The thread is about sending encrypted messages, not signed messages.  Preferably, I would like the message to remain private as an encrypted message should be (see example in OP).  It also displays a higher level of understanding as they must import my public key and not just sign a message with their own.  For unencrypted signed messages, I would still prefer to use Bitcoin signatures on this forum.

EDIT: Thank you for correcting your oversight, but now it appears it was not encrypted using my public key as I am unable to decrypt it.
EDIT2: You got it fixed!  Merit sent.

I used my own public key for the send and receive addresses  , I’ll edit the post later with a message encrypted for your own.

we bitcoiners can encrypt messages with the tools we already have without installing additional software. it needs AES (which all wallets have) and HMAC-SHA function which all deterministic wallets have and a public key which we can fetch from our wallet or from the person we want to send the encrypted message to.
i used OP's public key found on their profile (04e31f13f55c8bd626a32bf9ad93744e1cb3a4ec4b5efe1cce89e06687aa7bec7476ca4a343bdaf 9b5db1042966c0a8284a2e293ea7901d5284f4bd29cc6d26a40)

the process is known as ECIES and Electrum already has an easy to use implementation of it to encrypt and decrypt messages.

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i realized that the example above can only be decrypted by OP (it needs private key) so here is an example with its private key revealed (on testnet):

PGP was originally designed so that people could send each other encrypted email without having to agree on passwords to use. Each person keeps a public key and a private key for themselves, and a short fingerprint can be derived from the public key to save space (like bitcoin addresses).

You can encrypt a message with your private key, and specify which fingerprints are allowed to decrypt your message. This data is encoded into the encrypted message which prevents people without the private key of the fingerprints from reading the contents (that is why OgNasty could not read my first message).

Think about it - if you just sent someone an encrypted text with just AES256 or something, how will you securely communicate the password that decrypts the text to the other party without compromising it? PGP solves this by not requiring you to send any secrets.


Key servers are convenient for importing someone's fingerprint from the internet instead of having to search for their public key (you need the public key to import a fingerprint). You could also just download the public key file yourself and import that.


Because a fingerprint is just a shorthand for of the public key, proving ownership of the public key also proves ownership of the fingerprint. If someone is able to sign a message from a particular PGP key, it only proves they have access to its private key. It does not prove that other people do not have access to it (sole ownership). You'd have to rely on their word for that.

Funny, I hope I did it right

When I uploaded my key to a key server, the servers from Ubuntu, MIT and others all failed with the same error, though I could search for other people's keys. I uploaded mine at https://pgp.net.nz/, this key server is ran by a New Zealand domain registrar called InternetNZ. After a few hours my key mirrored to the other servers too and I could search for it there too.

I wonder how much resources it takes to run a PGP key server though. If it's a low resource thing this could be a nice project for me.


Alas, the SKS server software being abandoned doesn't make me happy. Without maintainers a project can only run for so long

Similar to BlackHatCoiner, I've never used PGP in the past, except for verifying Electrum.

This is my message

@OgNasty, here is my message! I think I've done it right.

@Yogee, nope. I tried finding an alternative but it's kinda confusing for me since there are lots key server scattered on the internet and I don't know whether the key server is legitimate and supported by Kleopatra.

Besides, you can still make use of the encryption/decryption function inside the certificate manager (Kleopatra) without checking your public key on a key server.