The Best Bitcoin Apps For Beginners On iOS, Android

Cryptocurrency prices continue to skyrocket. According to CoinMarketCap, by Friday morning bitcoin was selling for around $15,625 while litecoin reached a new peak at more than $125. One of North America’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase, briefly crashed on Thursday when it was swarmed with unprecedented traffic. These types of outages have become almost routine when prices oscillate. The Coinbase mobile app recently became one of the most popular apps in Apple’s App Store.

Despite growing adoption, bitcoin wealth is still highly concentrated. Aaron Brown, former managing director and head of financial markets research at AQR Capital Management, told Bloomberg around 1,000 users hold 40 percent of bitcoin. Many cryptocurrency experts agree several hundred wealthy investors control vast swaths of the global cryptocurrency market. However, when the news website BeProductive, mapped geotagged Twitter chatter about cryptocurrencies, the map proved both awareness and popularity are quickly spreading beyond Silicon Valley and Wall Street bubbles.

For cryptocurrency newbies on the go, here are a few mobile apps beyond Coinbase that are relatively user-friendly:

Editor’s note: This is not investment advice. Many blockchain-centric mobile apps have questionable security infrastructures. It is important for users to research platforms and tools, not merely digital currency itself.

+ Bitcoin Wallet and Bread

These are two of the most user-friendly mobile wallets for cryptocurrency. There are countless apps for mobile storage, so make sure to research the options and decide what works best for you. For example, BitPay might be more convenient for small business owners. The Coinme Wallet app could work well for someone who lives near a Coinme cryptocurrency ATM.

It could also be prudent to use a hardware wallet in addition to mobile apps. The cybersecurity firm High-Tech Bridge estimated 90 percent of the top 30 crypto-savvy apps in the Finance section of the Google Play store, each with up to 100,000 installations, had at least two high-risk vulnerabilities.

+ ShapeShift

Think of this like a digital vending machine for cryptocurrency. It’s not a wallet nor a trading platform. It’s a free exchange app. For example, users can put in litecoin or Ethereum’s ether tokens and convert them into bitcoin or vice versa. The Android app supports all the same cryptocurrencies as ShapeShift’s desktop platform, while iOS users have a little less variety because Apple has strict policies for financial apps. It is probably a good idea to play around with the ShapeShift website first, so that you don’t make any mistakes on the mobile app.

+ CoinDesk, CoinCap and Crypto Pro

There are so many bitcoin price charts to choose from. CoinDesk’s Android app, connected to the namesake cryptocurrency news outlet, has real-time price index, articles and push notifications for price alerts. The iOS app has slightly less enthusiastic reviews, so iPhone users may prefer the Crypto Pro: Bitcoin Ticker or ShapeShift’s CoinCap app. CoinCap, which also has an Android counterpart, features a simple price chart with a variety of cryptocurrencies. The personalized portfolio option is helpful for tracking the value of your own holdings.

More experienced cryptocurrency traders should check out apps such as Delta and Blockfolio, which also has a news reader. These apps have more features for mobile portfolio management via both iPhones and Android devices. The Revolut mobile banking app recently added cryptocurrency trading features for users who want to manage a mixture of currencies in one mobile wallet, including 25 fiat currencies and tokens such as litecoin or ether.

This was by no means a comprehensive list. There are countless mobile apps for cryptocurrency users. Newbies who are looking for broader educational materials should follow bitcoin evangelist Andreas Antonopoulos. He has a series of YouTube videos, blogs and books that cover a variety of subjects related to digital currency and decentralized technology. He doesn’t have an educational app yet. But if you become a Patreon you can snag invitations to networking events to meet other people in the cryptocurrency space. Getting engaged with the broader cryptocurrency community is the best way to find useful apps. Free local meetups are another way to learn more about bitcoin.