Electrum Wallet

Electrum is a long-standing Bitcoin wallet, first released by Thomas Voegtlin in 2011 and distributed under the MIT license. Rather than downloading the full blockchain, it connects to Electrum servers that index the chain, which lets the wallet synchronize and broadcast transactions quickly even on modest hardware.

How it works

Electrum is a Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) wallet: it requests proof that a user's transactions are included in blocks instead of validating every block itself. This makes it lightweight, with the tradeoff that it trusts the server it queries for chain state. Privacy-conscious and sovereign users commonly point Electrum at their own Electrum server, such as ElectrumX or electrs running alongside a personal full node, so that no third party sees their addresses or balances.

Capabilities

The wallet stores private keys encrypted on the local device and supports watching-only setups, where an online machine holds public keys only while a separate offline machine signs. It integrates common hardware wallets, supports multisig (splitting spend authority across several keys), and uses a recovery phrase so funds can be restored or moved to other compatible clients. These features make it a frequent building block for cold-storage and air-gapped workflows.

For self-sovereign use, Electrum is strongest when paired with your own node. See Full Node for the verification layer and Cold Storage for offline key handling.