Message Encryption as a built-in feature?

Bitcoin clients should have a built in simple message encryption/decryption system, perhaps based off of your actual Bitcoin addresses themselves.

This would make doing trades on sites like biddingpond much easier, since you don’t need to both agree on a separate app like PGP before communicating over email.

Most of the time I bet people don’t even bother to use encryption, but I think it’s a good idea to use it when doing trades in Bitcoins.

Thoughts?

A secure messaging system could have other benefits. The problem of spam is increased because it costs nothing to send email. A short message service that you needed to pay a few bitcoins for to send a message might revolutionise sms or email for those who are tired of sorting viagra and nigerian scam emails all day long.

😁

A secure messaging system could have other benefits. The problem of spam is increased because it costs nothing to send email. A short message service that you needed to pay a few bitcoins for to send a message might revolutionise sms or email for those who are tired of sorting viagra and nigerian scam emails all day long.

Great point…I’ve heard something called hashcash does this for email. But with bitcoin, one can additionally prioritize messages: .g. the message with 10 BTC attached to it is probably more important than the message with .01 BTC attached.

Quote from: Anonymous on September 15, 2010, 4:26:38 PM UTC

A secure messaging system could have other benefits. The problem of spam is increased because it costs nothing to send email. A short message service that you needed to pay a few bitcoins for to send a message might revolutionise sms or email for those who are tired of sorting viagra and nigerian scam emails all day long.

Great point…I’ve heard something called hashcash does this for email. But with bitcoin, one can additionally prioritize messages: .g. the message with 10 BTC attached to it is probably more important than the message with .01 BTC attached.

People think nothing of sending text messages or mms that costs .50c each. 😲

Something like this combined with the pay it forward project http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=922.msg12917#msg12917 would really increase the hardness of the network to attacks? Half your fee would go to the person you sent the message to and the other half would go to 3 randomn people -or split equally to increase anonymity 😁

As an extra security measure you could also send 3 dummy messages or however many you decided so the real message was hidden.The fee you sent would then be divided by however many security splits you decided on. This could mean you might get randomn bitcoin payments all day just for having a bitcoin message address. Think of twitter crossed with hashcash and email. To the outside world there would be no difference from a message to a payment you made.

19tq9NYFsSCMRUkc12v363tHgAeUokoVam just made a peanut butter sandwich!

😁

Something like this combined with the pay it forward project http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=922.msg12917#msg12917 would really increase the hardness of the network to attacks? Half your fee would go to the person you sent the message to and the other half would go to 3 randomn people -or split equally to increase anonymity 😁

As an extra security measure you could also send 3 dummy messages or however many you decided so the real message was hidden.The fee you sent would then be divided by however many security splits you decided on. This could mean you might get randomn bitcoin payments all day just for having a bitcoin message address. Think of twitter crossed with hashcash and email. To the outside world there would be no difference from a message to a payment you made.

Very clever!!! I like that idea… Plus, with bitcoin, you can customize your level of security: pay more bitcoins and you can send more false messages and have more security splits…

Quote from: em3rgentOrdr on September 15, 2010, 4:37:43 PM UTC

Quote from: Anonymous on September 16, 2010, 1:26:38 AM UTC

A secure messaging system could have other benefits. The problem of spam is increased because it costs nothing to send email. A short message service that you needed to pay a few bitcoins for to send a message might revolutionise sms or email for those who are tired of sorting viagra and nigerian scam emails all day long.

Great point…I’ve heard something called hashcash does this for email. But with bitcoin, one can additionally prioritize messages: .g. the message with 10 BTC attached to it is probably more important than the message with .01 BTC attached.

People think nothing of sending text messages or mms that costs .50c each.

Haha! Well, that’s partially true. Ususally they have a fixed amount of pre-paid text messages that they can send each month which if the don’t use are simply wasted. But they tend to forget that I still have to pay 25 cents whenever they send me a lousy spam text message!!! 😠

A smartphone bitcoin client with options for encrypted messaging would make for a great alternative text/sms system compared to the high fees charged by most wireless carriers for text messaging. Now, of course, I know of free text messaging apps, but they tend to contain ads. But with bitcoin, the small transaction fees for passing the message along would work as a great incentive instead…

Theymos already said this…  ECDSA does not support encrypting messages.  Only digital signatures.

Theymos already said this… ECDSA does not support encrypting messages. Only digital signatures.

I agree. Do ONE thing, and do it well.

But that doesn’t stop anyone from writing a trading suite, and using the Bitcoin protocol inside it.