Mycelium Review: Is it the best Bitcoin wallet?

Mycelium beats the competitors in many categories, but is it the best?

Mycelium for Android is the best Bitcoin wallet available. Aside from the enterprise-level security features, it has many other features making it more than a wallet, it becomes a trading platform, a vault, a wire-transfer, and more!

What is the Mycelium company? Who are they?

Mycelium is a semi-open-source developer/manufacturer specializing in top of the line bitcoin hardware, software, and security. Their website boasts they have the most secure bitcoin software and hardware, when combined enable enterprise level security. We’re going to review their wallet after noticing widespread acclaim. Afterall, the cryptocrooks doesn’t just reveal the scams, we acknowledge those on the cutting edge of bitcoin-based technologies.

“Growing from the dawn of the blockchain era. Acknowledged to be the best not the fanciest. Being adapted for use by the masses.“

–Mycelium Website

Mycelium is not only working to create hardware that guarantees everyone access to secure Bitcoin storage, but they are working to keep Bitcoin a decentralized cryptocurrency in the hands of the people. Their ideological values reinforce their commitment to the Bitcoin industry at large. We’ll explain why we honor Mycelium as the best Bitcoin wallet.

The main screen of Mycelium wallet showing all accounts linked to the app. We have one send/receive and 1 watch-only.

Multiple Wallet to Choose From

The Mycelium Bitcoin wallet, first-and-foremost, allows users to send and receive Bitcoin. It does this using the best security available for consumers. Mycelium is a no-BS wallet, with each linked account front and center once the app is started. It is simple to create a new wallet to send and receive Bitcoin.

Cold-Storage Wallet

The cold storage functionality allows you watch Bitcoin addresses, without storing private keys. When scanning a private-key to spend a cold-storage bitcoin wallet, the phone encrypts the data sent to the Bitcoin network in order to offer the highest level of security. Mycelium wallet boasts itself as one of the oldest most secure and reliable bitcoin wallets currently in the market. One interesting feature that the Mycelium wallet has is Local Trading. Local Trading allows users to sell and buy bitcoins inside the App with a low fee of 0.2% per trade with a system similar to Localbitcoin. The mycelium system allows contacting two people to buy and sell bitcoin with an encrypted message system.

Mycelium Interface

Mycelium lists 3 sections horizontally, Accounts, Balance, Transactions, Address Book. Users swipe left and right, with ability to access addition operations in the upper right. Nothing special about the transaction log, except a link to blockchain.info hash details. Even something simple like an address book is beautiful on Mycelium’s wallet app. What I admire most is the ability to send/receive from multiple addresses under one wallet while switching effortlessly between addresses. This allows people to transfer between personal addresses and organize the bitcoin in place.

Competition to Mycelium

There are dozens of bitcoin wallets available, so competition is tough. But for an all-around, feature-rich wallet with hgih secuirty, Mycelium takes the prize. One can choose between different android bitcoin wallets such as Coinbase (50-100k users) or Blockchain.info (50-100k users) which store your private keys. Or choose Bitcoin Wallet (100-500k users) or Mycelium (20k users) for local-storage of the private keys. Mycelium has worked its hardest to protect private keys from being exposed. The only way for hackers to gain this data is on a rooted device, or malware with root access, although highly unlikely to happen, the possibility has to be mentioned.

Mycelium Local Trading

A map showing Bitcoin buyers and sellers using Mycelium local trader.

The Mycelium bitcoin wallet integrates a proprietary peer-to-peer trading platform. This platform allows users of Mycelium to enable GPS to find sellers/buyers nearby. This system has no rating system but includes encryption for secure conversations. This allows traders to buy and sell Bitcoin anonymously. We tested this platform by contacting a member “CHEAPEST” to by $50 of bitcoin. Unfortunately, we will not buy bitcoin from anyone via venmo, especially without meeting in person at a local place.

Although Mycelium’s local trading bitcoin is an interesting feature, we do not recommend buying through it unless one requests cash and a public place to complete the trade. Mycelium is semi-open source, so hard forks of the program could occur, but Mycelium has been constantly integrating new features.

Best Mycelium Wallet Features

• HD Security – Sentence based wallet generation and back-up.

• Easy back-up for securing private keys

• Integrating local bitcoin trading

• Completely Free (for now, including no fees for trading)

Even they warn you about trading without meeting!

Mycelium Negatives

• Android only – As-of press date, Mycelium wallet is only available for Android devices.

• Not able to sign messages – Although previous versions were able to

• Local Bitcoin trading is prone to scams in current state

We couldn’t recommend Mycelium bitcoin wallet more, we use the Mycelium wallet and recommend  everyone to check it out! We consider Mycelium the best Bitcoin wallet. You can download it for Android here:

Click to see Mycelium Wallet on Google Store.

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