Economic Spam Prevention

The payment is the spam filter.

For 27 years, spam filters have tried to classify bad emails after they are sent. BTC.email solves spam at the economic layer: make every message cost something, and spam becomes unprofitable.

Why Spam Filters Will Always Fail

Email has no economic cost to the sender. Sending a million emails costs nearly nothing. Even with a 0.001% success rate, spammers profit. Every technical solution is a band-aid on an economic problem.

Filters Are Reactive

They try to classify emails after the spam is already sent. False positives bury legitimate messages in spam folders.

Arms Race Never Ends

Spammers constantly evolve. ML models require constant retraining. The defender always plays catch-up.

Privacy Invasion Required

Content scanning means someone reads your emails. Your private communications feed corporate AI models.

Economic Spam Prevention

When sending an email to a btc.email address costs a few cents, spamming millions of people becomes financially impossible. Legitimate users send dozens of emails per month for pennies. Spammers would need thousands of dollars for a single campaign.

Scale	Cost	Verdict
Personal use (50/month)	~$0.05	Negligible
Professional (500/month)	~$0.50	Coffee money
Spam campaign (1M emails)	~$1,000	Unprofitable
Mass spam (10M emails)	~$10,000	Impossible

BTC.email users communicate with each other for free. Only external senders pay.

Built On Open Protocols

BTC.email uses the L402 protocol, combining HTTP 402 Payment Required with Lightning Network micropayments. No proprietary lock-in. No permission needed.

Lightning Network

Instant settlement. Sub-cent fees. Bitcoin-native. Pay and send in under 3 seconds. Works with any Lightning wallet.

L402 Protocol

HTTP 402 Payment Required finally has a use case. The payment credential is the access credential. No accounts required.

Macaroon Credentials

Decentralized bearer tokens with embedded caveats. Verify without contacting the issuer. Delegate restricted permissions.

Human-Readable Addresses

Your @btc.email address is both your inbox and your payment address. Send Bitcoin as easily as sending an email.

27 Years In The Making

This is not a new idea. The technology to make it work just did not exist until now.

1997: Hashcash
Adam Back proposed proof-of-work for email. Computational cost as spam prevention. The idea was sound, but never achieved widespread adoption.
2008: Bitcoin Whitepaper
Satoshi cited Hashcash in the whitepaper. Transformed computational cost into economic cost. Created digital scarcity.
2009: Genesis Block Message
Satoshi embedded the first on-chain message: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” Messages in Bitcoin from day one.
2014: OP_RETURN in Bitcoin Core 0.9.0
Bitcoin Core added standardized support for embedding data on-chain. Enabled timestamping, messaging protocols, and metadata layers.
2018: Lightning Network
Instant Bitcoin micropayments launched. Sub-cent fees. Millions of transactions per second. Made pay-per-email economically practical.
2020: L402 Protocol
Lightning Labs created L402 (HTTP 402 Payment Required). Payment credential becomes access credential. The missing link for pay-per-use APIs.
2025: BTC.email
All the pieces finally assembled. Economic spam prevention becomes reality. The payment is the spam filter.

How We Compare

BTC.email is not competing on features. We are solving a different problem.

Feature	btc.email	Gmail	Outlook
Spam prevention at root cause	Yes	No	No
No content scanning required	Yes	No	No
Zero spam guarantee	Yes	No	No
Sender accountability	Yes	Partial	Partial
Privacy by default	Yes	No	No
No ads	Yes	No	Partial
No data selling	Yes	No	No
Self-sovereign keys	Yes	No	No
Bitcoin-native payments	Yes	No	No
Human-readable payment address	Yes	No	No
Built on open source	Yes	No	No
Free between users	Yes	Yes	Yes

Full-Featured Email, No Compromises

Switching to BTC.email does not mean giving up the features you rely on. Everything you expect from a modern email client is here.

Feature	btc.email	Gmail	Outlook
Compose, reply, and forward	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rich text formatting	Yes	Yes	Yes
File attachments	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multiple folders and labels	Yes	Yes	Yes
Search across all mail	Yes	Yes	Yes
Keyboard shortcuts	Yes	Yes	Yes
Threaded conversations	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multiple accounts	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mobile responsive	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dark mode	Yes	Yes	Yes
Draft auto-save	Yes	Yes	Yes
Contact management	Yes	Yes	Yes
Signature support	Yes	Yes	Yes
Filters and rules	Yes	Yes	Yes
IMAP/SMTP access	Yes	Yes	Yes
Calendar integration	Partial	Yes	Yes

Built on open protocols. Compatible with any email client that supports IMAP and SMTP.

Our Principles

Sovereignty

Your keys. Your data. Your email. No custodians between you and your messages.

Privacy

No content scanning. No data selling. No tracking. Payment proves legitimacy, not surveillance.

Simplicity

Complex technology, simple experience. Email should work the way you expect.

Openness

Built on open protocols and open standards. No proprietary lock-in.

Bitcoin-Native

Built on Bitcoin, for Bitcoiners. No shitcoins. No tokens. Just sats.

Aligned Incentives

You pay for the service. You are the customer, not the product.

Claim Your @btc.email Address

8+ character usernames are free. Premium names are available for sats. Start receiving spam-free email today.

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