Bitkey roadmap update, April 2025
Bitcoin custody has always been defined by tradeoffs. Privacy, safety, and usability have been inextricably linked, forcing users to choose which qualities matter most to them, index on those qualities, and put up with compromise on the others.
Most single-sig hardware offers good privacy, but is hard to use and puts fund safety at risk. Software wallets are easy to use and can be private, but could improve on fund safety. And a lot of third-party collaborative custody models are easy and safe, but force tradeoffs in user privacy. Whatever model you choose today, you can have at best 2 out of 3, but not all 3–at least not yet.
We believe the choice between privacy, safety, and usability is a false choice. Strong safety and privacy should not mean an unusable product, nor should something easy to use require compromises to privacy or safety. Bitcoiners shouldn’t have to simply accept that strength in one area requires weakness in others.
Over Bitkey’s first year serving customers, we’ve heard feedback about all of these tradeoffs – and we want to address them. We want to make Bitkey the first self-custody solution to deliver best-in-class safety, usability, and privacy–all at once.
Over the next few months at Bitkey, that starts with shipping a few big changes:
Safety
Safety is a core goal of bitcoin self-custody, and that means both keeping bad actors away from your bitcoin and making sure that you can always access it. Here are a few safety improvements you can expect from Bitkey this year:
- Transaction verification that people use consistently and correctly in practice. Existing solutions, like hardware screens, are hard to use, and as a result often don’t get used correctly, leaving users with a false sense of security. We want to give Bitkey customers easy ways to verify transaction details and other security-critical operations. First up is a software-driven feature we’ll bring to customers mid-year. We’re also evaluating ways to provide even stronger transaction verification with hardware, and an optional cold wallet configuration for customers who don’t mind putting in a little more effort for more security. These are complex projects, and our next step is to publish a technical proposal and solicit feedback – look out for this over the summer.
- Fingerprint reset. While fingerprints are secure and convenient, they're not foolproof. We never want our customers to risk losing their bitcoin because of a cut on their finger. Bitkey already allows customers to configure multiple fingerprints, but to further help customers regain access to their hardware, we’ll provide a secure mechanism to reset the fingerprint after a security delay. Ships in May.
- Bitkey Security Hub. This new tab in the Bitkey mobile app puts all of Bitkey’s strong safety and security features in one place, helping customers better understand what’s on offer and how to enable them. Ships in May, and we’ll continue to add to this tab beyond that.
Privacy
As we build Bitkey, we’re constantly looking for ways to bring better privacy to our customers. These privacy upgrades are on the near-term horizon:
- Private wallet balances. We can provide the safety of collaborative custody, but without any visibility into your balance or transactions – a major unlock not just for bitcoiners but for all customers who we believe deserve the best privacy features. We’re actively working on this and expect to bring it to customers soon after our transaction verification feature, around mid-year.
- Private purchasing. We’ll enable customers to purchase a Bitkey device without disclosing their home address and other personal information. This starts with an option to buy without disclosing your home (or billing) address and pick up your Bitkey order in person at thousands of locations in the U.S. We’ll also add an option to buy Bitkey with bitcoin. We’ll ship both of these over the next few months.
Usability
Bitkey is already the most usable hardware wallet on the market, but there’s always room for improvement. Here are a few ways we’re making the Bitkey experience even better.
- Configurable “delay and notify” time period. Today, when you lose one key, Bitkey helps you recover your wallet and imposes a hard-coded 7 day security delay in the process, giving you the time and opportunity to cancel recovery on the off chance it was triggered by a malicious actor. In a few months, we'll enable customers to configure this delay period — we want Bitkey to enable you to protect your bitcoin, not to decide the parameters for you.
- Additional exchange partnerships. Bitkey makes it easy to access many of your favorite exchanges to buy, sell, and transfer bitcoin. We’ll continue to add partners so that more Bitkey customers can quickly and easily use their bitcoin how they want. We’re most interested in adding partners who are either bitcoin-only or heavily focused on serving bitcoiners. We’re adding our next partner soon, and anticipate adding other partners later this year.
We want to hear from you
As we work on this roadmap, we’ll continue to share more about what we’re building, why, and how. Along the way, we’d love to hear what you think about our direction - what are we getting right, and what do you hope we change? If you don’t use Bitkey already, what’s missing that would change your mind? Your input will help us bring better self-custody to bitcoiners this year, and beyond.
We can’t wait to ship all of this and more to all of you. Self-custody has always been about trade-offs, but we think there’s a path to having privacy, safety, and usability in one product.
