bind bitcoin address to email?

[vinboy]

hi
I wonder if you can, or any service that enables you to bind a btc address to email.

So if I want to send abc@abc.com 0.5BTC, and knowingly that he has already assigned a btc address to his email, I can just do the transfer to abc@abc.com instead of asking and waiting to get his btc address.

[PerrythePlatypus]

hi
I wonder if you can, or any service that enables you to bind a btc address to email.

So if I want to send abc@abc.com 0.5BTC, and knowingly that he has already assigned a btc address to his email, I can just do the transfer to abc@abc.com instead of asking and waiting to get his btc address.

Coinbase, it would work if both have coinbase

[Abdussamad]

At the moment bitcoin clients don't support this but hopefully we will get there in the future. We should get there in the future because it can be done and people want it.

For the moment you can use coinapult.com.

[the_poet]

By doing so Bitcoin payments would be just as easy as Paypal ones. Interesting.

[benjyz]

email to BTC is very hard to do securely. where do you register addresses? what is a valid email provider? how do you secure email provider safety? etc.  the problem ties in with various difficult to solve problems about networks of trust and keysharing. Paypal/Coinbase works because it is centralized. not what we really want.

[TheButterZone]

Here it is the other direction: https://www.b1txr.com/

[coastermonger]

Email transfers will work if just the person sending as a coinbase account.  

The person receiving the coins will get an email telling them to set up an account (Free) and from there they can continue to use Coinbase or transfer the bitcoins out anywhere else.

[franky1]

this involves a centralised service to be trusted to hold a database linking the two.

the decentralised solution is to make a private key/public key. put funds into it, then email your friend with the private key/public key info and have instructions on how he can add it to a wallet.

i do this all the time.

EG:

Hi X,
i thought i would send you your first bitcoin, to use it you need to input the privatekey into a bitcoin wallet. here is a link to a few wallets and each of them have a easy way to input the private key
bitcoin-qt link
blockchain.info link

now here is the private key(do not disclose to anyone):
Al0ngA55edAm0unt0fCharacter5Usuallyg0e5here

if you want to see the balance right now:
blockchain.info/address/ blah

and here is the public address (which you give out to allow people to pay you):
Al0ngA55edAm0unt0fCharacter5Usuallyg0e5here

if you have any questions feel free to contact me

as for later on sending transactions to someone you know. you can always put their email or even just a name as the label of their bitcoin address in your client. then you can simply send to the lable name

[BoomBustBlog]

this involves a centralised service to be trusted to hold a database linking the two.

the decentralised solution is to make a private key/public key. put funds into it, then email your friend with the private key/public key info and have instructions on how he can add it to a wallet.

i do this all the time.

EG:

Hi X,
i thought i would send you your first bitcoin, to use it you need to input the privatekey into a bitcoin wallet. here is a link to a few wallets and each of them have a easy way to input the private key
bitcoin-qt link
blockchain.info link

now here is the private key(do not disclose to anyone):
Al0ngA55edAm0unt0fCharacter5Usuallyg0e5here

if you want to see the balance right now:
blockchain.info/address/ blah

and here is the public address (which you give out to allow people to pay you):
Al0ngA55edAm0unt0fCharacter5Usuallyg0e5here

if you have any questions feel free to contact me

as for later on sending transactions to someone you know. you can always put their email or even just a name as the label of their bitcoin address in your client. then you can simply send to the lable name

Doesn't this inject security risks going through the email server, and potential of interception en route, etc. I'm not a programmer or a network guy, more like a paranoid bastard - so to say...

[Abdussamad]

email to BTC is very hard to do securely. where do you register addresses? what is a valid email provider? how do you secure email provider safety? etc.  the problem ties in with various difficult to solve problems about networks of trust and keysharing. Paypal/Coinbase works because it is centralized. not what we really want.

BTC to email address does not involve an actual email Ok maybe for notifications but the actual payment will be made via the bitcoin p2p network. The address could be a stealth address embedded as a txt record in domain's DNS zone. When you enter an email address in your bitcoin client it looks up the txt record to find the stealth address. It then generates a bitcoin address using the stealth address and sends the coins. Finally it will email the recipient the nonce or embed the nonce in the transaction.

Edit: Widespread adoption of DNSSEC would be a pre-requisite for the above.