Bitcoin in SSP
Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency, and for many people it is also the first one they hold in any serious size. If you are evaluating SSP as a place to keep Bitcoin, you want to know two things: how Bitcoin works as a chain, and how SSP handles it specifically. This article covers both. We will give a short primer on Bitcoin's core mechanics, walk through how SSP supports Bitcoin via 2-of-2 multisig, summarise what sending and receiving looks like in the app, flag the most common pitfalls Bitcoin users hit on any wallet, and end with an honest list of what SSP intentionally does not do for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin in one paragraph
Bitcoin is a public ledger maintained by a global network of nodes. The most important mental model for a new user is the UTXO model: you do not own a "balance" the way you own a bank balance. Instead, you own a set of unspent transaction outputs — UTXOs — that were sent to addresses you control. When you spend, your wallet picks one or more UTXOs, consumes them entirely, sends the amount the recipient asked for to their address, and returns the leftover to a change address you also control. The wallet hides this from you, but it is what is happening under the hood.
The chain itself is secured by Proof of Work. Miners spend energy to find blocks, and a new block lands roughly every ten minutes on average. The supply schedule is fixed: there will only ever be 21 million bitcoin in total, and the rate at which new coins enter circulation halves every four years or so. None of this changes how you use Bitcoin day to day, but it explains why confirmations take time and why fees can spike when the network is busy: blocks have a hard size limit, and only so many transactions fit in each one.
How SSP supports Bitcoin
SSP supports Bitcoin on mainnet using BIP48 2-of-2 multisig. That phrase contains the entire security model of the wallet, so it is worth unpacking.
BIP48 is a standard for deriving multisig wallet keys from a seed, in a way that is interoperable across wallets that follow the same spec. The "2-of-2" part means your wallet has two keys, and every spend requires signatures from both of them. In SSP, one key lives on your phone in the SSP Wallet app, and the other lives on your laptop or desktop in the SSP Key app. To send Bitcoin, both devices have to be involved. If one device is lost or compromised on its own, the attacker cannot move your funds.
The receiving side is much simpler. From the outside, your SSP Bitcoin wallet looks like any other Bitcoin wallet: it has an address, anyone can send to it, and the sender does not need to know or care that it is a multisig. The multisig only matters when you are spending. For more on why we chose this model, see What is 2-of-2 multisig?.
Sending and receiving in SSP
Receiving Bitcoin in SSP is straightforward. Open the SSP Wallet app, choose Bitcoin, and tap Receive. The app will show you a Bitcoin address along with a QR code. Share whichever the sender finds easiest: paste the address into a chat, scan the QR with their wallet, or share a payment link. As soon as the sender broadcasts the transaction, you will see it as pending in SSP. Once it is mined into a block and gets a few confirmations, it counts as settled. There is nothing else to do on your end.
Sending is where the 2-of-2 model becomes visible. In short: open SSP Wallet, choose Send, paste the recipient address, enter the amount, pick a fee, and confirm on the phone. SSP Wallet then signs with the phone key and hands the partially signed transaction to SSP Key on your desktop, where you confirm and add the second signature. Once both signatures are present, SSP broadcasts the transaction to the Bitcoin network.
For a screen-by-screen walkthrough including how to handle the SSP Key co-signing step on desktop, see Sending Bitcoin with SSP. That guide covers the exact taps and prompts; this article focuses on the why behind them.
Common pitfalls
A few classes of mistakes show up over and over on Bitcoin, regardless of which wallet you use. They are worth knowing before you send anything meaningful.
The first is address poisoning. Attackers send tiny dust transactions from an address that looks almost identical to one you have previously sent to — often matching the first and last few characters. The goal is to get that lookalike address into your transaction history, so that the next time you copy "the same address as last time" you grab the attacker's instead. The defence is simple but unskippable: always verify at least the first six and last six characters of any address before signing, ideally by comparing against a copy from the recipient's own channel.
The second is fee mis-estimation. The Bitcoin mempool — the pool of unconfirmed transactions — can get busy, and if you pick a fee that is too low, your transaction can sit unconfirmed for hours or even days. SSP will suggest a fee based on current network conditions; if you override it, override it upward when you are in a hurry, not downward.
The third is sending to a wrong-format address. Bitcoin has multiple address types — Legacy, SegWit, Taproot — and a sending wallet that auto-converts between formats can produce results you did not intend. Always send to the exact string the recipient gave you, and do not let any tool "fix" it for you.
What SSP doesn't do
It is worth being clear about the edges of the product. SSP does not expose a custom Replace-By-Fee flow to the user: the fee you pick at send time is the fee that goes out, and you cannot bump it from inside SSP after the fact. SSP also does not support multisig configurations other than 2-of-2 BIP48 — there is no 2-of-3, no 3-of-5, no custom co-signer. And SSP does not sign arbitrary messages, only standard wallet transactions; if you need message signing for a third-party service, SSP is not the tool. These are deliberate product choices in service of a smaller, more auditable surface, not gaps we plan to plug.
Next steps
If you are ready to move Bitcoin through SSP, the step-by-step walkthrough is in Sending Bitcoin with SSP. To dig deeper into the security model that makes the send flow what it is, read What is 2-of-2 multisig?. And if you have not set up a wallet yet, start with Setting up your first SSP wallet. Together, those three articles cover the full path from a fresh install to a confirmed Bitcoin send.