Everything you need to know about timestamping your ideas on Bitcoin.
You get a PDF certificate delivered to your email. That certificate contains: the title and description you entered (or the fingerprint of the file you uploaded), a SHA-256 hash — a unique digital fingerprint of your content, the exact date and time your idea was anchored, a Bitcoin transaction ID you can verify independently on any blockchain explorer, and a QR code that links directly to the blockchain proof. From your dashboard you can also download a proof.json file with the exact data that was hashed, so anyone can re-check the proof without our website (see icalledit.io/verify-independently/). This certificate is yours forever. You don't need us to exist for it to remain valid — the proof lives on the Bitcoin blockchain, not on our servers.
iCalledIt does not replace a patent, trademark, or copyright registration. What it creates is independently verifiable proof that a specific piece of content existed at a specific point in time — known as "proof of existence." You can submit it as evidence; how much weight it carries is decided by the court and depends on the jurisdiction. It does not prove who created the content, and a private timestamp is not "prior art" in the patent-law sense, because prior art has to be public.
What courts and legislators have said so far (sources: icalledit.io/compare/#sources):
• France (March 2025): the Tribunal judiciaire de Marseille took Bitcoin blockchain timestamps of design drawings into account, together with other evidence, in a copyright case about fashion designs.
• China (June 2018): the Hangzhou Internet Court admitted evidence preserved on a blockchain.
• USA: Vermont law (12 V.S.A. § 1913) treats a blockchain record as self-authenticating under conditions; the presumption does not extend to the truthfulness of the contents.
• EU: under the eIDAS Regulation an electronic timestamp cannot be denied legal effect solely because it is electronic. Only qualified timestamps enjoy a presumption of accuracy, and a Bitcoin timestamp is not a qualified one.
How much weight your proof carries depends on the court and the jurisdiction. What does not depend on anyone is the check itself: the SHA-256 hash in the Bitcoin transaction can be recomputed and compared by anyone, without iCalledIt.
iCalledIt is operated by Agile Playground LLC, a company registered in Delaware, USA. The founder is Miroslav Ćurčić — an entrepreneur, PMP-certified project manager, and Sheffield MBA graduate with 28 years of business experience. This is not an anonymous crypto project. There is a real person, a real company, and a real commitment behind the service.
We retain your title and description to enable certificate re-download — if you lose the email, you can always get your certificate back. Files you attach in the Protect flow never leave your browser — only their SHA-256 hash is sent, and a hash cannot be turned back into the original content. (In the Dedicate gift flow the file is uploaded so it can be emailed to the recipient.) The generated PDF is not stored; it is created on-demand each time you download it.
Every access to your content — whether by you, by our system during PDF generation, or by anyone else — is recorded in our audit log with a timestamp, the accessor's identity, and the purpose of access.
We are prepared to back this with accountability, not just words:
• Independent audit: If you want additional assurance before submitting a sensitive idea, you may commission an independent security audit of our system — by an auditor of your choosing, at your expense. We will cooperate fully.
• Legal liability: If your original content is ever found to have been accessed, shared, or used by us in any unauthorized way, we accept full legal and financial responsibility. Your timestamp records exactly what you submitted and when, so any misuse on our part would be provable.
We don't ask you to trust us. We ask you to verify — and we give you every tool to do so.
The Free option lets you walk through the entire process — describe your idea, see how the system works, and understand what you'll receive. Think of it as a guided preview. However, it does not create a real Bitcoin blockchain transaction. Nothing is written to Bitcoin until you use a paid credit. With a credit ($19 for one; packs of 3 and 10 cost less per registration) your SHA-256 hash is recorded in its own Bitcoin transaction, creating permanent, independently verifiable proof of existence. Every pack includes the same features: you can add up to five witness emails (each witness receives a copy of your PDF certificate), group registrations into projects, add follow-ups, or use a credit for a Dedication — a registration gifted to someone, with a gift certificate emailed to them.
Projects let you group related ideas together — for example, if you're building a product and want to timestamp the concept, the name, and the technical approach separately but keep them connected. A follow-up is a new registration linked to an earlier one in your dashboard. Each follow-up gets its own Bitcoin transaction and date, so a series of them shows the order in which a concept developed. The link between them is kept in your account; it is not part of the hash. Projects and follow-ups are available with any credit pack.
Any file type — documents, images, code, designs, audio, video. In the Protect flow the file is hashed in your browser and never uploaded, so we never have a copy: only its SHA-256 hash, name, size and type are recorded. In the Dedicate gift flow the file is uploaded (maximum 10 MB) so it can be emailed to the recipient. This means you must keep your original file safe. If you ever need to show what you had, you show that your file produces the same hash that was recorded on the blockchain. That proves the file existed at that time, not who created it.
The blockchain proof remains valid forever, but you need the original file (or original text) to demonstrate the match. Think of it like a notarized envelope — the notary stamp proves the date, but you need the contents to prove what was inside. We strongly recommend keeping your original files backed up in at least two locations.
Your proof is replicated on every Bitcoin full node — thousands of independent computers run by different people in many countries, each holding a complete copy of the blockchain, including your transaction. There is no central server, no single company, and no single country that controls it. Removing or changing your record would mean rewriting a blockchain that all of those nodes check independently, which is not practically possible.
The Bitcoin network has been running since January 2009. Even if Bitcoin's market price fell sharply, the existing blockchain — and your record in it — would remain a public file that anyone can keep a copy of and check.
Your proof does not depend on us. The Bitcoin blockchain is a decentralized, global network — your transaction ID, your hash, and your timestamp exist independently of iCalledIt. Even if our website disappears tomorrow, anyone with your certificate can verify the proof using any public blockchain explorer (such as mempool.space or blockchain.com). That is the entire point of using Bitcoin as the anchor — no single point of failure, including us.
After you submit your idea, the SHA-256 hash is written into a Bitcoin transaction and broadcast to the network, usually within a minute or two, and your PDF certificate is emailed right after that. At that point the status is "broadcast". A new Bitcoin block is mined roughly every 10 minutes on average; once your transaction is included in a block the status changes to "confirmed" and the block height is shown on the verification page. When the network is busy, confirmation can take longer.
You can timestamp anything — but the timestamp only proves that the content existed at that point in time. It does not prove authorship or ownership. If you timestamp someone else's work, you have proof that you had access to it at that time — not that you created it. Original creators who timestamped earlier would have a stronger claim.
No. Copyright protects the expression of an idea (and in many countries exists automatically upon creation). Patents protect inventions through a formal legal process. iCalledIt provides proof of prior existence — evidence that a specific piece of content existed at a specific time. It complements formal IP protection but does not replace it. A timestamp is quick and inexpensive, so it can be a first step while you decide whether you need a formal registration.
Once a registration has been written to Bitcoin, it cannot be refunded. Because blockchain transactions are irreversible by design — that same irreversibility is what makes your proof tamper-evident and permanent. Once your hash is recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain, it cannot be undone, edited, or removed by anyone, including us. That is not a limitation — it is the core feature you are paying for. The free preview lets you walk through the entire process before you commit, so you understand exactly what you will receive.
Write to us at hello@icalledit.io — we respond personally, usually within 24 hours.
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