Quote from: RogerRabbit on January 25, 2010, 16:30:50
You can’t send messages to Bitcoin users unless it’s the IP? That seems unnecessary. Any reasoning behind this? I think people will use Bitcoin addresses a lot more often than the IP address when sending or receiving coins.

I think it was some technical limitation. Satoshi could tell more about this?

Yes, it’s a technical limitation. Sending by bitcoin address enters the transaction into the network and the recipient discovers it from the network. You don’t connect directly with them and they don’t have to be online at the time.

I very much wanted to find some way to include a short message, but the problem is, the whole world would be able to see the message. As much as you may keep reminding people that the message is completely non-private, it would be an accident waiting to happen.

Unfortunately, ECDSA can only sign signatures, it can’t encrypt messages, and we need the small size of ECDSA. RSA can encrypt messages, but it’s many times bigger than ECDSA.

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