Why isn't there an official bitcoin wallet?

[witcher_sense]

Before I first entered the cryptocurrency world I had been given advice to use official wallet for blockchain aka Blockchain.info. It taked me a month to understand that that wallet was neither official nor for blockchain. Later, I knew that there is nothing "official" in bitcoin due to decentralized, permissionless and open source nature of it. Everyone is free to build own applications, to innovate and improve the network. You can build a wallet for your family, for example, and call it "Our family wallet", it would be official for your relatives and that's the beaty of the bitcoin. Official financial application only for you and your family. However, for others it wouldn't be official, because they are free to build their own "official" wallet.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Bitcoin Core is the official bitcoin wallet.

bitcoin core is the reference implementation of bitcoin protocol. there is no such thing as "official" in a decentralized system because there is no centralized authority to release one.

Yes, but I see people getting confused that the original bitcoin wallet is bitcoin.com or blockchain.com. Because this is what google returns to them. I agree with the decentralisation, but it isn't centralized if the bitcoin developers made the wallet. It wouldn't be closed source neither.

[Warkop]

You don't need to worry about this, because Bitcoin looks real and official, in my opinion creating an official wallet yourself is not as easy as you think because everything takes a long time to create, but for Bitcoin wallets you can use blockchain if you want to store it because blockchain already looks very safe and good, everyone is also using blockchain wallets to store their Bitcoins. So for that you don't need to think about something that makes you confused about this.

[20kevin20]

Yes, but I see people getting confused that the original bitcoin wallet is bitcoin.com or blockchain.com. Because this is what google returns to them. I agree with the decentralisation, but it isn't centralized if the bitcoin developers made the wallet. It wouldn't be closed source neither.

Yes, it's a shame that the owners of those 2 domains are supporters of Bitcoin clones and unsafe wallets. But that's just because people obviously click the domains containing more known terms like blockchain, bitcoin, coinbase etc. before they click anything else.

Are you basically proposing an "official wallet" as in a "bitcoinwalletofficial"-like website? Any domain - or software - could be changed at any time in the wrong way. Even the said "official" wallet. The thing is, there should be alternatives. Bitcoin.org gives you an alternative for every use case you may be needing. Having a single "official" website/wallet is bad from a decentralization PoV. By having one more alternative that pops up into your eyesight whenever you look Bitcoin up, you're just going to have one more domain on the list of websites newbies tend to click.. or taking it another way, it'd be as if blockchain.com never existed and you proposed it.

[blckhawk]

Simply because Bitcoin was decentralized and that what makes this coin so powerful without control of anyone. If this such this wallet exist, there's no doubt that this will be popular and will be more trusted by everyone. However, this will be kind of easy to control, this will not become decentralized and tons of trusted wallet might close that could possibly affect the crypto world.

there are a lot of wallets here in the industry and those are wallets that no one are controlling. If the bitcoin developers make their own wallet then probably they are the one who has control over those wallets.

I think mate those who own the system have control over it. Well, technically not entirely because you have control over your passphrase, pins, and such but remember, believe it or not, they are the developers of the system so they have full control over it.

[HeRetiK]

Yes, but I see people getting confused that the original bitcoin wallet is bitcoin.com or blockchain.com. Because this is what google returns to them. I agree with the decentralisation, but it isn't centralized if the bitcoin developers made the wallet. It wouldn't be closed source neither.

Unfortunately declaring a wallet "official" is not going to change that. Someone just heading towards the first site that looks appealing won't bother looking for an "official" label either.

At least in my Google search results Bitcoin.org tops the other sites, so at least that's something. Also Bitcoin's wikipedia page only references Bitcoin.org and not that other site, presumably because as far as Bitcoin is concerned there's nothing noteworthy about Bitcoin.com to begin with.

[enterprevic2]

Bitcoin developers work on bitcoin core. Why don't they create an official bitcoin wallet as well? It will be exactly like bitcoin core, but without the blockchain. I always had that query.

Then that would go against the fact that it should be decentralized, giving the whole power to one person

[kayvie]

There is no official bitcoin wallet because it is decentralized. The only one who are in control with our wallet is ourselves, owners. If there is an official wallet, it only means that it is being controlled and handled by a third party, being decentralized will be useless and the true function of bitcoin will be set aside.

[Ludmilla_rose1995]

bitcoin is decentralized, so there is no need to create an official wallet. anyone can make a bitcoin wallet application and anyone can use it. it's just that scammers can take your money if you are not careful in choosing a wallet

[abel1337]

It's called decentralization. They are all official. But check them out with people who know, and then test the ones you download or use. Only after you are positive they are good, then put a chunk of bitcoin into them.

That's true I was victimized by a scam wallet, it's open sourced any individual, group or companies can create and launch Bitcoin wallet, we have many wallets now the only way to safeguard yourself is to audit the team and the source and read lot of reviews before using them, when it comes to wallets, reputation ranks high in the list.

if you don't do your research you will end up losing everything.

Would you mind telling us what wallet has scammed you? There were too many reputated wallet that is available now and to add to it there's a non-custodial wallets. It's rare for me to find someone who was scammed by a wallet service provider.


Decentralization is what bitcoin is, This gives us the freedom to create and own a wallet on our own as long as you we have the skill or knowledge to build one. Having only a "official wallet" that can be used is I think is a centralization.

[mersal]

Bitcoin was created for giving financial freedom in the possibile ways but if we have something called official wallet then more bitcoins will be stored there so it could go against the decentralization, bitcoi core is something like official wallet for Bitcoin but the o e who created Bitcoin didn't mention it.

By the way,why we need an official wallet if every wallet which gives private keys to you!

[junnar1968]

A Bitcoin wallet is a program that stores private keys also A Bitcoin wallet is analogous to a physical wallet. However, instead of storing physical currency, the wallet stores relevant information such as the secure private key used to access Bitcoin addresses and carry out transactions. Types of Bitcoin wallets are desktop, mobile, web, and hardware.

[Leviathan.007]

There will be never something called official bitcoin wallet. Because of the bitcoin decentralization there is not any official wallet. however, you can still store your funds on bitcoin core which is available free and open source on github. But, still you can check the other opensource wallets on github and maybe create your own customized bitcoin wallet with some knowledge.

[nolmuherte564]

I have an obviously old setup that I have not used in many years.  Bitcoin Core 0.13.2 appears to sync the blockchain and is up to date.  Armory 0.95.1 starts and scans fine, shows a balance , past transactions, and says it is online.  Everything "looks" good.  The question is can I still reliably send bitcoins?  Are these core and Armory versions still compatible with todays blockchain and network?

I ask because I had a similar situation with Litecoin, although there I was running a much older version of Litecoin Core.  In that case I tried sending some litecoins and they got hung up and the transaction was never recognized and it messed up my core wallet.  I had to update to the newer core and use a backup of my wallet.

So I don't really want to "just try it".  Also with all the issue I read here regarding the latest core + Armory + offline issues, I don't want to fight an update unless I really have to.

So, will core v0.13.2 and Armory 0.95.1 still actually work and send/receive bitcoins o.k.?

[pooya87]

Everything "looks" good.  The question is can I still reliably send bitcoins?  Are these core and Armory versions still compatible with todays blockchain and network?

Changes in bitcoin have been backward compatible so you can still continue using the old versions of the software and sync with the network but your software is lacking many new features including the SegWit options that aren't recognized by the old version. So you can't send coins to a SegWit address since the support for it was added in core v. 0.16.

[Amon1231]

Bitcoin is decentralized that's why there are no official wallets when you are storing bitcoin, unlike banks they are centralized they have the main bank that controls the cash flow within the economy.

[panganib999]

There will be never something called official bitcoin wallet. Because of the bitcoin decentralization there is not any official wallet. however, you can still store your funds on bitcoin core which is available free and open source on github. But, still you can check the other opensource wallets on github and maybe create your own customized bitcoin wallet with some knowledge.

I agree. I think one of the main reason why bitcoin doesn't have any official wallet is that because of it being a decentralized and unstable coin. Bitcoinis one of the most subscribe coin as of today because of its recently achievement or milestone. Bitcoin doesn't have any official wallet but there's more other wallet that you can use in order to save up some. A lot of wallet but each of one has its own differents and unique capahilities. Bitcoin today had achievea way best milestones. Be sure to check each wallet, more importantly rhe fees.