I review the best crypto wallets for 2024, ranking them from best to worst. I also examine some of the top hardware cryptocurrency wallets and rank them from my favorite to least favorite. If you’re trying to decide which crypto wallet is the best, I have a favorite I consider head and shoulders above the rest. I also dive into the various features of each wallet, each one’s strengths and weaknesses.
How to choose the Best Crypto Wallets
I’m sharing the top 5 safest crypto wallets, including the wallet that I think is the single best wallet, hands down, head and shoulders above the rest—and it’s not MetaMask. I’m also going to share my top hardware wallet picks. If you’re not using a hardware wallet, you’re massively putting your assets and your money at risk, especially if you have more than $1,000 in crypto invested. Anyway, what is a crypto wallet?
Most people genuinely don’t understand how cryptocurrency wallets actually work, but it’s super important. Lots of people think that crypto wallets are like exchange wallet accounts and that they can use their password and email to log into their wallets and access them from any device that they own. Wallets, however, are self-custodial.
They are not just accounts that you can log into. So if you have your good crypto wallet on your phone and you don’t have your backup seed saved somewhere, and you were to lose your phone or your phone was to die for some reason, you would lose access to 100% of your funds stored on your crypto wallet on your phone. And you would need help to recover those funds. You must do more than call up Metamask or call up the wallet provider and be like, oh, I lost access to my funds.
That’s a pretty important detail that far too many people do not understand. Your online wallet is like your personal signature. It identifies you as the entity that controls the address that holds your crypto assets. Contrary to popular belief, your free crypto wallet doesn’t actually have any crypto inside of it. That is, there are no like bytes of code that represent your cryptos or NFTs that are stored directly on your computer or phone or whatever. Instead, tokens and NFTs are always stored on the blockchain.
Your wallet is a way to identify you as the person who controls those assets on the blockchain. So if you lose your device, you lose your phone, or your desktop computer spontaneously catches fire, You have your seed phrase written down and stored somewhere safe.
You can take those 12 or 24 words in your seed phrase and input them into a new wallet on a new device or a new computer, a new phone, and it’ll load your purse on that new device, and all your assets will still be there. If you were to memorize your seed phrase, you could carry your entire crypto net worth in your head.
LIST OF THE BEST CRYPTO WALLETS FOR AUSTRALIAN CRYPTO HOLDERS
Metamask — The gold standard for Ethereum wallets
Metamask is the most widely used crypto Bitcoin wallet. I personally just use the Metamask browser extension. I don’t use their mobile wallet, and I have a love-hate relationship with Metamask. I have used Metamask for years. It has been my go-to crypto wallet for a long time, and there are certainly things I enjoy about it. However, my biggest complaint about Metamask is that despite being the largest wallet on the planet and having the most adoption, it feels like they have done very little in terms of innovation and actually making the wallet more useful and secure for the average person. Here’s exactly what I mean.
Most crypto exploits for the average person are because they signed some malicious transaction. A transaction that if it were put into human-readable terms, if they could understand what that transaction was done, you know, when looking at the transaction, no person in their right mind would approve. The problem is that Metamask doesn’t bother to do that or have any warnings or any kind of security features baked into the wallet. And to me, that’s just lazy.
These are features that Metamask should have added a long time ago. I will give them this, though. They recently introduced something called Metamask Snaps, which essentially allows anyone to build plugins for the Metamask wallet that can give you a range of different features and useful things that Metamask themselves haven’t built into the wallet. Think of it like the Chrome browser, which allows you to get Chrome plugins that augment the browser to do different things that the original browser couldn’t do.
And there are quite a few different Metamask Snaps that add a slew of other safety features to the Metamask wallet. You can get some pretty interesting and neat features for the Metamask wallet if you install that, you know, the right snap. Still, the way that Metamask works right now, I’m betting that the average person who’s brand new to crypto doesn’t end up doing that. I truly believe that these safety features should be the default for every single crypto wallet out there.
They should be table stakes because making scams harder reduces the number of scams that happen, which in turn means less money for scammers. And less money for scammers means less scammers with less resources. So, even a small elimination of surface area for scams can have a dramatic impact on the amount of scams out there. Some of the features of Metamask are you can buy crypto directly from the Metamask wallet without ever having to go to an exchange. When you click the swap button on the Metamask wallet, a browser window will open.
In that window, you can swap crypto directly from your wallet. This experience is kind of slow and clunky, and I almost never use it. You can bridge funds using your wallet, but again, it’s not better than other options, as it’s pretty clunky.
Again, this is a feature that I never use personally. You’re able to view your NFTs in your wallet. And if you click portfolio, it’ll load a webpage showing you all your assets on that address across various networks, which is useful. Overall, Metamask is the OG default wallet that most people end up using.
Coinbase — A safe crypto exchange with a large selection of listed coins
Wallet number two is the Coinbase wallet. This is not very clear for some people as there is Coinbase, the centralized exchange, and Coinbase, the self-custody coin wallet. When you’re using the Coinbase exchange, they are custodying the assets for you. When you’re using the Coinbase wallet, you’re self-custodying your funds. And right now we’re talking about the Coinbase wallet.
The Coinbase wallet has a really sleek, nice-to-looknice-to-look design and is really easy to set up. It’s really the perfect companion for users of the Coinbase exchange as it links up with your Coinbase account well. However, However, you don’t have to use Coinbase to use this easiest crypto wallet. A really great feature is that it allows you to link your Coinbase account directly to your wallet and transfer funds over really easily. It has the staples like allowing you to buy via the wallet, swap via the wallet, and bridge via the wallet.
However, for the Coinbase wallet, the UI for these things, in my opinion, is much better, and it’s a much smoother experience. Just like Metamask, it allows you to see your NFTs via the wallet, and as a unique feature, it has Matic and ETH staking built in as features in the wallet, which is something I’d never personally use. Still, for some people who don’t understand how to do that themselves, it’s a useful feature.
The explore section is unique to Coinbase wallet, and it allows you to easily browse top movers for the day, build a watch list, and more things. It’s actually a pretty neat and useful feature. The transactions have fewer security features than I’d prefer, but they do simulate how your assets will change based on the transaction, which is a handy feature.
My number one complaint with the Coinbase wallet is that you can’t currently use a hardware wallet with it outside of a ledger wallet. Although I have and use a ledger wallet, it’s not my go-to hardware wallet, so I don’t ever use the Coinbase wallet myself. Still, if you have a ledger or don’t use a hardware wallet, Coinbase is a decent pick for a wallet.
Rainbow Wallet – An Ethereum wallet with extra security features
Rainbow Wallet is a beautifully designed and simple wallet. It’s comparable to Coinbase’s wallet, with the added bonus of being able to connect with both ledger and Trezor hardware wallets. They make it really easy for you to onboard crypto via Coinbase, similar to the Coinbase wallet.
They have all the mainstay features, such as swapping, buying crypto directly from the wallet, and seeing your NFTs. They don’t have a bridging function like Coinbase and Metamask, but that doesn’t really matter, as I’ve never used the built-in bridging function myself. They make the transaction easier to read than Metamask but not quite as useful as the Coinbase wallet.
Phantom – A hardware wallet with Bluetooth connectivity
Phantom is a wallet well-known in the Solana ecosystem and recently branched out to the ETH ecosystem as well. Branding and look-wise, Phantom, Coinbase, and Rainbow are head and shoulders above the rest. I specifically really love the little ghost on the Phantom wallet that wakes up when you start to type in your password. But of course, we don’t just use wallets because they have nice branding.
Phantom, again, like the other wallets, has all the mainstay table stakes features such as a built-in swap function, the ability to view your NFTs and wallet, the ability to buy crypto and wallet with a credit card, and even has neat, easy-to-understand transactions similar to Coinbase wallet. I also love how simple the wallet interface is. In my opinion, it’s lacking in a few areas, similar to the Coinbase wallet. It only allows you to use a ledger hardware wallet. There’s no built-in bridging function, which, I don’t really care about myself.
The wallet’s simplicity, while a perk, can also be frustrating at times when you want more advanced features. Phantom is a pretty cool wallet, and I’d love to see them improve their experience. Ideally, while it’s like Phantom, Coinbase wallet, and Rainbow, maybe add their versions of Metamask snaps or expand out a bit to support more useful features while balancing simplicity and user experience. Okay, so that leaves my all-time favorite wallet.
The first time I used this wallet, it was like jumping years into the future. In fact, in my opinion, this wallet is so advanced and has so many more useful features it’s kind of embarrassing when I go use the other wallets and how far behind they are. And before somebody comments something stupid like sponsored or like you got paid to say those things, none of these wallets sponsored me, and I have no relationships with any of these different companies.
Rabby – An Ethereum wallet with extra security features
Wallet number five is the Rabi wallet. After being recommended by a guy named Scott from the Obsidian Council, it quickly became my number-one go-to wallet. I love this wallet more than any other wallet out there for a couple of different reasons. First, unlike any of the other wallets, including Metamask Portfolio, Rabi shows your entire portfolio automatically built into the wallet directly. It shows every asset you hold, but unlike Metamask Portfolios, it also shows every asset you have locked, staked, yield farming, et cetera.
The normal wallet interface on Metamask only shows you the assets you have on whatever chain you have it set to. Where with Rabi, when you open your wallet, it just automatically shows you all of the assets that you hold on that address across every chain, including, again, all of the assets you have staked, you have locked, yield farming, et cetera. Second, with Rabi, I never have to add chains manually or switch chains when I’m using a different app.
Rabi just intuitively switches to whatever chains are needed for the app I’m interacting with. It’s awesome. Although seemingly small, it significantly improves the user experience. The wallet has so many little things built into it that make things easy and intuitive. For example, the Rabi wallet, like all the other wallets, has a built-in swap feature. But with Metamask, I never used the built-in swap feature because it was clunky. Again, it also makes you load a different page in your web browser to do it.
With Rabi, however, I always use the swap feature, and I hardly ever go directly to Uniswap or something like that. That’s because the built-in swap is just super easy. It aggregates prices from multiple aggregators, showing you exactly where it’s sourcing the swap from, and simulates the gas costs and how much you’re going to receive, including the dollar amount in US dollars versus, you know, just the asset you’re receiving.
As a safety feature, when you go to select an aggregator, it makes you enable that aggregator first so you don’t accidentally use one that’s potentially risky. It has a built-in widget that shows you the current Guay fee so you can trade when gas fees are low. There’s an approvals button that allows you to check which apps you’ve given approvals to and revoke any that you may have unknowingly given full access to your funds. It has an instant gas top-up feature where you can use the tokens you have in your wallet to top up gas on any chain.
This is really useful when somebody sends you funds on a chain you don’t have any gas tokens on. We can use this gas top-up feature to exchange some of those tokens for the gas token, then send those funds wherever you want to send them. When you connect with a dApp for the first time, it shows you the site’s popularity, any marks you’ve made, and who the site is listed by. It also warns you if it identifies any security issues that it deems risky. You won’t be able to proceed with the transaction without first excusing that warning.
This makes it far easier to catch when you’re connecting to a fraudulent app. Imagine you thought you were connecting to Uniswap, and a new pop-up came up in your Rabi wallet. It showed that the site’s popularity was really low and gave you a warning. That would be a massive red flag, warning you to double-check the address you’re visiting because it’s probably a fraudulent link. They also make transactions dead simple to read, showing you what you’ll pay and what you’ll receive and simulating the transaction, similar to Coinbase and Phantom.
They also allow you to select the gas speed really easily. This is a feature you can get in MetaMask, but it’s buried under a menu. And they give you information on the specific contract you’re interacting with. You can see the protocol name if you’ve ever interacted with that contract before, how long ago this particular contract was deployed, and its popularity and it allows you to make your notes and marks.
If Rabi detects any possible security issues, it will flag that site with either a red or a yellow flag. Again, it will only let you move forward with the transaction after first making you click on that flag, reading through why it flagged it, and approving the transaction regardless.
I’ve had it flag sites that were just smaller sites with lower popularity. Other times, it flagged things that it deemed possible security issues that could cause me to lose my funds. The reason I love this feature is that it makes it far less likely that somebody is going to get exploited and lose all their funds. It makes it much more difficult, as you have to overcome multiple security warnings in order to get exploited in most situations.
It also only lets you send funds to an address you have allowed after first entering your password, making sure you don’t accidentally send funds to the wrong address. On top of all that, it not only supports Trezor and Ledger, but it also supports a wide range of different hardware wallets that you can use with the wallet.
OK, so that’s what Rabi does better than all the other wallets. For one, Phantom makes viewing NFTs the best experience possible out of all the different wallets. But in reality, it’s only slightly better. And it’s certainly not a reason that I would choose the Phantom secure wallet over another wallet. Also, Rabi needs to use a credit card directly in the wallet, which is surprising, considering every other private wallet has this feature.
What’s the best crypto wallet in Australia?
The number one best wallet overall would be the Rabi wallet. My number two pick would be the Coinbase wallet. Number three would be the Phantom wallet. Number four would be Metamask and number five would be Rainbow Wallet. I’ll add that this is me rating Metamask based on only its out-of-the-box features. If I were instead rating Metamask based on the custom snaps that I could add to make it more effective, I would put it in the number two slot.
They’ll get a library of better and better snaps, and it could eventually push Metamask all the way up into my number one spot. OK, so earlier, I mentioned hardware wallets and why I’d personally only buy crypto and self-custody it with a hardware wallet. Hardware wallets are essential if you have more than $1000 invested in crypto.
They are an extra layer of security purpose-built to keep your crypto assets safe with a browser wallet alone, or you can keep your wallet on your phone. Your private keys are stored on that device, which is always online. So, it’s possible that somebody could compromise those private keys and access your funds, although in most cases, that’s unlikely. With a hardware wallet, your private keys are kept in cold storage and can only be used and accessed when you’re physically holding the device, have it plugged into a computer, and are doing something.
Your funds can’t be sent, withdrawn, or stolen when your hardware wallet isn’t physically plugged into your computer. Unlike your computer, your hardware wallet is purpose-built to protect your crypto assets. And it could have prevented countless exploits that have cost people thousands to millions of dollars. In the Wild West of crypto, only the paranoid survive, and it pays to be safe rather than sorry.
My top picks for crypto hardware wallet
That said, what are my top picks for crypto hardware wallets? Well, I currently have three that I use, and those are really the only three on which I can judge anything because I have yet to use many of the others. First, I have a Ledger X, which is really useful if you’re interacting with any non-EVM chain. This means things like Solana, Cosmos, Akash, etc. I use my Ledger when I self-custody assets on any of those different chains. I think some of the drama that Ledger recently went through was a little bit overblown.
My Favorite Hardware Wallet
My favorite hardware wallet is my Trezor Model T. While my Ledger can be used for anything, it can also be used for EVM chains and non-EVM chains, as well as Bitcoin. My Trezor can primarily be used for EVM chains and Bitcoin. That’d be things like Ethereum, Base, Avalanche, Optimism, ZK-Sync, Polygon, BNB chain, and a ton more. Again, with just the Ledger, you really are set up for anything out there. So, like buying a Ledger, you would be set up to interact with any chain out there.
However, I have been annoyed at times using my Ledger, trying to connect it to my computer, trying to connect it to my MetaMask, and it’s having issues and won’t connect. With the Ledger, you have to go to Ledger Manager and install these different apps for different chains. You have to update them constantly and always select the right app for the right chain on the device.
My Trezor, by contrast, just works. I enter my password, approve my transaction, and that’s it. It’s worth noting that if you need help understanding how hardware wallets work, they interface with your digital wallet on your desktop. So, if I’m using MetaMask, I’ll use my hardware wallet using MetaMask, or if I’m using Rabi, I’ll use my hardware wallet using Rabi. So, you just load up your address from your hardware wallet instead of loading it directly on the computer.
The big difference is that you’re using your private key stored on your hardware wallet versus using the private key stored on your computer or your phone or whatever. So when I go to do a transaction on my MetaMask or Rabi, I have to plug in my hardware wallet. I have to enter my password, and then I have to approve that transaction physically using my hardware wallet rather than clicking a button on my computer. The last hardware wallet that I use is my Tangent wallet.
This one is a newer hardware wallet that I’m testing out. And full disclosure: I met this random guy at a conference. He was at the Tangent booth. He recognized who I was, and he offered me this hardware wallet for free. They’re basically like little credit cards that you tap on the back of your phone to access your wallet and funds mobility wherever you go. I really like the idea because it’s really useful. I don’t carry my hardware wallet everywhere I go, and it’d be nice to be able to do that.
So, this is like a credit card that goes into my wallet. When I need to access my funds, I pull it out, Tap it on my phone, enter my password, and boom—I can access my funds on my phone. However, I really haven’t used it that much. From my first take, it seems less secure than something like Trezor or Ledger. Maybe that’s just me. You know, perhaps it’s because it’s newer, and I don’t trust it yet. But being that I haven’t really used it a ton, I don’t have a deep opinion of it.
I think it’s a really neat concept of having, again, a credit card, like a hardware wallet that you can take everywhere you go and constantly use your funds. Another reason, though, I don’t use it a lot is I don’t use mobile wallets a lot. The biggest reason I don’t use mobile wallets is that I’m paranoid. Again, only the paranoid survive. An alarming number of exploits occur when people lose all their funds, which happens when they have all their funds stored in their mobile wallets on their phones.
