BitBox02

The BitBox02 is a hardware wallet from Shift Crypto, a privately held company in Zurich that sells under the BitBox brand. It keeps the keys to your coins on a small USB-C device with an OLED screen and touch sensors along its edges, and you check and approve every payment on the device. It comes in two editions at the same price: a Multi edition for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Cardano and tokens, and a Bitcoin-only edition with less code.

The firmware that runs the wallet and the BitBoxApp that goes with it are open source, and anyone can rebuild the firmware to check it matches the official release. The device costs $139 once. It works with computers and Android phones, not with iPhones or iPads.

Who Holds the Keys

BitBox says the wallet secret is generated on the device from five sources of randomness, two of which come from outside the device: your computer and your device password. The secret is stored encrypted on the device’s main chip. Three secrets are needed to decrypt it: one on the main chip, one on a separate secure element and your device password. This is the BitBox02’s form of self-custody: BitBox has no copy of your keys, according to its own description, and no outside review has confirmed that description in a published report.

The secure chip, an ATECC608B, is closed: BitBox says chips of this kind come with non-disclosure agreements that keep their code private, so what the chip does cannot be checked from outside. BitBox’s design does not give the chip the wallet secret itself. The chip stores one of the three secrets and slows down each password check. It also counts every unlock: after about 730,000 unlocks over the device’s life the chip stops working, which caps how many passwords a thief could ever try. BitBox says that if the chip misbehaved, protection would fall back to your password and the main chip’s secret. After 10 wrong passwords in a row the device resets itself.

Backup and Recovery

During setup the BitBox02 writes a backup to the microSD card in the box. That file is not encrypted with your password, a choice BitBox calls deliberate: anyone who gets the card can take your coins. You can also show the 24 recovery words on the device screen at any time after entering your password and write them on paper. The words appear only on the device, never on your computer, and you restore a wallet by entering them on the device too.

The words follow the BIP39 standard, so they restore your coins in many other wallets if the BitBox02 breaks or BitBox stops supporting it. There is no other way back: if you lose both the microSD card and the words, your coins are gone, and BitBox cannot recover them.

An optional passphrase turns the same words into a different wallet. It is not stored on the microSD card, so forgetting it also means losing the coins in that wallet. The device can also derive separate sets of recovery words for other wallets from the one on the device (the BIP-85 standard); BitBox notes that this adds convenience, not security, because the main words can recreate all of them. For multisig, the BitBox02 works as one of the signers with a compatible wallet app, and BitBox says it checks that the other signers’ keys are the ones you registered.

What BitBox and Others Can See

Every Bitcoin and Ethereum transaction is public on its blockchain, whichever wallet you use; a wallet can only avoid adding more information about you.

By default the BitBoxApp asks BitBox’s own servers for your Bitcoin and Litecoin balances and history. Those servers see your addresses, your balance and your IP address, and can link your addresses to each other. BitBox says its servers either do not record IP addresses or anonymise them before logging. In the desktop app you can connect your own full node through a wallet server of your own and remove BitBox’s servers, so they no longer receive your Bitcoin addresses.

The desktop app can also send its traffic through Tor, which hides your IP address from the server, but only if you run Tor Browser or a Tor service yourself. Tor does not change which server answers the app. Ethereum and token accounts always load through services based on Etherscan, which receive your account address, and BitBox offers no way to use your own Ethereum node. Coin control lets you choose which coins a Bitcoin payment spends, so you do not join coins from different sources by accident.

The app has no analytics or third-party trackers, according to BitBox. Buying, selling, swapping and spending inside the app are services of other companies: Pocket Bitcoin, BTC Direct and MoonPay require identity checks (KYC) before you buy, while, according to BitBox, SwapKit swaps need none. BitBox says these companies receive no personal data until you open their service and agree to their terms.

The Lightning Wallet in the Phone App

Since September 2026 the BitBoxApp for phones has a Lightning wallet in public beta. Its keys are derived from your BitBox02 but stored on the phone, so it is a hot wallet: payments are approved on the phone, not on the device. It runs on the Spark network, where transfers depend on a group of operators following the rules, and restoring the wallet on a new phone requires Spark’s services. BitBox recommends keeping only small amounts there. The privacy settings for your own node and Tor do not cover it.

Buying the Device

The BitBox shop ships only to a name and postal address and asks for an email address, so a purchase links your name to owning a hardware wallet (purchase privacy). You can pay with bitcoin or Lightning instead of a card. BitBox says it anonymises order data after 30 days but keeps invoices for ten years, as Swiss law requires.

BitBox gives each device an attestation key at the factory, and the BitBoxApp checks it every time you connect to detect a fake device. The chips are covered in epoxy, the case halves are glued so that opening them breaks plastic pins, and the device ships in a vacuum-sealed bag with a patterned seal. BitBox itself says these checks cannot prove that a genuine device was never physically modified, which is why it tells you to always set up the wallet yourself and never use recovery words that came with a device. These measures target supply chain attacks, where a device is swapped or altered before it reaches you.

Open Source and Firmware Checks

The firmware for both editions and the BitBoxApp are published on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 open-source licence. The firmware builds are reproducible: BitBox publishes build instructions, and people who rebuilt each release sign a statement that their result matches. The device accepts only firmware signed by several BitBox engineers, will not install an older version and can show the firmware’s fingerprint each time it starts. On the server side, BitBox publishes the scripts it uses to run ElectrumX, open-source software for wallet servers, but not the code of its update and exchange-rate services.

BitBox says the BitBox02 firmware was audited by Census Labs, a security company, but it publishes no report, date or scope, and no other independent security audit of the BitBox02 has been published. BitBox runs a bug bounty programme and lists 17 researchers who have reported issues.

Security Incidents in 2026

BitBox disclosed several severe firmware flaws in mid-2026 (incident history), all of them fixed. Its update of 8 July 2026 fixed an error in how the BitBox02’s firmware and startup code handled one type of USB request, reported by a researcher at CertiK. On 17 August BitBox said the error could have let an attacker steal funds: after tricking a user into installing a fake BitBoxApp, the attacker could get malicious firmware onto a genuine BitBox02. The BitBox02 Nova was not affected.

The update of 17 August 2026, firmware 9.26.5, fixed two more severe flaws found by BitBox’s own engineers. One affected the Multi edition before a wallet was set up: a malicious computer could run its own code on the device and possibly install malicious firmware. The Bitcoin-only edition does not contain that code. The other let a malicious computer send a Silent Payments transaction to an unintended address, so the coins could be held for ransom. BitBox says no thefts have been reported for any of these flaws and existing recovery words are not affected. The July update also fixed a flaw that let a compromised partner service inside the app read your account’s public keys, which reveal your transaction history.

On 10 September 2026 attackers used a flaw at Brevo, the company that sends BitBox’s newsletter, to enter BitBox’s account. They sent two phishing emails to subscribers asking for their recovery words and downloaded the list of email addresses of newsletter, tutorial and affiliate subscribers. BitBox says it alerted Brevo within the hour, warned its subscribers and had the phishing sites taken down, and the second email was stopped after reaching about half of the list. BitBox says no names, postal addresses or orders were exposed, and its own systems, the app and the devices were not affected.

Ownership and Jurisdiction

Shift Crypto AG is registered in the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland, and sells the BitBox02 and the newer BitBox02 Nova. Its privacy policy follows Swiss data protection law and the GDPR and says personal data is stored in the EU. The company is privately held; its founders started the BitBox line in 2015.

Price

The BitBox02 costs $139 once in the BitBox shop, the same for both editions, with a microSD card, a USB-A adapter and an extension cable in the box. You pick the edition when you buy; it cannot be changed later, though your recovery words restore on either edition. The BitBoxApp is free. Purchases, sales and swaps inside the app are run by outside companies, which charge their own fees. The device has a two-year warranty.

Pros and Cons

Our Rating

The BitBox02 suits people who want their keys on a dedicated device with open, rebuildable firmware, especially those who hold only bitcoin and can run their own node. It does not suit iPhone users, and anyone who wants the app to hide their addresses from the company’s servers has to set up a node first.