Bank with Bitcoin Glossary

While this site certainly features more metaphors, here are the analogies between crypto terms and their banking equivalents.

Mobile wallet: a mobile wallet is a software app that will run on your phone. These are often non-custodial but you need to do your own research to ensure that you are not unwittingly choosing a custodial wallet with an interface that shows you on your mobile phone.

Hardware wallet: a hardware wallet is a physical device that is typically electronic that is only used to manage your cryptocurrency or bitcoin. It may or may not have a camera or a touch screen or access to the internet. This device may look like a cell phone, calculator, or a keychain but the features are typically limited to only managing crypto to minimize the attack vectors.

Paper wallet: a paper wallet is typically a backup of a hardware or mobile wallet that is both the seed phrase, typically a combination of 12 or 24 words selected from a pool of over 2000 words, as well as the derivation path or protocol to ensure you can restore the wallet from the backup.

Exchange wallet: an exchange wallet is a wallet provided for use while your Bitcoin is stored on exchange. This is a custodial wallet in that the exchange has access to your funds and could lose control of them to malicious actors or make the funds unrecoverable through technical incompetence. The Exchange wallet may appear as an app on your phone as well.

Exchanges: an exchange is a place to trade Fiat for crypto or crypto to crypto. These may be centralized where one party or company has control over the assets on the exchange or decentralized where the protocol facilitates exchanges between peers on the network.

Savings account: Bitcoin savings accounts are similar to traditional savings accounts where interest is paid to depositors for holding their Bitcoin in a custodial account where that Bitcoin can then be lent out to borrowers. this exposes you both to the performance risk of the savings company to provide your interest and the counterparty risk that they take on to lend the money out.