The new Opera browser incorporates a crypto wallet that works

More precisely, an Ethereum wallet is included with the latest versions of the quite good Opera browser. Incidentally, the main thing not to like about this sturdy Scandinavian software is that the Android version on a default installation does keep throwing a lot of notifications which has to be they way they pay their way.

It was very easy to send ETH Ethereum coins from another wallet, which is to be expected and as it is, a transaction cost of ZAR 1 ensured that this happened within a few seconds. The way to start is actually to install Opera first on a mobile device and then link it to other installations of Opera (on your laptop, for example). Right now, I have the same wallet on several laptops as well as my mobile phone which is really convenient. This is a real wallet as the wallet itself stores the cryptographic private keys for the address and they can therefore be lost – unless backed up, for example by running the wallet on some other devices. Doing this with Opera is really convenient since you can use a QR code to transfer the private keys to a device with a camera or simply re-enter the back-up version of the key which is a twelve-word phrase that the wallet can display. This might be a topic for another blog but for now, I would say that the Opera wallet looks quite nice. Obviously, it also handles other crypto tokens that reside on the Ethereum blockchain so you can invent your own currency and run it right from this wallet.

Update on 10 May 2019: the private keys are not actually stored on other device but only on the phone. There is a complicated messaging going on because apparently Opera lets you use the phone version of the wallet from the desktop but the keys for signing are not on the desktop. I am no longer so sure how much I like it...