Blockonomics Touts Bitcoin via Email
Indian cryptocurrency startup Blockonomics has introduced a new product that allows users to send and receive bitcoin securely via email.
Called BTCMail, the new service aims to make it easier for users to gift or send bitcoin payments instead of using alternatives like gift cards. BTCMail is suitable for gifting/sending BTC to anyone who doesn’t already have a bitcoin address.
Blockonomics founder and CTO Shiva S said that existing services store bitcoins (along with the private keys) on their server. The recipient gets a redeem code that he can use to claim his bitcoins. This works very much like Amazon/Apple gift cards. He explained that the problem with this approach is that the server can be hacked and can also have downtime, in which case bitcoins cannot be redeemed.
The new service uses a distributed trust model based on Split Key Generation. In this process, the sender and Blockonomics have only part of the private key, but can generate the public bitcoin address. The recipient has both parts of the private key and can claim the bitcoins. The recipient can also redeem bitcoin even when the Blockonomics server is down by mathematically combining the private keys.
