Jack Dorsey begins selling Bitcoin wallets privately
Jack Dorsey is selling Bitcoin hardware wallets privately through his company Block Inc. People can grab a futuristic looking BTC hardware wallet, named Bitkey, without sharing their home address.
According to a post published by Bitkey on X, anyone located in the US can order the hardware wallet and have it shipped to a pickup point like FedEx, Dollar General, Albertsons, Kroger stores, and up to 9,000 Walmart locations. Getting a Bitkey only requires a name and an email address if the user pays in Bitcoin and selects a pickup point.
Dorsey’s Bitkey works without a seed phrase
Bitkey has a different recovery model compared to other hardware wallets. Most crypto hardware wallets rely on a seed phrase, which comprise 12 to 24 combinations of random words.
Many people have lost access to their crypto holdings forever. That’s because their seed phrases were lost, stolen, burnt in a fire, or accidentally tossed in the trash.
The Bitkey website says, “Seed phrases are hard to manage, easy to lose, and attractive targets for even low-tech scammers.” It continued: “It’s a single point of failure and represents a fundamental weakness of prevailing self-custody models.”
Moreover, most crypto wallets are singlesig (single-signature). In other terms, users have one signature to sign all transactions. Hackers have an easy job targeting a singlesig wallet with a seed phrase.
Bitkey eliminates the need for a seed phrase. It’s a multisig (multi-signature) wallet with three keys. Each key is saved on a separate device. One key is on the smartphone, another inside the hardware wallet, and the last one is saved on the Bitkey server.
This design helps people recover their BTC even if they lose their physical wallet or smartphone.
Bitkey signs Bitcoin transactions with two keys
To sign a transaction, users need 2 out of 3 keys, usually the keys stored on the smartphone and the hardware wallet. To spend, users must tap the hardware wallet at the back of the phone, similar to how people use Apple Pay at points of sale.
Since there are 3 keys and 2 devices plus a server involved in Bitkey’s system design, losing access to the hardware wallet or smartphone isn’t a major problem. If a user loses their smartphone, the wallet app can be recovered using the keys saved on Bitkey and the server.
The worst-case scenario is when a user loses their smartphone and Bitkey at the same time. This is solvable too through Recovery Contacts. These are people the user adds in the app when setting their Bitkey for the first time.
Bitkey was designed and created by the team behind Square and Cash App. The wallet is available in 95 countries.
Last week, Bitkey partnered with Strike, a Bitcoin payments app. US-based Bitkey users can now purchase BTC using Strike and transfer it smoothly to their hardware wallet.
Block Inc. shares have been in the red this month. Data from Google Finance shows that the company’s stock (ticker: XYZ) lost 7.83% in the past 30 days and currently trades at $61.57.
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