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Getting Started with a Wallet

By 6q7q…aawu September 9, 2026
Choosing a wallet, adding your first mint, making a deposit, sending tokens, and why backing up your seed phrase is non-negotiable.

Choosing your first wallet

Cashu has several solid wallet options — which one to start with mostly comes down to browser vs. native app, not one being “better.” If you’re new to Cashu, cashu.me is a good first stop: it runs in any browser with no installation, and can be saved to your phone’s home screen like an app (a “Progressive Web App”).

If you’d rather have a native mobile app from the start, Minibits (Android) and eNuts (iOS/Android) are both established, actively maintained wallets — a genuine starting point, not just a fallback if cashu.me doesn’t suit you.

Setting up your first mint

  1. Open your wallet and look for an option to add a mint (usually “Add Mint” or a “+” button).
  2. Paste in the URL of the mint you chose — starting with https://.
  3. Your wallet will connect and fetch the mint’s public keys. You’re now ready to use it.

Tip: if you’re just testing things out and don’t want to risk real sats yet, you can use testnut.cashu.space — a public test mint that issues unbacked “fake” ecash for practice. These tokens have no real value and can’t be exchanged for actual Bitcoin — nothing you do there can cost you real money, which makes it a safe place to get comfortable with the wallet before using a real mint.

Your first deposit

To fund your wallet, look for “Receive” or “Mint,” choose an amount, and pay the Lightning invoice that’s generated. Once it’s confirmed, you’ll have ecash tokens in your wallet.

Sending and receiving tokens

Sending ecash is different from a normal Bitcoin transaction — there’s no address, no block confirmation. You generate a token (a long text string starting with cashuA or cashuB), and send it to someone however you like: paste it in a chat, show a QR code, even embed it in an emoji. The recipient pastes it into their own wallet to receive it.

Because this doesn’t touch the Lightning Network, it’s instant and free — this is one of Cashu’s biggest advantages for small, frequent payments.

Backing up your wallet

Most wallets, including cashu.me, generate a 12-word seed phrase (similar to a Bitcoin wallet). Write this down and store it somewhere safe.

This is worth being blunt about: your seed phrase, combined with a mint that supports NUT-09 (Restore), is the only way to recover your funds if you lose your device. It doesn’t matter if the mint is perfectly healthy and online — without your seed backed up, losing your phone means losing your ecash permanently. This is different from the mint-related risks in Module 2; this one is entirely on you to prevent, and entirely preventable.

🔑 Key takeaway

Seed phrase + NUT-09 support = recoverable.
No seed backup = permanent loss on device failure, no matter how trustworthy the mint is.

Pick a wallet

MintRadar keeps a plain list of Cashu-compatible wallets — no ranking, no reviews, just the current options so you can pick one and get started.

Browse Cashu wallets →

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