Till18 vs Bitkey
Bitkey is for holding your own bitcoin safely for the rest of your life. Till18 is for giving a child money they receive at eighteen. They overlap on self-custody and almost nowhere else — if you want the first thing, buy the Bitkey.
| Bitkey | Till18 | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A hardware device plus app for bitcoin self-custody | A sealed capsule for a child, opening on a fixed date |
| Who holds the keys | You, with multisig | Your family, with a guardian quorum |
| Can you spend it today | Yes — it is your wallet | No. Not you, not us, not anyone |
| Named beneficiary | Inheritance contacts, invoked after death | The child, named at creation, on their 18th birthday |
| Relatives can contribute | Only by sending bitcoin themselves | By card or bank transfer, no account, from any served country |
| Notes and letters | — | Every gift can carry one, sealed until 18 |
| Crypto knowledge needed | Comfortable with bitcoin | None |
| Cost | One-time device purchase | €0/month, 0.75% per deposit |
Bitkey column summarised from bitkey.world, read 26 July 2026: the product describes “built-in multisig”, “integrated inheritance” and is “Bitcoin—only”. Reviewed quarterly; if you find something out of date here, tell us and we will fix it.
What Bitkey does better.
Liquidity, which we deliberately removed
Your bitcoin stays spendable. For most people holding most of their savings, that is correct, and a product that removes it would be wrong.
Native bitcoin, on the bitcoin network
Bitkey holds actual BTC in your own custody. A Till18 Bitcoin capsule holds Circle’s bitcoin on Circle Arc — a trade we made for the timelock and the gifting flow, and one we explain in full.
Hardware you can hold
A physical device with a real security model behind it. Our physical artefact is a printed sheet of paper, which is excellent for recovery and useless as a signing device.
What Till18 does that Bitkey cannot.
It has somebody to give it to
A capsule names the child at creation and opens on their birthday. Bitkey’s inheritance path is invoked after death — a different event, on a different timeline, with a different purpose.
Grandparents can take part
Eleven people can fill a capsule from three countries without any of them owning bitcoin or installing anything. That is the whole growth mechanism of a family gift, and self-custody tools have no answer for it.
Nobody can raid it early — including you
Self-custody protects money from other people. It does not protect it from the owner on a bad month. The capsule does, and that is the promise being made to the child.
So which should your family choose?
Choose Bitkey if…
the money is yours, you want it spendable, you are comfortable running bitcoin yourself, and inheritance-after-death is the outcome you are planning for.
Choose Till18 if…
the money is meant for a specific child on a specific date, relatives who will never touch crypto need to be able to give, and you want the plan to survive both bad markets and your own future self.
Both is reasonable
They solve different problems. Plenty of families should own a hardware wallet for their own savings and a capsule for their child’s eighteenth.
Their 18th birthday is already on the calendar.
Setting one up takes ten minutes. We open capsules in small groups so every founding family gets a real conversation.
For parents and guardians (18+). One email to confirm, one when your capsule is ready — nothing else.
iPhone and Android apps arrive with the first capsules. Everything works in a browser on day one.