Block Inc., Jack Dorsey's financial services and blockchain technology company, has launched the public beta of the Bitkey multi-signature hardware wallet.
The American financial services company, which changed its name from Square to Block in 2021, recently introduced Bitkey, a new Bitcoin wallet designed for facilitate intersection of current fiat monetary systems and the distributed financial system built on the blockchain.
On his Twitter account, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of the social platform and CEO of Block, reported that the beta version of Bitkey is now open to the public, so the first clients of the financial services and blockchain technology company can start interacting with the wallet and test its multiple functions.
Bitkey is a self-custody multi-signature Bitcoin wallet designed for the next 100 million users of the cryptocurrency.
Through this digital wallet, Dorsey's company wants Empowering people to “really own and manage their money with bitcoin”, without the friction and anxiety that has historically existed with traditional self-custody wallets.”
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Bitkey, a new Bitcoin wallet for ownership and self-custody
Block's goal with Bitkey is to ease Bitcoin users' journey to self-custody.
In a publicationBlock Inc.'s Lindsey Grossman said Bitkey can make things happen for Bitcoin users make it easier and safer to move your cryptocurrencies from their accounts or wallet addresses on centralized exchanges to the wallet, where they can own and manage their money on their own terms.
On the other hand, Block's new self-custody Bitcoin wallet can connect with the CashApp financial application, also developed by the company, to make it easier for users to transfer and purchase bitcoins. Block also announced a recent partnership with Coinbase, which has become one of the partners that will connect to Bitkey to provide users with an easy and secure customer experience when transferring their cryptocurrencies from the exchange platform to the hardware wallet.
The new bitcoin wallet is designed so that the company's customers can have more control and ownership over their financial lives by owning and managing your cryptocurrencies directly, without intermediaries.
Bitkey beta is launched
The Bitkey beta is reserved for select Block customers globally. The company said customers chosen to test the wallet in this first phase, before its public release, will receive a free hardware device, a mobile app, and a set of recovery tools to access the wallet in case they lose their phone or tablet. hardware walletWith this, the company seeks to test the new wallet to detect any errors, as well as generate feedback and ideas in the community for possible improvements and additional functionalities in future versions.
One of the features that Bitkey's Block highlights is transparency in operations, ensuring that the wallet will always display the real and total cost of the bitcoin transfer or purchase, based on both the country from which the transaction is made, the fiat/bitcoin exchange rate provided by a partner, and the processing fees of the fiat payment method chosen by the customer. All this so that customers can decide which partner is best suited for them before redirecting to the partner-hosted experience, Block Inc. said.
For now, Bitkey's expertise is focused on buying and transferring bitcoins for self-custody. In the future, Block will integrate new functionalities into the digital wallet to allow the sale of bitcoins.
Bitkey is scheduled to be launched to the public later this year.
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