BitBox

Shift Crypto sells two devices. The BitBox02 (2019) is a small USB-C stick with an OLED screen and touch sliders on the edges instead of buttons. The BitBox02 Nova (June 2025) keeps the shape and adds what the original could not do: work with iPhone and iPad. That needed new hardware, because iOS apps cannot talk to a USB accessory the way Android and desktop apps can.

Nova's Bluetooth runs through "Whisper", a separate chip with no memory and no access to wallet secrets. Traffic is encrypted end to end before it reaches the radio, and Bluetooth can be switched off entirely. The Multi edition covers Bitcoin, Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens, Cardano, Litecoin and about 1,500 other tokens, plus FIDO U2F two-factor login. The Bitcoin-only edition drops all of that code, and the two cannot be converted into each other later.

Our scored review covers the original model: BitBox02 review.

BitBox is a real Swiss company with a decade of shipping devices and no reported case of funds stolen through a flaw in its hardware or firmware. Its security model is a dual-chip design: a secure chip hardens the device against physical attack, while the main firmware is fully open source with reproducible builds, so the published code can be checked against what the device runs. New seeds mix five sources of randomness, including a per-device factory secret and input from the host, which is why BitBox said it was unaffected by the 2026 Coldcard entropy bug.

2026 has still been busy. The Dixence update of 17 August 2026 (firmware 9.26.5) fixed two severe bugs found in internal audits, partly with the help of AI models: a memory-corruption flaw that could allow code execution on an un-initialised Multi-edition device connected to a malicious host, and a silent-payments flaw that could have locked funds to an unintended address. The same post said a bootloader issue fixed in July (9.26.2) was more serious than first described, since a phished user could have been led to install malicious firmware on an older BitBox02. The Nova was not affected by that one. No exploitation of any of them has been reported.

On 10 September 2026 attackers used a flaw at Brevo, BitBox's newsletter provider, to send two phishing campaigns from BitBox's own account and to download its subscriber list. Because the emails came through the real sending infrastructure they passed authentication checks. Only email addresses were exposed; shop orders are held separately and anonymised after 30 days.

BitBox does not offer phone support and will never ask for your recovery words. Update firmware only from inside the BitBoxApp or bitbox.swiss.

Shift Crypto AG is privately held and based in Zurich; CEO Douglas Bakkum co-founded the line with Jonas Schnelli, a long-time Bitcoin Core contributor, in 2015. Their first device, the Digital BitBox, was among the earliest hardware wallets sold. The company designs and manufactures in Switzerland and sells direct, alongside the BitBoxApp, steel backups and tamper-evident bags.

The BitBoxApp now includes swaps through partners and, since the September 2026 Meggen release, Lightning payments using the same backup as the on-chain wallet.