Recover your bitcoin without SignBit
If SignBit is unreachable, or gone for good, your bitcoin is still yours and still spendable. Your vault is standard Bitcoin multisig, so you need no SignBit account, no SignBit software and no permission from us. This guide is worth reading before you need it.
1. What you need
Your vault is standard Bitcoin multisig, so any wallet that supports it can rebuild it. You need two things.
- Enough of your own keys to meet the vault's threshold. On a 2-of-3 vault that is any two of the three, for example yours and your recovery key.
- A description of the vault. Either the backup file from your vault page (Download backup), or SignBit's public key in the form the wallet asks for (Show Zpub on the SignBit key card). Save both with your seed backup now, while you can reach us.
2. Choose a wallet
Sparrow and Electrum both work, and we have tested both step by step. Use whichever you know, or whichever suits what you saved.
- Sparrow reads the backup file directly, so the vault's keys, threshold and address type are filled in for you. See Recover a vault in Sparrow.
- Electrum builds the vault from your seed words plus SignBit's Zpub, entered by hand. See Recover a vault in Electrum.
3. Check the balance matches
Whichever wallet you use, it finds the vault's coins on the blockchain by itself. The balance should match what SignBit shows, to the satoshi, and the first receive address should match the one on your vault page. If either differs, stop and do not send anything to that wallet, because something was entered differently from the vault.
4. Spend with your own keys
Build a transaction to wherever you want the funds, sign it with enough of your keys to meet the threshold, and broadcast it. SignBit's signature is not needed. The Bitcoin network does not know or care that SignBit exists, and if SignBit is still running, the payment also appears in your vault's history there, because it is the same vault.