Electrum Wallet Review: Pros and Cons
Electrum is a thin and non-custodial software crypto wallet that supports most major modern platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android.
Last time we wrote an Exodus wallet review, and now it’s time to go through another desktop wallet - Electrum Bitcoin wallet.
In this Electrum review, you will find all the necessary details about its features, functions, security, advantages, disadvantages, etc.
Let’s go!
What Is an Electrum Wallet?
At first, it is important to say in this Electrum review that it has not as a fully-designed interface as Exodus has.
They want users to pay attention to their functions and features.
And here I can understand the team, because the main function of any crypto wallet is a secure sending, storing, and receiving crypto assets.
The wallet has been on the market since 2011 and accounts for approximately 10% of all Bitcoin transactions. It is one of the good and time-tested and reliable hot wallets for storing Bitcoin, so you will not be able to create, for example, an Electrum DASH wallet.
Electrum Wallet Phishing Attacks
This is very important information, and we suppose it should be mentioned in our Electrum wallet review.
Everything started in 2019 when Electrum developers posted on Twitter some messages about new phishing attacks.
There was a post about a fraudulent version for Stellar:
Features
As I told you before in the Electrum review, the wallet is quite...conservative.
There are only 5 tabs for a user: “History”, “Send”, “Receive”, “Addresses”, "Contacts".
History
Here you can monitor all of your transactions and every detail about them.
Send
Here you can send your assets. And! You are able to choose the size of commissions based on the priority of a transaction.
Receive
Here you can find your BTC address or QR code. The second type is more convenient now.
Addresses
This section allows you to view the Bitcoin addresses used to send and receive coins. To display the address list, go to the View tab > Show Addresses.
Electrum is one of the few crypto wallets that provides full control and access to their addresses. Many programs hide information about receiving/changing addresses and do not provide an opportunity to spend from any specific address. In Electrum, all these functions and capabilities are initially available.
Contacts
The tab is initially empty. Here you can add your favorite accounts for sending bitcoins.
Security - Is Electrum Wallet Safe?
At first, this wallet has more than 9 years of experience. I told you before in our Electrum wallet review, that it was released at the beginning of 2011.
This wallet is not only thin but non-custodial. It means that all of your private keys and data are stored on your device, but not on the Electrum server.
Now let’s talk about security measures you will face while setting up your new wallet.
After you choose a name for your wallet, you will be offered to choose a type of wallet you want to create: standard wallet, wallet with two-factor authentication, multi-signature wallet or just to watch Bitcoin addresses.
The first type - standard wallet, is protected only with the help of a password, that is why we advise you to choose the second type of wallet.
Then, when you choose this type, the Electrum two-factor authentication will start. You will need to pay for it and to download a Google Authenticator.
Then you will be asked to create a new seed, and after you agree, the system will give you the seed phrase that will help you to restore access to your wallet in the case of problems with a system of device problems.
On the next screen, you will be asked to create a password to begin your Bitcoin wallet login process.
The most important now is to store the seed phrase and password carefully. Don’t take screenshots, don’t copy them. Write them down! And hide in a safe place.
The security features:
1. An encrypted wallet file that stores your private keys, protected by a password.
2. Electrum uses the seed phrase as a recovery method. This will protect you from the risk of losing your private keys or the device on which the program is installed.
3. Since the server code is open source, anyone can run the server.
Despite the many security measures, the project still had some problems in this matter. In November 2017, the Electrum team became aware of a problem, and it became understandable that Electrum can be hacked.
The crux of the problem was that any malicious site could gain control of your bitcoins if the wallet was not password-protected. In addition, users claim that even having a password allowed that website to send bitcoins to the hackers' address.
The team managed to fix the vulnerability only in early January 2018. They claimed that they were not aware of how serious the problem was.
Pros and Cons
My favorite section of this Electrum review - advantages and disadvantages.
This wallet is very easy to use, safe, and convenient.
Below are the main features of the Electrum wallet, thanks to which it won love and respect in the crypto community:
1. It is very good for those who want to use Bitcoin for recurring payments.
2. Password protection makes it much more difficult for hackers to break into your wallet.
3. User information is not stored on the server.
4. Open source. Anyone can check the device code for bugs, errors, and vulnerabilities in the system.
5. Electrum automatically calculates the amount of transaction fees based on their urgency. The wallet itself does not charge any fee for using it.
6. Electrum can be used as a multi-signature wallet. This greatly increases the security level of the wallet.
The thing I don’t like is the poor design.
I don’t want you to understand me wrong, of course, security is the most important.
Among other disadvantages are:
1. You need to download separate versions for every crypto asset.
2. You need to pay for two-factor authentication.
3. Wallet downloading needs a lot of attention to the process.
4. There were security issues and no one knows if they will be possible again in the future.
5. It supports only BTC (if you use only BTC and don't want to have an Electrum DASH wallet, it will not be a problem for you).
Electrum Bitcoin Wallet Reviews
Judging by the numerous user reviews on the Internet (especially on Electrum review Reddit), the Electrum wallet works almost flawlessly, without interruptions, and performs its function perfectly.
There are some complaints about the wallet, but they are rather related to the unprofessionalism or unattentiveness of individual users.
So, for example, one of the users complained that the wallet does not start. The problem turned out to be that he used Cyrillic characters in the name of the folder where Electrum was installed.
From other reviews, it can be concluded that Electrum sometimes does not update data on the blockchain very quickly. This is most likely due to a slow connection because the wallet takes data about the state of the Bitcoin network from its own servers.
Final Thoughts
Here is the end of our Electrum wallet review, and I hope it was useful and informative because we tried to gather all the most important details.
This wallet is very conservative but convenient and safe. Also, I need to say that it is very easy for beginner traders to use as soon as you are attentive because there are a lot of steps to follow to create a wallet.
By the way, if you want to know how to create a Bitcoin wallet or how to choose the best and the safest Bitcoin wallet, read
this article.