Bitcoin treasury

This page is about how your business holds and manages the bitcoin it takes. Taking a payment in the first place is covered on Bitcoin payments; this is what happens to the bitcoin afterwards.

There is no single Musqet wallet that holds your bitcoin for you. You choose how to hold it, and several of the options are self-custody, meaning you hold the keys. That is the point of bitcoin, and it has a serious consequence: if you lose your recovery phrase, nobody, including Musqet, can recover the funds. Back it up carefully.

Your options are:

a Spark wallet on your phone, in the merchant app,
a wallet you already have, connected over Nostr Wallet Connect, or
an exchange account, which can sell your bitcoin for pounds.

Which of these you have depends on how your business was set up. You can see your balance wherever your bitcoin is held. For a connected wallet or exchange it shows on the web dashboard. A Spark wallet is held on your phone, so only the merchant app can show its balance; the web dashboard points you to the app instead of a figure.

A Spark wallet in the app

The simplest option is a Spark wallet on your phone, set up in the Wallet tab of the merchant app. It is self-custody: the keys live on your device, protected by your phone’s biometrics, and Musqet never has them.

Unlocking the app

The merchant app is locked whenever you open it, and again when you come back to it after 30 seconds or more away. Unlock it with your face, fingerprint or phone passcode. The same unlock opens your business wallet, so you are not asked a second time to see your balance. While you are away, the app’s screen is hidden in your phone’s app switcher. The lock is always on and cannot be turned off; a phone with no screen lock at all is not locked.

Seeing your balance

The Wallet tab shows your balance both ways at once: the amount in sats and its value in your local currency at the current bitcoin rate. Tap the figure to switch which one shows on top, or to hide the balance so it cannot be read over your shoulder. The home screen’s wallet card shows the same two figures, and the choice applies to every balance in the app together.

Keeping your sales private

Your Spark wallet keeps your bitcoin activity private. Your wallet address and the payments you receive do not appear on public block explorers, so your sales are not on show to anyone searching the blockchain. This is on by default; there is nothing to switch on, and it does not change how or when a payment reaches you.

Setting it up

When you create the wallet the app shows you a twelve-word recovery phrase and asks you to confirm it. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe and private, offline. This phrase is the only way back to your bitcoin if you lose the phone. If you already have a Spark wallet, you can connect it instead of creating a new one.

Your phone must have a screen lock before the wallet can be saved, because that is what protects the wallet’s keys. A PIN, pattern, password, fingerprint or face unlock all count on iPhone and on Android 11 or later. On Android 10 or earlier a fingerprint or face unlock is needed. If the phone has no lock, the app asks you to set one and check again before it shows the recovery phrase.

Once you have confirmed the phrase, the wallet is set up and unlocked straight away, ready to take payments, and it connects to your business automatically. There is normally no separate step to unlock it or connect it first; if it cannot connect at that moment, the wallet card shows a Connect button so you can do it yourself.

Backing it up and recovering it

Your business wallet is backed up automatically to your phone’s secure storage as soon as it is set up and connected, the same automatic protection your personal wallet has. Only your phone can unlock that backup, so Musqet cannot read it. The wallet card shows a Backed up automatically badge once this has happened, and while it is in place the app stops nudging you to write the phrase down.

Because your business bitcoin is self-custody, you should still keep your own copy: you can reveal your recovery phrase at any time (behind your phone’s biometrics) and write it down. If the automatic backup is not available on your device, the app keeps prompting you to back up by hand as your balance grows.

If you lose the device, you recover the wallet on a new phone. Because it was backed up to your phone’s secure storage, the app restores it automatically the first time you open your business wallet on a new phone signed in to the same Apple or Google account, with no phrase to type. It also claims any payments that arrived while you were between devices, so nothing waiting for you is missed. If that automatic backup is not available, for example on a different phone account or a device without it, you recover by importing your twelve words into the app instead.

Replacing your wallet

If a wallet is already set up and you import a different recovery phrase, the app replaces the wallet on your phone. It asks you to type REPLACE to confirm first, because the wallet you are replacing cannot be recovered through Musqet afterwards.

Replacing the wallet on your phone does not move your business over to it automatically. Your business keeps receiving payments to its current wallet until you re-connect the new one. The app warns you about this before you replace, and afterwards the wallet card shows a Change to this device wallet button. Choosing it points your business at the new wallet and needs your password and authenticator code. If two-factor authentication is not on yet, or your account uses passkeys with no authenticator app, the app says so and links you to where you can set one up (see Confirming it is you). Until the business is pointed at the new wallet, payments still arrive at the previous one.

Sending bitcoin

From the business wallet you can send bitcoin to a Spark address, a bitcoin address or a Lightning invoice or address. Sending to Spark is instant and free; sending on-chain shows the network fee before you confirm. Every send asks for your phone’s biometrics again.

Lightning nodes

Musqet no longer hosts Lightning nodes for businesses, and the web dashboard no longer has pages to manage, back up, withdraw from or migrate from one. A business that used a node now receives bitcoin with a Spark wallet, a connected wallet or an exchange account. To move to Spark, set up a Spark wallet in the Wallet tab of the merchant app. If your business had a node and you have a question about it, contact support.

Connecting a wallet you already have

If you already run a bitcoin wallet, you can connect it over Nostr Wallet Connect instead of holding funds with Musqet. You paste a connection link, and payments are received into your own wallet. The funds stay entirely in your wallet; Musqet only holds the connection.

An exchange account, and selling for pounds

You can connect an exchange account so your bitcoin can be sold for pounds. You link it with the exchange’s API keys (keep these private; you never need to share them with Musqet support).

Balance. The exchange page shows what is sitting on the exchange, in both bitcoin and pounds.
Selling. You can swap bitcoin for pounds at a quoted rate: enter an amount, see the live quote, and confirm. If your account is set up to, bitcoin you take can also be converted to pounds automatically as it arrives.

Getting money out

Money leaving Musqet from here goes to a bitcoin destination, an on-chain address or a Lightning destination, not to a bank account. (Your card takings reach your bank through settlement instead.)

From an exchange, withdraw bitcoin to a bitcoin address you set on the exchange.
From your Spark wallet, use Send in the app. The web dashboard shows no Withdraw page for a Spark business, because only the app holds the keys.

When you withdraw from an exchange to an on-chain bitcoin address, Musqet checks it against a blocked list and refuses a match. Changing the Spark address your business receives to needs two-factor authentication, as an extra check on where your money goes.

Keeping your bitcoin safe

Because much of this is self-custody, a few things are worth repeating:

Your recovery phrase is the only way back to your bitcoin. Musqet cannot reset or recover it.
Write it down offline and keep it private. Do not photograph or store it where someone else could find it.
Turn on two-factor authentication on your account, which is also required to change where your business receives bitcoin.

Troubleshooting

What you see	What it means	What to do
You lost your recovery phrase	Self-custody funds cannot be recovered without it	Nobody can recover them; keep any working device signed in and contact support
You want your bitcoin as pounds	Selling happens through an exchange account	Connect an exchange, then swap bitcoin for pounds