Samourai Wallet Review

Samourai is a privacy-oriented wallet for mobile devices, it is to be considered one of the most comprehensive offerings on the market. The company behind the wallet was founded in 2015 by Streetside Development LLC in London. Since then, the Samourai Wallet offers unprecedented privacy for Bitcoin enthusiasts who want a high level of privacy when it comes to Bitcoin transactions. The wallet offers uncommon features that cannot be found in similar apps, such as Ricochet, Stonewall, PayNym, Smart Alerts, No Address Reuse, and Merge Avoidance.

Using Samourai wallet will open your eyes in terms of what is possible with Bitcoin. The app itself is topped up by creativity, and the desire for independence. The team dedication is evident in the quality of the app itself, in addition to everything else, it promotes the use of Bitcoin as a currency unit and the removal of pricing in fiat currencies such as the dollar.

User Interface

Samourai has an extremely minimalist UI design that is simple and easy to use while providing a high degree of control over the Bitcoins stored in it. The first thing that appears when you open the wallet on your Android device is a screen with scrambled numbers where you can enter your PIN. Scrambled numbers prevent screening apps that spy on their users from being able to detect the PIN required to unlock the wallet. 

Everything you need to send and receive Bitcoins is just a click away, creating an intuitive experience given the many features the Samourai wallet offers.

Despite the minimalistic UI, Samourai is considered to be very technically oriented, so some of this complexity may prevent the average user from using it as a daily driver, despite the advanced privacy-oriented features.

Which devices is the Samourai wallet available for?

Samourai wallet is available only for Android devices and is currently not available for iOS.

Security and Privacy Features

Samourai is considered to be one of the most privacy oriented wallets offering control over the privacy of your bitcoin transactions. Features like Ricochet, Stonewall, PayNym, Intelligent Alerts, No Address Reuse and Merge Avoidance are responsible for keeping your privacy when transacting to a whole another level. Tor routing is also available to mask your IP address to secure your location while you are transferring Bitcoin. 

Full Offline Mode

One of the most important features that Samourai wallet offers is the full offline mode, making it possible for the wallet to work in offline conditions. You can Offline Broadcast bitcoin transactions to the network through SMS and goTenna Mesh Network. 

Segregated Witness – SegWit support

Samourai Wallet has full SegWit support enabled by default in order to provide affordable miner fees for each bitcoin transaction.

Smart Miner Fees

You can manually set the transaction priority – Low to Urgent to pay the best possible miner fee according to your needs. This feature allows you to get the best possible satoshi per byte for each transaction, and the built-in fee boosting allows you to increase the miner fee at will to make your transaction go through faster.

Stonewall

Stonewall is a strong privacy feature that prevents leakage of privacy-damaging metadata of your transactions. It creates special transactions to represent a statistical doubt between the sender and the recipient. This privacy feature is designed to protect you from blockchain surveillance companies that want to deanonymize you.

PayNym

PayNym is a publicly available ID with which you can send and receive stealth transactions. By using PayNym, you conceal your public Bitcoin address to further protect your identity. A PayNym cannot be searched on the blockchain, making it impossible for an entity to check the balance of your transactions and wallet.

Batch Spending

Batch Spending allows you to compose a transaction that includes several unrelated transactions, saving you up to 30% on mining fees.

Scrambled PIN

When you want to access your Samourai wallet you will have to input a PIN with numbers that are randomized every time. This simple feature will protect against spyware, keyloggers, and screen recorders thus preventing unauthorized access.

Stealth Mode

With the stealth mode ON you remove the app from the launcher and the home screen of your Android device. A secret code will be required afterward in order to access, reveal the Samourai wallet.

Remote SMS Commands

You can use SMS commands to completely erase or restore your wallet in case your device is stolen or lost. Remote commands are one of the features that allow unprecedented control over the security of your Bitcoins.

Ricochet

Ricochet lets your transactions make extra leaps and bounds, creating additional transaction history. This feature is used to ensure that your Bitcoins are not blocked when you transfer them to an exchange such as Coinbase, Kraken, Bitpanda due to address blacklisting. This is a premium feature that adds a whole new dimension to protecting your privacy and your coins.

Whirlpool

Whirlpool gives you the ability to cycle your Bitcoins to break the connection between transaction inputs and outputs, greatly increasing your privacy. 

OpenDime Support

Samourai Wallet provides support for OpenDime, a hardware wallet for the streets. OpenDime is a USB flash drive that allows you to spend your Bitcoins on the road, just as you would spend fiat currency via your debit cards.

Additional products

Samourai Wallet has additional products that accompany the wallet and form a package of unique offerings with the sole purpose of enhancing the privacy of your identity while using Bitcoin.

Sentinel Watch Only

This is an online companion for the cold storage of a Bitcoin wallet. The Sentinel allows you to track all activities on your offline, cold storage, and paper wallets without revealing your private keys. Sentinel Watch tracks the public keys so that the private keys are never disclosed at any time.

Dojo

Dojo is a self-hosted, Docker-based software suite, a full node server that makes it easier than ever to run a Bitcoin node. 

nodl Dojo

This is a plug-and-play full Bitcoin node created with Samourai Wallet in mind to provide strong privacy for your Bitcoin activities. This hardware node comes with a metal box, a high-performance CPU, and enough memory to last for a long time. The device has its own operating system (Armbian OS) and pre-installed functions such as Bitcoin Core, Tor, Samourai Dojo, Samourai Whirlpool. The price of nodl Dojo will require a considerable budget, but the price is nothing when compared to the value the device has for your privacy and control of your Bitcoins.

Conclusion

The Samourai Wallet is one of the best bitcoin wallets that offers a level of privacy that is difficult to achieve with an ordinary wallet. Privacy is the essence of freedom, and the Samourai Wallet offers the opportunity for everyone to be free in terms of their control over money in the face of Bitcoin. The problem with the wallet, of course, is that it is not simple enough for the ordinary Joe to use all its functions with ease, but then again, the ordinary Joe wouldn’t mind being exposed to the risks that Samourai minifies. 

By providing a higher level of control over your privacy, you need to be more responsible, because a simple mistake can cost much more than overpaying for transactions. The user experience is very good if you’re not totally new to transferring bitcoins. Using this wallet for mobile privacy-oriented bitcoin transactions is highly recommended and maybe it is the only mobile wallet offering such features in order to increase user privacy.

Samourai Wallet is a Bitcoin only wallet that offers unprecedented privacy and control over your transactions and Bitcoins.

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