Top 3 Free Self-Custody Wallets To Safeguard Your Crypto

As the name suggests, Self-Custodial wallets (also known as non-custodial wallets) give their users complete control of their crypto assets.

Users’ private keys are not available to third parties, and the user solely owns or can access funds held in these wallets. Although self-custodial wallets are more secure than custodial wallets in many aspects, you need to be careful when using a self-custodial wallet.

As a user, you must keep your recovery phrase incredibly secure and confidential. If you lose the phrase required to restore your wallet, nobody can help you. You risk losing all of your funds if you misplace or forget your recovery phrase.

That being said, here are some of the best self-custody wallets available on the market:

1. MetaMask Wallet

MetaMask is not only the most popular and widely used wallet, but it is also free. If you are not looking for a cold, self custodial wallet, this is a go-to wallet. Remember, it’s a hot wallet (i.e., connected to the internet).

Metamask has a very user-friendly interface and provides quick and easy access to thousands of tokens and decentralised apps within the Ethereum network. The  wallet works with anything built on Ethereum, which accounts for a sizable portion of the Web3 world.

MetaMask enables users to manage their accounts and keys in a variety of ways while keeping them separate from the site context. This is a significant security enhancement over storing user keys on a single central server or even locally, which can allow for mass account thefts.

MetaMask offers a mobile app as well as a browser extension to customers, which reduces any kind of friction in onboarding.

2. Electrum Bitcoin Wallet

If you want to hold Bitcoins, there is a wallet designed especially for this. Electrum was created specifically to be used with bitcoin. It’s been in the game since 2011 (for over a decade). It is free, secure, and open-source software with some advanced features and options.

The company states that private keys are never sent to the servers by the Electrum client. Furthermore, it validates the information reported by servers using a mechanism known as Simple Payment Verification.

Electrum allows its users to set custom transaction fees as well as determine the level of security they wish to use. You can opt for a standard wallet with 2-factor authentication or a multi-signature wallet. You can also add custom words to your seed phrase.

This wallet offers the best efficiency and security features as it was designed specifically to work with the bitcoin blockchain. It’s not beginner friendly and only works with BTC. Hence, if you want to store other cryptocurrencies, this is not for you.

3. Exodus Wallet

If you want to store a multitude of crypto assets in a free non-custodial wallet, you can go ahead with Exodus.

It is a simple, beginner-friendly wallet that supports more than 180 different cryptocurrencies. Exodus also supports swaps between more than 150 different cryptocurrencies. It enables users to keep all of their crypto in one place while plugging into multiple different exchanges.

Exodus allows you to set custom fees to keep expenses low, as well as automatically set a fee to ensure the transaction is completed quickly. Exodus also works with the Trezor hardware wallet.

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