How Bitcoin States of America works

Your identity is a random nickname and a random ID generated in your own browser the first time you visit. It lives in your device's local storage and is never tied to an email, phone number, or login.

By default the app makes one IP lookup to show a rough region (state or country) next to your messages. Hit the ghost toggle in the top bar to switch that off — in ghost mode no lookup happens at all and no location is attached to anything you send.

Type /join myroom somepassphrase to create or enter an encrypted channel. Your message is encrypted in your browser before it is sent, using a key derived from the passphrase.

The passphrase never leaves your device — it isn't sent to the server, and there's no "reset passphrase." Anyone who joins with the exact same channel name and passphrase can read the room. Anyone without it — including whoever runs this server — sees only meaningless ciphertext. Share the passphrase out of band, and note that the AI assistants cannot read encrypted channels.

The nostr channel is not this app's chat — it is a live window into the public Nostr network. Your browser generates a Nostr key on this device, and anything you post there is signed locally and published to public relays, where anyone using any Nostr client can read and reply to it.

Use /nostr bitcoin to follow a hashtag. Nothing on this channel is stored in our database — we neither keep the notes nor hold your Nostr key.

Nostr is public and permanent by design: notes cannot be deleted, and your key stays in this browser's storage — clearing site data loses that identity for good.

Set your Lightning address with the zap button in the top bar and it rides along with your messages, so anyone can tip you. Tapping the zap icon on a message fetches an invoice directly from that person's wallet and shows you a QR code to pay.

The app never touches the money — no custody, no fees, no middleman. Payments go wallet to wallet over Lightning, and your address is stored only on this device (it is public on messages you send).

Type /p2p myroom for the most private option in the app. Your browser connects directly to the other participants' browsers using WebRTC, and messages travel straight between you over an encrypted data channel.

Nothing is written to the database — not ciphertext, not metadata, nothing. There is no history to delete because there was never a record: close the tab and the conversation is gone. Use the invite button to share the room link.

The one caveat, stated plainly: a small server step is still needed to introduce peers to each other (it sees only "someone wants to join this room", never message content), and connections relay through public STUN servers, which means peers can see each other's IP addresses — as is true of any direct connection. Rooms hold up to 12 people, and everyone must be online at the same time.

Your browser also generates a cryptographic keypair, and every message you send is signed with it. The server verifies that signature and shows a short fingerprint next to your name.

That's how you spot impersonators: anyone can pick the same nickname as you, but they can't reproduce your fingerprint. Trust the fingerprint, not the name. Clear your browser storage and you get a new identity — so the fingerprint is per-device, on purpose.

Every message on the server is deleted automatically 24 hours after it's posted. There is no archive and no searchable history.

Want it gone sooner? The timer button next to the message box cycles through 5 minutes, 1 hour, and 24 hours for the message you're about to send.

Need it all gone now? /panic deletes every message you've ever sent from the server immediately. The request is signed with your key, so nobody else can wipe your history — and nobody, including you, can undo it.

Mention @satoshi for Bitcoin concepts, history, and technology, or @oracle for live market data and news. They reply in the channel like any other participant and are labelled AI.

You can also run AI research on any individual message — press and hold it on mobile, or use the sparkle button on desktop — to get context and sources on the claim being made.

Being straight with you, because privacy tools that overpromise are worse than none:

• →Metadata. On public channels the server sees your message text. Even in encrypted channels it still sees that a message happened, in which channel, when, and how big it was.
• →Your IP address. Connecting to any website reveals it. Use a VPN or Tor if that matters to you — ghost mode hides your location from other users, not from the network.
• →A weak passphrase. Encryption is only as strong as what you chose. Guessable passphrase, guessable room.
• →Screenshots and copies. Self-destruct removes messages from the server, not from anyone who already read them.
• →Offline / mesh use. This is a web app and needs the internet. It cannot join a phone app's Bluetooth mesh — browsers don't allow that.