The obvious next step.

Mail between members does not require a payment. People you know reach you the ordinary way: they write, and the message is in your inbox.

Every other inbox treats your attention as free. BTC.email starts from the other side: the people you want to hear from cost nothing to let in.

A first introduction is the other half of the same idea. Someone you do not know can put bitcoin behind the message, and that bitcoin is for the person who does the reading.

Hashcash asked a sender to burn computer time that nobody received. Bitcoin turned that cost into money. Lightning lets a small amount reach the one person who read the mail. That is the missing piece.

His example was a famous person with more mail than time. The reader gets paid. The sender gets read. A payment still cannot promise a worthwhile conversation. It can make the introduction deliberate.

That path is paused in the private alpha. A Bitcoin wallet is optional, it uses a test network, and real bitcoin transfers have not launched. The About page tells the longer history. The FAQ explains Lightning and sats.

The address is also a public page at btc.email/@yourname. One link carries your picture, your name, and your address, plus any wallet addresses and social links you choose to show.

That page is the community side of the same address. Someone across a table can scan it. Someone on the web can write to it. You decide what it shows, in Settings.

The mail stays in BTC.email. You read, write, and reply in the browser. Messages are not forwarded to another inbox, and there is no separate mobile app.

It is built as a complete mail program, not a payment screen with a text box.

• Conversations fold. Search, labels, stars, and snooze organize what stays.
• The composer replies, forwards, and starts new mail, with signatures and messages you reuse.
• You can allow or block a sender, unsubscribe, or report phishing.
• A wrong move can be undone. A send can be taken back for a short moment.
• Mail that sends or receives bitcoin has its own place in the folder list.

A wallet can add bitcoin to one @btc.email recipient. In the private alpha that transfer uses the test network. You review it before it goes. Paid filtering stays paused, so a payment is not what admits a sender.

BTC.email hosts your inbox. It is built so that it never holds the keys to your bitcoin.

Email and Bitcoin were named together in Bitcoin’s first week. On January 16, 2009, days after the software shipped, Satoshi wrote that it could already be used for pay-to-send email.

The two things are not a mail program plus a wallet bolted on. The address is the membership. Friends write to it for free. The public page is how the community finds it. Bitcoin is how a stranger’s first message can respect the reader’s time, when that path is open.

Hashcash made spam expensive and paid nobody. Bitcoin made the cost into money the reader can receive. What remained was a place worthy of both: a state-of-the-art inbox to live in, and a public address the community can share. That place is the obvious next step, and it is what BTC.email is.

The About page tells why unwanted mail stayed cheap to send, and why neither mail nor Bitcoin has an owner. This page is the inbox and the address.

BTC.email is in private alpha. You register with an email you already have, confirm it, and we activate the account by hand. Wallets use a test network and hold no real bitcoin. Do not send real bitcoin to an alpha wallet.

Paid filtering is paused. Mail between members is free.