An Emergency Access Kit is a recovery method that gives you a way to retain control of your funds should the Bitkey app become unavailable in the public app stores. During Bitkey set up, an encrypted copy of your Mobile Key as well as an Emergency Access Kit, a separate PDF recovery document, were uploaded and saved to your cloud. While we hope you will never need to use this recovery document, if the Bitkey app were to become unavailable in the public app stores, this Emergency Access Kit creates a path that allows you to retain control of your funds. Using this kit, and the instructions contained within it, you will be able to find a publicly downloadable version of the Bitkey app, outside of the public app store, that must be installed (sideloaded) onto an Android mobile phone. This Emergency Access version of the Bitkey app can then be used with your Bitkey hardware device to move your funds out of your Bitkey, without having to depend on the Bitkey team, or public app store providers such as Google and Apple.
The Emergency Access Kit provides instructions on how to download and install the full Bitkey app if you’re ever in a situation where you need it, but the app isn’t available in the app store native to your mobile OS or from a source that you may not fully trust. The steps will guide you through how to:
- Download a previous version of the Bitkey app as an APK file, hosted initially on a Github Page
- Verify the APK matches the original app published, so you can be sure its safe
- Install the app the Bitkey app from this APK file and locate it on your device
- Restore your Mobile Key on to the new Bitkey App
- Move funds out of Bitkey