Why trust electrum?

[bitnote]

Hello, I'm new here. When I signed up here, I was confused by the forum's many tiny buttons and features, so I just tried to dig deeper for a few days.

I have a question about non custodial wallet that why most users here trust electrum or suggest electrum first?
I have read some posts by using search button every where someone recommends electrum often.
Can you tell us why I trust Electrum or why it's better than any other wallet?

[1714312102]

1714312102

[Orpichukwu]

Electrum is an open source wallet and also a non-custodial wallet, or you can say self-custodial, as many people refer to it now in the forum.
Open source means other developers will be able to verify the source code and what it is about.
 
Self-custodial: You have full control over your wallet and the coins inside; the wallet developers don't have data backups anywhere about the wallet stored in their database.
 
Features: They have convenient and easy-to-use features that every Bitcoin user can use without needing any technical knowledge.
It's a one-deisgned wallet and not a multi-deisgned wallet, which supports multiple coins, including altcoins, so you don't have to worry about chain complications.

[wd1]

Electrum has been around for a long term and is open source.

[mocacinno]

in short: you shouldn't...

You shouldn't blindly trust anything or anyone.

This being said: electrum is open source, anybody with a basic knowledge of python and blockchain technology should be able to verify each and every line of code to find out if the electrum dev's did (or did not) include any backdoors. Offcourse, nobody actually takes the effort to critically review each and every line, as a result, in the past, there were vulnerability's in older versions of electrum, and you'll never be 100% sure the current version is vulernability-free (but at least, you ARE able to verify the code if you really wanted to).
The best idear would be to use electrum in an airgapped setup, that way most vulnerability's won't hurt you, or at least use electrum in combination with a good hardware wallet.

[Z-tight]

Electrum is a well recommended wallet in the BTC community because it is open source, self custodial and widely reviewed. And because it is open source it is trustless as you can check the code and see if there is anything malicious in it, unlike closed source wallets.

Can you tell us why I trust Electrum or why it's better than any other wallet?

Electrum in itself isn't better than every other wallet and it depends also on the user. Take note that Electrum is an online wallet by default, so it isn't good if you want to store a large amount of BTC's, though you can set up Electrum on an airgapped device that would never be connected to the internet. Nevertheless instead of using Electrum offline, you can use a hardware wallet if you lack the ability to set up Electrum offline in a safe enviroment, hardware wallets like Passport is a good alternative; and as for software wallets, BlueWallet and Sparrow are good alternatives as well.

[pinggoki]

That's because with Electrum wallet, you're responsible for your own bitcoins and the likelihood of having your bitcoins being stolen is close to zero if you're careful with where you store the wallet. The reason that they recommend it is because it's a good wallet for you, they care that you don't lose your bitcoins as a newbie and at the same time you learn how to use a non-custodial wallet and be responsible for your own safety.

[MainIbem]

It's because of its transparent nature and people calls it open source where it would be verified by also fellow developer, but that notwithstanding you can only rely on a hardware wallet it's best recommendable for everyone but since it could be a little bit stressful to have the alternative means is to use electrum wallet at the main time, however it's trusted than anything other wallet address out there except for the hardware wallet.

[jeraldskie11]

Hello, I'm new here. When I signed up here, I was confused by the forum's many tiny buttons and features, so I just tried to dig deeper for a few days.

I have a question about non custodial wallet that why most users here trust electrum or suggest electrum first?
I have read some posts by using search button every where someone recommends electrum often.
Can you tell us why I trust Electrum or why it's better than any other wallet?

There are many wallets out there, not just electrum, where you can trust that your funds will be safe. They usually prefer hardware wallets, which are the most secured wallets. Although electrum is a very trusted wallet but it is also more vulnerable to hacking compared to hardware wallets.

I think they prefer to use electrum since you don't have to spend money in it. By the way, I've been using this wallet for many years now and I never experienced losing funds that's why this wallet is recommendable.

[TravelMug]

Hello, I'm new here. When I signed up here, I was confused by the forum's many tiny buttons and features, so I just tried to dig deeper for a few days.

I have a question about non custodial wallet that why most users here trust electrum or suggest electrum first?
I have read some posts by using search button every where someone recommends electrum often.
Can you tell us why I trust Electrum or why it's better than any other wallet?

Don't trust, but verify. Here is a good guide by @DireWolfM14 [GUIDE] How to Safely Download and Verify Electrum [Guide].

[bitnote]

The best idear would be to use electrum in an airgapped setup, that way most vulnerability's won't hurt you, or at least use electrum in combination with a good hardware wallet.

what is airgapped setup? Nice suggestion I will not trust anyone blindly will do my own research.

[mocacinno]

The best idear would be to use electrum in an airgapped setup, that way most vulnerability's won't hurt you, or at least use electrum in combination with a good hardware wallet.

what is airgapped setup? Nice suggestion I will not trust anyone blindly will do my own research.

Here's a how-to: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html

An airgapped setup basically means you never enter your seed on an online machine, nor transfer any walletfile that contains any private keys or seed information to an online machine.

• you create a new wallet on an offline machine and only backup your seed on a physical (offline), secure medium
• You export your master PUBLIC key to an online machine (trough QR codes, or trough a safe device) and import it into your wallet on the online machine
• You derive public keys from your master public key, hash them into the address and get receive funds using your online wallet
• When you want to spend the unspent outputs funding the addresses you created in the previous step, you use the online machine to create an unsigned transaction (since the online machine does not contain the master private key, the transaction cannot be signed on the online machine)
• you transfer the unsigned tx to the offline machine for signing, and the signed transaction is transferred back to the online machine for broadcasting

an airgapped setup is usually even more secure than a hardware wallet, especially if you use qr codes to transfer the master public key and the unsigned/signed transactions, you do a "proper" setup of the offline machine and you make sure you pick a trusted wallet. if you don't have a spare computer you can use as an offline machine, you can use a bootable usbstick to boot a linux distro with disabled network interfaces: just boot from the usb stick whenever you need to sign transactions and reboot into your "normal" os for the online parts of the process.

I'd suggest starting with testnet coins in order to get the hang of things... The whole process is doable even for not over technical users, but it does require some basic knowledge. There's a learning curve . I'd say there are gradations in security when doing an airgapped setup, ranging from relatively safe to completely paranoid, but in general, it'll be safer than using an online wallet even if you don't go into "paranoid-mode"

[Ben Barubal]

Hello, I'm new here. When I signed up here, I was confused by the forum's many tiny buttons and features, so I just tried to dig deeper for a few days.

I have a question about non custodial wallet that why most users here trust electrum or suggest electrum first?
I have read some posts by using search button every where someone recommends electrum often.
Can you tell us why I trust Electrum or why it's better than any other wallet?

        I've been using Electrum for several months, and so far it's been good, and I haven't faced any problems with it, as long as you have the private key to the address you created there. All I can tell you is that when you use Electrum on the desktop and it notifies you of updates, you should update it.

       In addition to that, it is more advisable to use electrum on the desktop. It is not saying that it is not good to use electrum in mobile apps; it still depends on you how you trust it.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

I have a question about non custodial wallet that why most users here trust electrum or suggest electrum first?
I have read some posts by using search button every where someone recommends electrum often.

In this case you should trust what people are saying about using electrum because it's the best Bitcoin wallet (been online since 2011) after hardware wallet. If you don't have money for hardware wallet you can use Electrum but as you expand your Bitcoin stash, it'll be better to move to a offline hardware wallet. Electrum has been used by many members of the forum and it has been confirmed to have everything been said about the wallet. It's very easy to install and to navigate yourself around the wallet. But in general don't trust everything you see on the forum and just because people are talking about it doesn't make it valid, do your research because the forum can have lots of misinformation and when you blindly follow what you read, you might end up in a regrettable situation.

Can you tell us why I trust Electrum or why it's better than any other wallet?

• First and foremost, it's a non custodial wallet, so you're incharge of your coins (private key/seed phrase).
• it's an open source wallet and has a reputation of been trustworthy (been online since 2011)
• It supports multi/change of addresses features which increase anonymity.
• It supports Replace by fee (RBF) feature
• It supports Segwit address.
• it support customization of fees and not having a fixed fee.

This are just few reasons why it's better than others and where other Bitcoin wallet matches electrum in everything then its reputation of been online since 2011 gives it more superior points above others as they're new in the game but electrum has been offering Bitcoin wallet service for more than decade without any setback. Electrum though is an online wallet so other precaution need to be apply to protect your coins like using it only on an airgapped device.

[fuguebtc]

Can you tell us why I trust Electrum or why it's better than any other wallet?

Electrum in itself isn't better than every other wallet and it depends also on the user. Take note that Electrum is an online wallet by default, so it isn't good if you want to store a large amount of BTC's, though you can set up Electrum on an airgapped device that would never be connected to the internet. Nevertheless instead of using Electrum offline, you can use a hardware wallet if you lack the ability to set up Electrum offline in a safe enviroment, hardware wallets like Passport is a good alternative; and as for software wallets, BlueWallet and Sparrow are good alternatives as well.

But for newbies, I think Electrum is the most suitable because it is simply the easiest to use of all the online wallets. I think OP should learn about custodial wallets and non-custodial wallets, closed source and open source, from there he will know how to choose the best wallet for himself. But I agree with you, the safety of bitcoin does not completely depend on the wallet but on the majority of its users, which is us. Therefore, OP needs to have knowledge about security and basic knowledge about bitcoin before deciding to invest in bitcoin.

[Helena Yu]

If you think like that, then you can check the electrum official site and read every single code to make sure it's 100% safe. Also you need to learn Bitcoin from scratch in order to learn if "generating seed phrase" in trustworthy wallet isn't manipulated or controlled by someone else including the wallet developer.

what is airgapped setup? Nice suggestion I will not trust anyone blindly will do my own research.

This one https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html

Set up electrum in airgrapped storage will make your wallet become very secure, as long as you know what you do.

[Z-tight]

In addition to that, it is more advisable to use electrum on the desktop. It is not saying that it is not good to use electrum in mobile apps; it still depends on you how you trust it.

Electrum on desktop is better than on mobile, but it doesn't have anything to do with trust or safety as they are both secure, as long as you downloaded it from the original website and verified your download. Electrum on mobile lacks many features that are available on desktop and that's why the desktop version is better, features like coin control, signing a message and customizing fees.

[Nrcewker]

The main reason for which people suggest to use electrum is that, it is open source. That is no person or governing body owns the wallet. If you store the coins there, then you will be the only one who will have access to it. Moreover it’s not an online wallet where the risk of getting phished always remains with the investors. If you have large amount of Bitcoins to hold, then you can also opt for Trezor wallet, it’s not free, but it comes with ample of advantages than the electrum wallet. You are the one who needs to take decision for the wallet, hence choose wisely.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Can you tell us why I trust Electrum or why it's better than any other wallet?

Don't say it is better than all other wallets. It is good because it is open source, non custodial and you own the wallet private keys, mnemonic seeds. You control your bitcoins by using Electrum wallet. That wallet software is available for Android, mobile and you can use Ligthning Network too.

But it can be your best choice but not best choices of other people who can buy hardware wallets or use Bitcoin Core with full nodes.

Don't trust, but verify. Here is a good guide by @DireWolfM14 [GUIDE] How to Safely Download and Verify Electrum [Guide].

The paranoid user's security guide for using Electrum safely. It's an useful security guide to use Electrum wallet and helpful for not only newbies.

[Jawhead999]

I don't think it's a problem for an Average Joe to trust Electrum without need to dig deeper because not everyone able to read code.

There are many trustworthy users in this forum, if someone spreading lies or misinformation, his post will not get merit and will be corrected. As long as you verify the GPG signature, it's already safe and you don't have to worry. It's only safe you're installed the original Electrum, but if you make a mistake by clicking random link etc or your device are infected with malware, it's no longer safe. So make sure everything is clean and secure.

[avp2306]

Hello, I'm new here. When I signed up here, I was confused by the forum's many tiny buttons and features, so I just tried to dig deeper for a few days.

I have a question about non custodial wallet that why most users here trust electrum or suggest electrum first?
I have read some posts by using search button every where someone recommends electrum often.
Can you tell us why I trust Electrum or why it's better than any other wallet?

Because most of people seeking a handy wallet choose electrum than any other web wallets available in the market. But it doesn't mean that you can 100% trust them since hacking might possible to happen. Also even if the platform is trusted still its up to the user on how he gonna secure his wallet since if he's to lazy taking some good actions to make his wallet then there's still a chance that his balances will gone and taken out by those hackers.

Also don't put all your money there or the one you can't afford to lose so that you will not regret if something bad happens to the platform. Electrum is good and reliable wallet but its up for you on how you use it and also don't click any unwanted links by using that so you can escape those possible hacking scenario which already been experience by some other people.