You can also use Electrum in ‘cold storage’ mode to create a ‘watching only’ wallet. This allows you to receive Bitcoin payments and see your balance, but not spend the coins, which may be useful if you’re buying BTC as a long-term investment.

As a ‘thin’ client, Electrum relies on other servers for payment information, making it more vulnerable to certain types of hacking than ‘full nodes’ such as Bitcoin Core. See here for more information about how Electrum tries to protect you from this.

3. Jaxx

Jaxx was first developed in 2014 and serves not only as a Bitcoin wallet but an app which can store multiple cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin, Dash, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash. Ripple is not currently supported but the Jaxx team have hinted they may support this feature in the future. (For a full list of supported currencies see here).

When first run, Jaxx displays a 12 word ‘master seed’ similar to Electrum which you can write down and use to restore your wallets if you lose access to the original program.

The interface is deceptively simple in that you can quickly and easily switch between wallet balances. Jaxx has also integrated Shapeshift support. This functions as a built-in currency exchange, allowing you to quickly exchange crypto balances, for instance to convert DASH to BTC. You can view your updated balances as soon as processing is complete.

Jaxx is available as a Chrome extension as well as for Windows, Mac and Linux. There’s even a mobile app (both for Android and iOS), so it’s likely you can view all crypto balances from a single device.

The software is closed source, however, so cannot be reviewed by the community in order to hunt for security bugs. Note that one such bug was discovered in June 2017 which allows someone with access to your machine to extract your master seed and steal your coins. Until this is fixed we recommend using Jaxx only for storing and exchanging small amounts.

Update: service closed

4. Rippex

Ripple is one of the top five cryptocurrencies in terms of capitalization and although it was designed to facilitate transactions between banks, many individuals also use it for speculation and to make payments.

Unlike more popular currencies like Bitcoin, the official desktop client is no longer maintained by the original creators. Fortunately the community has continued to maintain it in the form of Rippex.

Aside from being seemingly the only desktop client available for Ripple, Rippex is very easy to set up. On first-run it generates a ‘secret key’ which you can write down to restore your wallet in case anything happens to it. The client also requires you to encrypt your wallet file with a password, making your money harder to steal.

In order to activate your wallet you have to pay a fee of 20 XRP (around $43 at current exchange rates, which is about £32). Once you’ve done this, you can set up a ‘cold’ offline wallet if you prefer to store your secret keys offline for safety reasons.

If you want to store your XRP outside an exchange but don’t want to pay the fee for Rippex, you can also generate a paper wallet instead from http://ripplepaperwallet.com. The website will load the necessary code into your web browser – be sure to disconnect from the internet before creating the wallet.

Rippex is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

5. Exodus

Exodus is a multi-currency wallet and can hold various types of coins and assets. The setup process is very simple. Like Jaxx, you create a 12 word ‘master seed’ which you can write down and use to restore your wallet if you’re no longer able to access the original. (Incidentally, if you’ve previously created a master seed using Jaxx, Exodus can restore these too). Once setup is complete, Exodus will also prompt you to choose a password to protect your wallet.

Your digital assets are shown in a user-friendly pie chart. Unlike the other wallets we’ve discussed here, you can also choose different ‘skins’ to make your client easier on the eye. Use the localization settings to change the default currency (USD) to your home currency if necessary.

The wallet software also supports exchanging crypto-assets and currencies using Shapeshift, and even lists the percentages of assets you hold as part of your ‘portfolio’. Sadly Dogecoin is no longer supported.

Exodus is also not 100% open source. The company claims on its website that doing so would give away trade secrets and make it easier for hackers to create bootleg versions of its wallets. In light of this, if you use Exodus you’ll have to trust that there are no undisclosed security bugs or backdoors built into the software.

http://www.techradar.com/news/best-cryptocurrency-wallets-2018

A new smartphone from Chinese company Vivo includes an in-display fingerprint scanner and pop up selfie camera to allow for the highest screen-to-body ratio we’ve ever seen on a phone – and you’ll actually be able to buy (in some countries).

The new Vivo Nex has just been announced in China, and the smartphone features a variety of high-end specs with a 6.59-inch bezeless AMOLED display on the front.

The Nex has a screen-to-body ratio of 91.24%, which means the bezels around the edge of the screen are particularly slim. The best screen-to-body ratio on a phone before this was the Essential Phone with 84.9%.

How has Vivo managed to achieve this? There’s no notch or thick bezel along the top of the phone to house the selfie camera and other technology, such as the earpiece, with the company including three new pieces of tech instead.

First off is the company has included an 8MP front-facing camera that pops up from the top of the phone’s body when you want to take a quick selfie shot.

There’s no traditional earpiece speaker either. Instead the company has a technology called Screen SoundCasting that turns the display itself into the loudspeaker so you can hear the person speaking on the phone.

The third way to make the phone’s bezels particularly slim is the in-display fingerprint scanner, which is Vivo’s third attempt at the technology after previous phones like the X20UD and X21.

Vivo claims this technology is more accurate and faster than ever before, and if allows you to securely unlock the phone by placing your finger on the bottom half of the screen.

If this all seems awfully familiar, that’s because we saw a concept of the Nex earlier this year at MWC 2018.

It’s not all screen

In terms of internal spec, the Vivo Nex features the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset that we’ve seen perform well in some top-end phones announced this year like the OnePlus 6 and variants of the Samsung Galaxy S9.

On the rear of the phone is a dual sensor camera, with a main 12MP f/1.8 sensor and  a secondary 5MP f/2.4 offering. It also comes with optical image stabilization and an LED flash on the rear.

The Nex also packs in 8GB of RAM, 256GB of internal storage (but no microSD support) and a 4,000mAh battery. The phone is also set to launch in both black and red colors.

How long will it be top?

The concept phone Vivo announced MWC 2018 had a 98% screen-to-body ratio, and the Nex is a big step for forward to achieving that goal on a phone you can actually buy.

Rival company Lenovo has teased a launch event for June 14 that will bring an even higher screen-to-body ratio than the Nex. One teaser even suggested it’ll have a 95% or more ratio but we’ll have to wait and see if Vivo can be beaten by this new device.

It’s worth noting we don’t currently have any word on whether the Vivo Nex will be coming to other countries around the world. We hope it will be launching in other places, but right now it’s only confirmed as a device for those in China where the price has yet to be revealed.

TechRadar is currently in China at the launch of the new Vivo phone, so we’ll be testing out the phone as soon as possible to give you our verdict on this next-generation device.

http://www.techradar.com/news/vivo-nex-ditches-the-notch-with-pop-up-camera-and-in-display-fingerprint-scanner

On a big sales event like Amazon Prime Day, we always have a hot wish list of items that we hope will get some big discounts and we bet you do too. And if you’ve been waiting to get involved with the world of smart speakers, we imagine the Google Home Mini has caught your eye.

Of course, Amazon will be hoping hope to sell huge numbers of Amazon Echo and Amazon Echo Dot speakers on Prime Day – and they probably will. We’re well used to seeing Amazon discount multiple Echo smart devices on days like Prime Day, Black Friday and just for the hell of it at multiple times during the year.

And whenever Amazon lowers the price, Google quickly follows suit with similar discounts on the Google Home and Google Home Mini speakers sold on its own store and at popular electronics outlets like Walmart or Newegg in the US and Currys, Argos and AO in the UK.

Whatever price Amazon Prime Day unveils for the Echo Dot, you can be sure the Google Home Mini will match it at all the big retailers. Well, everyone except for Amazon who don’t actually stock any Google Home products thanks to a spat the two companies are having over YouTube on Amazon’s screen-enabled Echo devices. 

So what prices are we expecting to see? Well in regular sales, we’re used to seeing the Amazon Echo Dot deals and Google Home Mini prices drop to around £34.99 ($39.99 in the US) down from the original £49.99 ($49.99) – although both speakers seem to be settling around £39.99 in the UK at least nowadays. However, expect an even better deal on Prime Day. We suspect the Echo Dot will drop to at least $29.99 (same as the Black Friday price) and the UK price to potentially beat the frequent £34.99 sale price, possibly £29.99.

The Echo Dot is by far and away the best selling smart-speaker in the world – it was first to market and has been aggressively advertised ever since. The Google Home Mini was late to the party, but arguably has the better product thanks to the smarter Google Assistant (sorry, Alexa), better compatibility with your Google accounts and android mobiles and the ability to use the free version of Spotify on it (paid version only on the Echo speakers). What’s more, Google has really stepped up its advertising campaigns recently. And we’ve generally found there’s no room for two different brands of smart speaker in a home, so it’s certainly time to pick a side.

With both Amazon and Google potentially hacking into their profit margins with such big discounts though, it opens the way for some bonus add-ons to tempt a purchase over the rival smart speaker. We’ve seen the Google Chromecast occasionally come bundled with some credit for the Play Store, so keep an eye out for something similar with the Home speakers.

This is all fantastic news for buyers as no company wants to lose ground to the other on key discount periods so they’ll be keen to offer the better deals. Amazon Prime Day may be all about Amazon’s deals overall, but the giant retailer is all set to potentially provide an ample opportunity for Google’s Home speakers to catch up via price matching at other retailers. Whatever happens though you’ll be able to get a fantastic price on either smart speaker and we’ll be bringing you all of the best deals from any retailer in our Amazon Prime Day coverage hub.

http://www.techradar.com/news/why-amazon-prime-day-will-also-be-the-best-time-to-get-a-google-home-mini