Bitmessage was conceived by software developer Jonathan Warren, who based its design on the decentralized digital currency, Bitcoin.

[1] Bitmessage gained a reputation for being out of reach of warrantless wiretapping conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA), due to the decentralized nature of the protocol, and its encryption being difficult to crack.

[2] As a result, downloads of the Bitmessage program increased fivefold during June 2013, after news broke of classified email surveillance activities conducted by the NSA.

[1] It achieves anonymity and privacy by relying on the blockchain flooding propagation mechanism and asymmetric encryption algorithm.

[2] Bitmessage has also been mentioned as an experimental alternative to email by Popular Science[3] and CNET.