The answer is one sentence: non-custodial wallets work on Bitok Arena, custodial wallets do not. Everything after that sentence is the explanation of why — and a practical guide to knowing which category your current wallet falls into before you send anything.
On Bitok Arena, "works" means one specific thing: your address appears on the leaderboard, you can reinforce your position during the round, and any winnings land where only you have access. A custodial wallet fails all three. Not partially — structurally.
Why Custodial Wallets Don't Work
A custodial wallet is any service that holds your private keys on your behalf. Exchange accounts are the most obvious example — Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Bybit, and all others. But the category is wider than exchanges. Some apps marketed as "wallets" operate on a custodial model where you log in with email and password but never receive a seed phrase. Some browser extensions hold keys on company servers. Some early crypto apps offered "wallet" features that were actually custodial account services.
The common thread: if you did not receive a seed phrase when you set up the wallet — and physically write it down yourself — the service is almost certainly custodial. Your "balance" is an entry in their database. When you send BTC, it goes out from an address they control, not from an address you do.
On Bitok Arena, a custodial send means the leaderboard records the custodian's address — not yours. You cannot add to that position independently, because you do not control the address. If that position wins, the prize goes to the custodian's infrastructure, where what happens next is entirely outside the competition's scope. The round settles correctly. The problem is where it settles.
Why Non-Custodial Wallets Work — and How to Confirm Yours Qualifies
A non-custodial wallet generates a private key on your device and gives you the seed phrase that represents it. The service that created the wallet retains no copy. The address it generates is yours — it exists on the Bitcoin blockchain, controlled exclusively by that key, and no company can move the BTC at that address without your seed phrase.
Trust Wallet and Exodus are non-custodial mobile wallets — both display the seed phrase during setup and explicitly confirm they do not store it. Electrum on desktop is non-custodial. BlueWallet is non-custodial. Ledger and Trezor hardware wallets are non-custodial by design — the key never leaves the device. Any wallet in these categories gives you an address that belongs to you and works correctly with Bitok Arena.
When you send from a non-custodial address, the transaction goes out from your address. Your address appears on the leaderboard. You can add more BTC from the same address at any point during the round. If your position wins, the prize arrives at that address — the same one you hold the key for, confirmed on-chain, accessible immediately without anyone else's involvement.
The custodial versus non-custodial distinction is not technical complexity dressed up as a choice. It is a one-question test: do you have the seed phrase, stored physically, that you wrote down yourself? Everything that follows from that answer — what the leaderboard records, who receives any prize — is a consequence of that single fact.
If your current wallet is custodial and you want to compete on Bitok Arena, the path is straightforward: install a non-custodial wallet, write down the seed phrase it generates, then move BTC from your custodial account to your new address via a standard withdrawal. From there, participation works exactly as the competition is designed.
Custodial or non-custodial — the wallet you hold determines what the leaderboard records and where any prize goes. One question, asked before the first transaction, resolves every uncertainty that follows.