Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin Startup KeepKey Ends Support For Multibit Wallet Software

The long-running bitcoin wallet Multibit is being discontinued, the firm that bought it last year has announced.

Dating back to 2011, Multibit was a popular choice among community members, hitting a one-million-downloads milestone in early 2014. And as CoinDesk reported in May of last year, hardware wallet provider KeepKey moved to acquire Multibit for an undisclosed amount that was denominated in bitcoin. The original developers behind Multibit departed the project following the sale.

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-startup-keepkey-ends-support-multibit-wallet-software/

Well with so many issues and complaints from user, I guess its time for Multibit to go. The dev has remained so quiet for some time and even the thread here is dead. Although it has reached it peak but once the dev stop making new enhancements there's no way that the product is sustainable. Good thing that they declare it before the feared hard fork, so that no one will used their wallet to keep our precious bitcoins.

Seems like a slightly poor business decision on the part of KeepKey.  Buy out the software, realise you've bitten off more than you can chew when it turns out you're not equipped to deal with maintaining it, let alone upgrading it for SegWit compatibility, then give up and abandon it.  That couldn't have been profitable for them at all.  Then again, I suppose that's easy to say with hindsight, so I shouldn't be too harsh on them.  Lesson learned for future, I guess.



That only works out if everyone has heard the news, though.  I'm thinking a majority of MultiBit users probably haven't switched to another wallet client yet.  Still, assuming they're lucky and don't run into any of the serious bugs that can result in loss of funds, using MultiBit after the fork doesn't guarantee that you're going to lose any coins, it's just considerably riskier.  It also depends on outside factors like the transaction fees, since MultiBit has issues with not allowing users to change the default fee settings.  At peak times, when fees are high, MultiBit users may face long delays in sending transactions, or may even drop off the mempool altogether, causing their transactions to fail.

If anyone is still using MultiBit, the blog from KeepKey provided these links to show you how to export your private keys and import them into Electrum, but please ensure your PC is free from viruses or any kind of spyware or keyloggers before attempting it.  It's also best to disconnect from the internet before exporting them.  Make backups of your keys and store them securely offline (preferably password protected), just in case you need to recover your bitcoins later.  And don't leave the keys on your PC (or any other device connected to the internet) in plain text format because that is potentially a serious security risk: