Sign & Verify Message? | Bitcointalksearch.org

Harley997

sr. member

Activity: 266

Merit: 250

Quote from: Parham6 on May 20, 2014, 09:33:33 AM

Can someone please explain to me what these two options in Multibit Client do?

When you sign a message you are essentially proving that you are in control of the private key of the address that you are signing from. The most common use of this is to verify that you in fact have sufficient funds to pay for a transaction. Other uses for this feature is to prove you are someone who participated in a particular transaction.

To verify a message is to verify that a signed message (see above) was in fact signed by a particular address.

ranlo

legendary

Activity: 1988

Merit: 1007

Quote from: hilariousandco on May 20, 2014, 09:48:39 AM

Check these links out:

https://multibit.org/en/help/v0.5/help_signAndVerifyMessage.html
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/18qy88/bitcoin_message_signing_and_verification/

It's a way of verifying that you own that specific address.

To add on to this, it's often used in the crypto world for things like purchases and investments, as it proves you are who you say you are (at least, you are the person who sent the money). For example, you can send someone 0.1 BTC and then sign using the same address stating that you sent them that and here's your email or address (and they can then verify it).

hilariousandco

global moderator

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