In 2013, seed phrases were a major step forward — replacing private keys and their unwieldy string of numbers and letters with a simple set of real words. They made recovering lost wallets easier and helped bring self-custody to more people. But today, they remain a single point of failure and as Bitcoin becomes more mainstream, a reason people choose not to hold their own Bitcoin.
We’ve seen seed phrases lost, stolen, tossed in the trash, and burned in fires. We’ve heard from people too nervous to set up a wallet because they don’t trust themselves to store one phrase forever. Still, for more than a decade, wallets have continued to build new features on top of that same fragile foundation.
We know there’s not one right way to self-custody. And for some people, seed phrases still make sense. But if Bitcoin is going to be the money of the future, it needs to fit into the lives of the people who will use it.
That’s why we built Bitkey — to make self-custody work for as many people as possible.
This is just one step forward, and an invitation to continue innovating on a project we all deeply believe in.
To learn how Bitkey recovery works without a seed phrase, head to bitkey.world.
