Updated on October 18, 2022.

Do you need a wallet to buy crypto? It’s optional: you can do it on an exchange as well. But let’s say you bought some crypto, and now you’re faced with a choice to store your assets within the exchange account or move it to a crypto wallet. After all, you won’t need to create another account, store or remember another password, and learn how to use another service, right? Partially. OneArt weighs some pros and cons and gives top reasons why you do need your personal wallet.

Not your keys, not your crypto

Your crypto wallet grants you control over your assets via private keys. Not owning them means giving control to a third party, such as an exchange or a custodial wallet provider. Owning the key identifies you as the true owner of the assets.

❗️You should keep in mind two crucial points:

The fact you can access your crypto on your custodial wallet or exchange doesn’t mean it’s truly yours. Technically, it’s the service provider that owns your assets, so they can withhold them, set restrictions and limits, block your account, go bankrupt, and so on.

It’s the same as with a bank account. You can’t be sure the bank won’t suspend it, or it won’t be robbed/fall under a sanction regime, etc.

Since you own the key, you’re in charge of its safety. If you lose, forget, or reveal it to a 3rd party, no one will be able to retrieve your crypto.

Secure your crypto

This point follows directly from the previous one. If no one except you stores your private key, your assets are more secure. Keeping your assets on an exchange account may be too risky: as of 2019, they were losing $2.7 million per day on average, and the number was predicted to soar.

According to CryptoHead, breaches of exchanges are the most common.

❗️ The exchange may have sort of an insurance policy to reimburse stolen assets but

There’s no guarantee you’ll be refunded (check out BitMart’s case).
It may take too much time. For example, the Bitfinex exchange was hacked in 2016, and most funds were recovered only this year. Mt. Gox lost 850,000 bitcoin in 2014 and filed for bankruptcy. Its creditors were allowed to register for repayments in July 2022.

Easier and quicker access to your funds

Have you ever been annoyed by too much info you don’t even need when trying to buy/sell/swap your tokens?

It really looks like it was made by crypto natives for crypto natives. An average user, especially a newbie, is usually overwhelmed by such an amount of extra information. It makes them think the crypto space is too hard to jump into, requires special knowledge and skills, is not for everyone, etc. Almost 15% of the OneArt survey respondents say too much information hinders decision making.

However, creating a user-friendly and still secure crypto space is challenging. Poor UI/UX is the most common problem of crypto wallets: many of them are hard to navigate through.

*Source:* *Examining Usability Issues in Blockchain-Based Cryptocurrency Wallets*

At OneArt, we believe that chipping away all the unnecessary complexity and adding walkthroughs, hints, and prompts can help seamlessly onboard new users.

For example, reminding them to secure their wallets or explaining what gas limit is

And warning about priority fees.

Store and manage your NFTs securely

The ‘Not your keys, not your coins’ principle mentioned above applies to digital collectibles as well. You’d better not store them on exchanges or marketplaces that are often targeted by hackers. Remember the $1.7 million OpenSea hack? It’s just one example. As of May 2022, NFT-related crimes have already caused financial losses that are 667% higher this year than over all of 2021.

So as not to be exposed to malicious activities, store your assets in a wallet that is truly yours.

How to choose the best crypto wallet

As per Cryptowisser, there are over 140 wallets to choose from. Check out our comparison article and consider these criteria:

What security features does the wallet have?
Does it support all needed blockchains?
Can you manage your NFTs?
Is it easy to use?

Finding the best wallet that meets all your needs might be a daunting task as there’s still no all-in-one solution on the market. That’s the issue the OneArt team is striving to solve. We’ve already launched secure and easy-to-use crypto and NFT wallet on iOS and Android, supporting multiple blockchains. And that’s just the beginning followed by the web extension, crypto profiles, and other great fetures.

Stay tuned!

Rustam I.