Wallet
The tool that holds your keys and signs your transactions — the coins themselves never leave the blockchain.
A crypto wallet stores private keys and signs transactions; the coins themselves exist only as ledger entries on-chain. The taxonomy that matters: hot (online — apps, extensions) versus cold (offline hardware), and custodial versus non-custodial (who holds the keys).
Setup fundamentals: the seed phrase backup is the wallet — record it offline before depositing anything meaningful; verify receive addresses on-device; and use separate wallets for savings versus DApp experimentation so one bad signature can’t touch the vault. Modern smart-contract wallets (account abstraction) are softening these sharp edges with recovery options.