In the unlikely event that Casa goes offline without warning (we don't ever plan on doing this!), and the Casa app is not available for signing transactions, you can still recover your bitcoin Pay funds.
We call this "Sovereign Recovery" of your bitcoin Pay key, and it's meant to be used in an emergency scenario in which Casa disappears or is otherwise not responsive. Please also see Sovereign Recovery for ETH Pay if you need to recover access to your ETH.
You have the ability to recover bitcoin Pay funds outside of Casa by exporting bitcoin Pay's seed phrase from the app.
See our blog post on this here.
(Bitcoin Pay was previously called the "Single Key," which was previously called the "Mobile Key" or "Standalone Mobile Key" in our documentation).
NOTE: Do not export the bitcoin Pay seed phrase unless absolutely necessary! This feature is intended to be used only in the unlikely event that Casa "goes dark."
Essentially, exporting the seed phrase allows you to create a transaction outside of Casa in an emergency scenario.
How it works
PLEASE NOTE: The following instructions are to restore the Pay key only. The process to recover the mobile key that is part of your multisig vault is different! Please see the complete Sovereign Recovery overview for instructions on recovering funds from your 3-key or 5-key vault.
In your Casa app, tap the "Bitcoin Pay" card, then:
- Tap the card
- Tap "View Public Keys"
- Tap "BTC Account"
- Write down the Derivation Path, which should look like: m/49/0/0
- Go back 2 screens to the bitcoin Pay view
- Tap "Import or Export Backup"
- Tap "Export Private Key"
- Write down the seed phrase
Using your seed phrase to recover funds in Electrum
Electrum is one of several apps that you can use to restore your bitcoin Pay funds. The instructions below details how to restore funds in Electrum.
Install the latest version of Electrum: https://electrum.org/#download then:
- Run electrum
- Create a new wallet and give it a name
- Choose "standard wallet"
- Click next
- Select "I already have a seed"
- Click next
- Type the seed phrase into the box
- Click "Options"
- Check "BIP39 seed"
- Click "OK"
- Click "Next"
- Select "p2sh-segwit (p2wpkh-p2sh)"
- Type the derivation path you wrote down earlier
- Click "Next"
- On the password screen, leave both fields blank and click "Next"
Electrum will now initialize your wallet and display all of the transactions that have been received and sent by it. If you don't see your transactions show up after a minute or so, something went wrong during the process and Electrum derived the wrong set of addresses.
To send your assets to a new wallet, click on the "send" tab and fill in the "pay to" field with an address owned by your new wallet. Click the "max" button to sweep all of the value out of the wallet, and slide the "fee" bar to an appropriate fee depending upon your urgency.