Bitcoin Privacy Gets a Makeover: Cosigners Will Be Baffled 😂

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Now, hark! A new BIP has emerged from the digital wilds, purporting to plug a privacy leak in multisig collaborations. It’s called “Chain Code Delegation for Private Collaborative Custody,” and if you yawned, don’t worry-so do I. But here’s the kicker: it’s supposed to stop those oleaginous custodians from peering into your wallet like it’s a candy jar at a kid’s birthday party. Bitkey, the self-proclaimed “pioneer of this grand experiment,” says they’ll roll it out first if the world deigns to approve. Fancy.

The gist? Share your xpub with a cosigner, but withhold the chain code so they can’t derive your addresses like it’s a treasure map. Cosigners can still help with recovery, sure, but now they’re blindfolded while doing it. Bitkey calls it “removing the tradeoff” of privacy for collaboration. Pfft. Sounds like trading a magnifying glass for a spoon. Still, they claim users will be able to “assist without learning anything about unrelated transactions.” A bold promise, or a desperate one? You decide.

How This BIP Would Make Cosigners Feel Like Clueless Tourists

The problem’s as old as the hills: give a third party an xpub and chain code, and they can track your every move on the blockchain. It’s like handing a stranger your diary and expecting them to forget they read it. Bitkey’s solution? Withhold the chain code entirely and reveal just enough to sign a transaction. They call it “collaborative custody,” but I call it “letting the babysitter pretend they don’t know how many cookies you hid in the couch.”

The BIP’s abstract is as dry as a desert, but here’s the juicier version: the delegatee (that’s the privileged party) hides the chain code, and the delegator (you) computes the child key. Then, in a twist worthy of a Dickens novel, they use Schnorr blind signing to keep the cosigner clueless. It’s like a magician’s trick-everyone knows it’s happening, but no one can explain how. The cosigner signs the transaction without knowing what it is. Poetic, ain’t it?

Functionally, this narrows the cosigner’s view from a panoramic vista to a pinhole. Instead of seeing all your transactions, they get a snippet of data when you spend. Bitkey calls it a “private collaborative wallet”-a phrase that makes me chuckle. After all, privacy and collaboration are like oil and water, unless you’re a wizard with a cryptographic wand.

The design’s been “incubating in the open,” which is code for “discussed by engineers who like coffee and naps.” A summer thread on Delving Bitcoin highlighted two perks: limiting the “security blast radius” (read: fewer chances for hackers to exploit) and keeping secrets until the last possible moment. It’s like hiding your gold in a vault and only opening it when you need to pay the butcher. Practical, if you’re a paranoid billionaire.

Bitkey’s positioning itself as the first to implement this, which is either bravado or a well-calculated gamble. They argue it’ll be an “open, community-vetted standard,” but let’s be honest-history shows standards are often just marketing fluff. Still, if they deliver, they’ll be the first to offer a wallet where cosigners are as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Jack Dorsey, bless his cotton socks, amplified the announcement on X. Because nothing says “trust” like a guy in a hat and a grin.

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $111,398. A tidy sum, to be sure, but remember: even with this BIP, your privacy is still a work in progress. Or, as Twain might say, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in Chicago.”

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2025-10-24 19:44