I am very new to Bitcoin. My friend and I are doing a business that will accept Bitcoin as payment. I would like to know how easy it is to use Copay as a wallet that we can both share, and that will require both our authorizations to distribute Bitcoins into separate Bitcoin wallets for us? If someone could please answer this for me, I would be very appreciative.

Thank you!



copay.io says:


See also Multi Sig Use Cases

Multi-Sig Use Cases

m = signatures required to spend, n = signatures possible

m=1 and n>1
Shared Wallet

Could be used for small group funds that do not require much security. Least secure multi-sig option because it is not multi-factor. Any compromised individual would compromise the entire group. Group funds for a weekend or evening event might be a good use case. A shared wallet might also be fun for some kind of games too. Besides being convenient to spend from the only benefit of this setup is that all but one of the backup/password pairs could be lost and all of the funds would be recoverable.

Partner Wallet

Scary because no keys can be lost. As the number of signatures required increases the risk also increases. Could be thought of as hard multi-factor authentication.


Note that terms like "partner wallet" or "buddy wallet" are not generally used and understood. People are more likely to call this something like a "2 of 2 multisignature wallet" or a "1 of 2 multisignature wallet" respectively. Though the above terms are more general and usefully apply to many other values of m & n.

There have been desperate questions here from people who set up a 2-of-2 multisignature wallet and found their friend lost their wallet-password without making any backups. This meant all their Bitcoin became lost forever. So I'd suggest

Go for a 2-of-3 arrangement with a passive partner (someone you both trust not to use their signature except in pre-agreed emergency circumstances. e.g. create a third key with your friend, and lodge the key, written on paper in a sealed envelope, with a lawyer)

If you must go for 2-of-2, walk through the backup and recovery process with your friend and make sure both of you are aware of the risks of not making a backup, or of not having tested recovery. You could easily lose all your money through a bit of carelessness on your friend's part.

I can't really answer "how easy" since I don't use it and that is rather subjective anyway.

Copay appears to be a popular wallet. It ought to be well-tested by it's users. It's probably worth trying out. If you find it doesn't meet your ease-of-use needs, you can always move your funds to a different wallet or import the private keys into a different wallet (saving tx fees).

  • In a more official arrangement (in the context of a company) having a lawyer hold the 3rd key, with a contract that only makes the key accessible to either party if both parties agree, or either party becomes incapacitated (sickness, death etc). You can keep it in such a way that the lawyer never open/sees the key as well. An extreme would be to place the key into a safe deposit box, and give the lawyer the key. – cleanmarker Jan 4 at 18:08

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