Cryptowallet 101

When i got into crypto i thought i knew what a cyrpto wallet was but i also was wrong. With the influx of new people here i figured it would be beneficial to give a short explanation.

A crypto wallet in short is an application (Metamask, Gamestop Wallet, Brave Wallet, you name it) that enable you to access and manage your cryptocurrencies, NFTs, or any other blockchain assets you have stored within them.

The assets however are not really stored in the wallet. Unlike coins in your physical wallet, you know, those are actually in that thing. Crypto wallets are more like a door. Your actual wallet is represented by a private key or a seed phrase. When you download a wallet application like Metamask, it allows you to generate a unique seed phrase or private key. This seed phrase can be used across different wallet applications.

The wallet itself will most likely be password protected. This is to get into the room with all the gateways to all different layers. To access those you need a seed phrase. With that seed phrase you can go to the respective chains and actually access your holdings. Your holdings are connected to an adress on the blockchain. For each chain you will have a different adress.

So:

• A wallet is an app used to interface with the actual blockchain which holds the crypto, it has a password of its own in many cases
• Your seed phrase is what actually allows you to access the crypto on all different layers
• You can use different wallets to access the same crypto.
• You dont need a new seed phrase everytime you download a wallet application

TLDR: A wallet is an application that can be used to access your different crypto adresses on different blockchains. It doesnt actually have coins in it, those are on the blockchain. Your seed phrase coupled with your adress prove your ownership of your coins.

Ps. i know a lot of you have like super big brains and know this, others dont. This is for them, not you ;)

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