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What are Recovery Contacts and how do they help keep my Bitkey safe?

Updated
Bitkey is designed to keep your wallet safe — and help you recover if something goes wrong.
When you first set up your Bitkey wallet, an encrypted copy of your App Key was created and saved to your cloud account. This backup was encrypted using your Hardware Key, so even if someone — like a hacker or a cloud provider — gained access to your cloud storage, the backup would be useless without your Bitkey hardware to decrypt it.
That’s why, if you lose or replace your phone, recovery is simple — you just reinstall the app, log into your cloud account, and use your hardware device to decrypt the App Key and restore your wallet.
But what happens if you lose both your phone and your hardware?
You still have the encrypted App Key in your cloud — but without your hardware to decrypt it, the backup becomes useless to you.
That’s where Recovery Contacts come in.
A Recovery Contact is someone you choose — someone you know and trust — who can help you unlock that encrypted backup without ever accessing your wallet or your keys.
With their help, you can decrypt your App Key, restore access to your wallet, and continue recovery — all without relying on a company, seed phrase, or exposing sensitive information.
✅ Recovery Contacts cannot access your wallet or your keys
They can only assist with recoveries that you initiate and approve

How Recovery Contacts work

Recovery Contacts help you encrypt and decrypt your App Key without ever seeing your private keys or learning anything about your wallet.
When you enroll a Recovery Contact, Bitkey uses them to establish a secure encryption process for your app Key:
  • You receive a tool to encrypt your App Key
  • Your Recovery Contact holds the tool needed to decrypt it later — but they never see your wallet or even the encrypted backup itself
This means that if you ever need to recover your wallet and don’t have your Bitkey hardware, you can ask your Recovery Contact to give you what’s needed to decrypt your App Key. They’re not recovering anything for you — they’re simply providing a missing piece that only you can use.
They never see your keys. They never see your wallet. And they never have access to your funds.

When can a Recovery Contact help?

Recovery Contacts are used in only one specific scenario:
When you’ve lost both your phone and your Bitkey hardware device at the same time, but still have access to your encrypted App Key in the cloud.
In that situation, you can’t decrypt the backup yourself because your hardware is missing. Your Recovery Contact can help you unlock the backup — and from there, you can begin the recovery process to get back into your wallet.

How the process works

When you set up a Recovery Contact:
  1. You invite someone you know and trust through the Bitkey app
  2. They accept the invitation and install the app (if they haven’t already)
  3. Once you reopen your Bitkey app, they become activated
    → A Recovery Contact must be enrolled and activated before they can assist with recovery
Behind the scenes:
  • You receive the tool to encrypt your App Key
  • Your Recovery Contact stores the tool needed to decrypt it later
    They never see your key, your backup, or your wallet

If you ever need to use a Recovery Contact

  1. You lose access to both your phone and your hardware device
  2. You install Bitkey on a new phone and start the process to restore your wallet
  3. When your cloud backup is located, you will be asked to use your hardware to decrypt the backup and restore the wallet. You will instead select I've lost my Bitkey device which will guide you through the process of restoring your wallet with a Recovery Contact.
  4. You reach out to your Recovery Contact (ideally over video or live chat)
  5. You share a recovery code
  6. They enter the code into their Bitkey app to verify it’s really you
  7. They provide the tool needed to decrypt your App Key — enabling you to restore your App Key from your cloud backup so you can do a hardware recovery to replace your Hardware Key 

Additional things to know

  • You can add up to three Recovery Contacts, but only one is needed to help during recovery
  • You can remove a Recovery Contact at any time
  • Bitkey will notify you if a Recovery Contact removes themselves
  • Your Recovery Contact can never access your wallet or your keys
    → They’re only there to assist at your request

 

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