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What are Trusted 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 Mobile 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 Mobile Key and restore your wallet.
But what happens if you lose both your phone and your hardware?
You still have the encrypted Mobile Key in your cloud — but without your hardware to decrypt it, the backup becomes useless to you.
That’s where Trusted Contacts come in.
A Trusted 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 Mobile Key, restore access to your wallet, and continue recovery — all without relying on a company, seed phrase, or exposing sensitive information.
✅ Trusted Contacts cannot access your wallet or your keys
They can only assist with recoveries that you initiate and approve

How Trusted Contacts work

Trusted Contacts help you encrypt and decrypt your Mobile Key without ever seeing your private keys or learning anything about your wallet.
When you enroll a Trusted Contact, Bitkey uses them to establish a secure encryption process for your Mobile Key:
  • You receive a tool to encrypt your Mobile Key
  • Your Trusted 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 Trusted Contact to give you what’s needed to decrypt your Mobile 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 Trusted Contact help?

Trusted 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 Mobile Key in the cloud.
In that situation, you can’t decrypt the backup yourself because your hardware is missing. Your Trusted 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 Trusted 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 Trusted Contact must be enrolled and activated before they can assist with recovery
Behind the scenes:
  • You receive the tool to encrypt your Mobile Key
  • Your Trusted 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 Trusted 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 Trusted Contact.
  4. You reach out to your Trusted 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 Mobile Key — enabling you to restore your Mobile 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 Trusted Contacts, but only one is needed to help during recovery
  • You can remove a Trusted Contact at any time
  • Bitkey will notify you if a Trusted Contact removes themselves
  • Your Trusted Contact can never access your wallet or your keys
    → They’re only there to assist at your request

 

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