KeepKey Hardware Wallet now supports Bitcoin segwit. Try it out in the new ShapeShift Platform — secured by hardware.

SegWit Enabled for KeepKey

Now available for Bitcoin on the ShapeShift Platform.

Published in

ShapeShift

4 min readAug 6, 2019

SegWit support is now available for KeepKey in the ShapeShift Platform! We’ve been building a new, intuitive client to give KeepKey users an unparalleled experience, and it’s now complete with SegWit.

Last year, we started building a comprehensive web-based platform for KeepKey. While this vastly improves the hardware wallet experience and is available to KeepKey owners for free, it meant SegWit for KeepKey had to be deprioritized for a while. We think that after trying KeepKey’s new platform, you’ll understand why we poured our time and talent into this vision.

And now, SegWit is complete!

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What are the benefits of SegWit?

SegWit, short for Segregated Witness, is a protocol upgrade on Bitcoin that changes the way data is stored. P2SH SegWit is now live on the platform and we’ll continue to work on support for full SegWit Native.

SegWit provides:

Significantly lower transaction fees
Decreased risk in sending transactions
More efficient use of Bitcoin’s blockchain space

SegWit on ShapeShift

SwegWit is supported for both KeepKey and Trezor in the platform. If you used the ShapeShift Platform before SegWit was released, or if you currently use the KeepKey Chrome App, learn how to get started below.

Grab your KeepKey and login to the ShapeShift Platform.
Your KeepKey firmware needs to be v.6.2.0 or higher. If your firmware is below v.6.2.0, you can update it by clicking below.

Experience the new ShapeShift

Download the KeepKey app to securely communicate with the ShapeShift Platform.

To enable BTC SegWit, go to the “Settings” page in the Platform, click the “Forget” button, and re-pair your KeepKey to generate your new BTC SegWit address. You only need to do this once. Once completed, you can access your BTC SegWit receive address with or without your KeepKey connected. Find more information here.

To enable BTC SegWit, go to the “Settings” page in the Platform, click the “Forget” button, and re-pair your KeepKey.

Your BTC receive address will be a SegWit address only.

BTC Legacy addresses start with a 1.
BTC SegWit addresses start with a 3.

Moving forward, your BTC address in the Platform will start with a 3 instead of a 1. You can still access your BTC Legacy account and address in the KeepKey Chrome App.

Your BTC account balance will reflect the total amount on your BTC Legacy address and your BTC SegWit address.
When you spend Bitcoin in the ShapeShift Platform, funds will be spent from the smallest number of UXTOs, regardless of if the funds are on your BTC Legacy address or BTC SegWit address. This helps reduce transaction costs.
By default, “change” from transactions will deposit to your BTC SegWit address.
We recommend moving all your BTC funds to your BTC SegWit address to get the full benefits of SegWit. Do this by sending all your funds to your new BTC SegWit address in the ShapeShift Platform.

IMPORTANT: If you have a balance on your BTC Legacy and BTC SegWit addresses, the KeepKey Chrome App will only reflect the balance on your BTC Legacy address. This is because the KeepKey Chrome App doesn’t support SegWit enabled accounts. This is also will happen if you pair your KeepKey with a non-ShapeShift wallet that doesn’t support SegWit.

We hope you enjoy SegWit! We look forward to building additional features as the platform matures over the coming months.

If you have any questions, please reach out to our Support Team.