About CryptoWallets NZ

Why this site exists

Most crypto wallet content is written for an American or European reader, and the gap matters more than it looks. Every hardware wallet sold here is an import, with 15% GST and a Customs levy attached. Only a handful of devices are stocked domestically. The tax treatment is New Zealand's own — cryptoassets as property, no general capital gains tax, and CARF reporting since 1 April 2026. And this country has an unusually dense history of exchange failure for a market of five million people.

Cryptopia was hacked for roughly NZ$30 million in 2019 and its liquidation ran until December 2024. Dasset went into liquidation in August 2023 with about NZ$6.3 million of customer cryptoassets unaccounted for and a Serious Fraud Office investigation following. BitNZ, NZBCX and BitPrime all folded. And in 2026 the country lost both its largest homegrown platform — Easy Crypto, which stopped trading on 30 March after being acquired by Swyftx — and its oldest, Kiwi-Coin.

The conclusion we draw from that is simple enough to state in a sentence: in New Zealand, exchanges are temporary and wallets are permanent. Everything on this site follows from it.

What we cover

Thirteen wallet reviews — eight hardware devices and five self-custody apps — graded on the same four axes described in our methodology. Eight category and comparison pages covering hardware versus software, cold storage, mobile, desktop, non-custodial, staking and the full wallet taxonomy. Sixteen practical guides, from setting up a first wallet through to reconciling a year of staking rewards for Inland Revenue. And eleven New Zealand city guides covering what is genuinely local: which retailers stock what, courier realities, offsite storage that actually exists, and the environmental risk that will eventually destroy a paper backup in that particular region.

We also do something most sites in this space avoid, which is to write about the regulatory position accurately rather than in generalities. The Financial Markets Authority does not supervise self-custody wallets. The Department of Internal Affairs becomes the single AML/CFT supervisor from 1 July 2026. The FMA's March 2026 designation notice on the NZDD stablecoin is the first formal indication of how a New Zealand regulator reads a stablecoin. These things are checkable and they matter, so we cite them.

What we deliberately do not do

We do not give financial advice. This is an independent information website. We are not a licensed financial adviser, not a broker and not a licensed provider under the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any cryptoasset, and nothing here takes account of your circumstances. Our disclaimer sets this out fully.

We do not take money for rankings. No wallet maker sponsors a review, buys a position in a table, or has input into a grade, and no rating has ever been changed at a vendor's request.

We do not invent authors. There are no stock-photo experts with fabricated credentials on this site. Where we express a view we say "we", and where a claim rests on someone else's work we name them — Ledger Donjon for the Tangem laser fault-injection research, Inland Revenue for tax positions, Cryptocurrency NZ for local retail observations.

We do not fill gaps with confidence. Where something cannot be verified, we write that. Inland Revenue has published no guidance specific to staking rewards, so we describe the prevailing professional view and label it as an inference. Sources disagree about whether Trezor is stocked in New Zealand, so we report both and tell you to check. Neither Ledger nor Global-e disclosed how many customers the January 2026 breach affected, so we say it is undisclosed.