It's something quite useful to be able to verify that the contents of a message are actually coming from a specific person (or at least someone that has access to that person's private key).
If you haven't done so, you can learn how to do it here.
Basically all you need is the software that you normally use, like Electrum for example. You can then either verify or sign any message.
I feel like this is not well known, but it should be.
A lot of the software you use signs messages all the time. Lightning login uses signed messages.
Fair enough.
But these are general purpose messages, linked to a specific Bitcoin address, and done manually. There's clearly a difference.
I didn’t mean for it to sound like “so what.”
I just meant to add some context
Don't know if this counts but you do it automatically any time you use a Nostr application. Signing a message manually, though? Nope. Never needed to.
I signed my pinned tweet: https://twitter.com/1GLENCo/status/1557085841104699392
On tor darknets, a signed message is used to verify two accounts on two separate onion services are the same by placing a signed message on both to verify the correlation.
I used it this way but for PGP instead of a Bitcoin signed message
Adam Back also uses a PGP signed message on his list of social media as a way of proving he owns all of those accounts, he puts that on his website
Most days my wallet "signs" messages in forms of OP_RETURNs haha
https://opreturnbot.com/
In Europe you have to with DCA tools such as https://relai.app/ or https://pocketbitcoin.com/ (when using a wallet outside the app).
Hello Stacker News! 796459
1MFey9WHWGD2BAdbUKxnHAVmJYXL1CXhKg
GyMiA19+TABICS72bGm0z8b+bsGU+Zxtwc0BkSD5M3SKSj/PlmKZ5NlZtaMgg8LdFUL1rpeG8W32NKhrziNLuHA=
If you run linux I can definitely recommend Kleopatra for pgp stuff. Its clipboard import/decrypt/validate functions are very handy.
The ones in electrum and bitcoin use secp256k1 curves so they are different to pgp, though you can add this curve to pgp it doesn't show in most interfaces and most installations of pgp can't handle it. I think it may be because it was only added to pgp recently so most versions are older than this change.
also, as people are pointing out, there are many apps that are doing this transparently and automatically. Protonmail messages are, if possible, encrypted and signed.
Yes, in Trezor Suite.
Not yet
But I'd like to
Publish a signed message here so that anyone else can verify it