I am interested in placing a message into the blockchain for the purpose of timestamping the message (eg adding the hash of a document to the blockchain so that the document can be verified as existing sometime before the timestamp of the block)
I've looked at how btcmsg does it but the comment in this link suggests that btcmsg isn't the right way to do it.
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2616/how-to-decode-messages-embedded-with-btcmsgPlease don't encourage this abuse of Bitcoin. If someone would like to implement a message service correctly, there are many developers on IRC willing to help. – Luke-Jr
Can someone propose how I may best achieve placing a message in the blockchain? I've had some ideas but would like to hear how the pros think it should be done.
I expect flames that 'bitcoin isnt meant for that' - if so please explain the alternative you'd use instead.
I have made a beta implementation of CommitCoin protocol. If you're interested PM me. I'm not ready to make it publicly available just yet but it's fully functional.
An easier alternative if you don't mind paying 0.0005 btc fee is to use
hash to address utility of blockexplorer to convert the hash of your message to a btc address, and then create a transaction that sends 0 btc to that address. (this way no money is wasted)