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When you send money, does Bitcoin-Qt automatically sign the transaction?
On the Receive Coins tab, why is there a Sign Message button? Which message am I signing? There is no Send Message button, either. When you click on Sign Message, there is also a Verify Message tab. What am I verifying? Shouldn't the system ensure that I'm receiving a properly signed coins bundle?
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The sign/verify message feature has nothing to do with the regular wallet functionality. Sending and receiving coins has nothing to with it.
It provides the ability to sign a message... anything you like, using one of your addresses, proving that you are the owner of the address. It can be used to prove you own some amount of bitcoins, without actually sending them for example.
It's not a feature regular users will frequently need.
Then I might create a message in Bitcoin-Qt, sign it, and email it, say, to another person? – Strychnine – 2013-04-22T00:38:31.610
Indeed, it just shows you the signature, which can send along with the message to someone. If they paste both the message and the signature into the Verify Signature form, it will tell them whether it's valid or not. – Pieter Wuille – 2013-04-22T09:33:50.453
I'd like a feature request (where do I do this Pieter), I'd like a user to click on a URL and bring up the QT client similar to
mailto://user@asdf.com, butsignqt://asdfsafd@asdf.com?key=ALL|1addressHereand sign a message for one or all of their keys – goodguys_activate – 2013-12-12T19:51:36.230See http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues
– Pieter Wuille – 2013-12-13T08:52:05.900actually, it has a bit to do with it... the same public-key algorithm is used to sign transactions.... – Erik Aronesty – 2014-01-28T17:14:56.970