Miner Wallet
A wallet is a key pair and an address where you receive payouts. The coins sit in the network, and the wallet holds the right to spend them.
What a wallet is
Technically a wallet does not store coins. It stores a private key, and the coins are recorded against an address in the network itself. From there a simple consequence follows: whoever holds the private key owns the coins, no matter what app sits on your phone.
Wallets come in two kinds. In your own (non custodial) wallet the key is yours, and nobody, the app developer included, can spend the coins. In a custodial one, on an exchange for example, the service holds the key and you hold a record in its database. The second option is simpler. The first is safer in the sense that it does not depend on somebody else's decision.
For a miner a wallet is first of all the payout address in the pool settings. The pool sends coins where you typed them, and a transfer cannot be undone. So the address gets checked character by character, and we advise running the first payout on a small amount.
The recovery phrase the app shows you when it creates the wallet is that same key in human readable form. Do not photograph it, do not send it in a messenger and do not keep it in a chat: anyone who sees it gets access to the coins. A phrase written on paper and lying at home is safer than a screenshot in the cloud.
Quick reference table
| What it stores | the private key, not the coins themselves |
| Kinds | your own (you hold the key) and custodial (the service does) |
| What the pool needs | an address for payouts |
| Recovery phrase | the same key in words, keep it off the internet |
| Cancelling a transfer | impossible |
What to check before the first payout
Match the address against the network. A bitcoin address is no good for Litecoin, and inside one network there are different formats. The pool usually warns you about a mismatch, but counting on that is unwise.
Check the pool's minimum payout. On one asic it sometimes takes several days to build up, and that is not a fault but a threshold you can change in the settings.
An exchange address works as a payout target, but it can change or stop accepting small amounts. Your own wallet for payouts, with the withdrawal made from there, is safer, because it depends on you alone.
Example
You typed an address into the worker settings. The pool built up the minimum amount and sent it. After that the coins are visible in the wallet and the transaction is visible in the network. If the address belonged to someone else or carried a typo, the transaction still goes through, only there is nobody to get the coins back from: the network did what you asked it to do.
Related terms
Where to go next on the site
Coins
Hardware
- ASIC Miner knowledge base
Questions and answers
Can you put an exchange address in the pool
Technically yes, and many people do exactly that. The risk is that an exchange address can change or stop accepting small payouts, and then you go looking for the coins through its support.
What happens if you lose the recovery phrase
Nobody will restore access to the coins: your own wallet has no support desk that remembers your key. That is why the phrase gets written on paper and kept the way documents are kept.
Why is a hardware wallet better than an app
The key never leaves the device, and the transaction is signed inside it. For amounts you would hate to lose, that is a sensible expense.
Do you need a separate wallet for each coin
You need an address on the right network. Many apps support several networks at once, but an address is always tied to its own network, and that is the one the pool asks for.
How the terms connect
Every link in the chain is clickable. Orange marks where you are now.
Looking for an ASIC miner
The catalog holds 212 models. You can compare them by hashrate and by joules per terahash, then plug your own rate into the calculator and see what stays in your pocket.
Page written and checked by Denys Klimchuk. Updated .