Day 1 of my SaaS: I used it to timestamp its own code on Bitcoin. Here's why.
Three weeks ago I shipped Incipite.
On launch day, the first thing I certified with it was the source code itself. Not as a stunt. I genuinely wanted to know if the pipeline worked before telling anyone about it.
Why I built this
I write code and poetry on the side. At some point I started wondering: if someone copied one of my projects, removed the commit history, and shipped it as their own — what would I have? A GitHub repo with a timestamp I control isn't proof. Same for a poem or any text file. Nothing I could show that would hold up without asking someone to just trust me.
I looked at the alternatives. Notaries are expensive and offline. Self-hosted proofs rely on people trusting your server (they won't). Emailing it to yourself proves nothing — you can manipulate email dates, and no one in a dispute will accept a Gmail screenshot.
OpenTimestamps uses Bitcoin blocks as a clock. Each block is mined every ~10 minutes and timestamped by the entire network. Submit a SHA-256 hash of your file, it gets aggregated with thousands of other hashes, anchored in a block. The timestamp is public, immutable, verifiable by anyone — even in 50 years — without trusting me.
What I built
Incipite is the layer that makes this usable for non-technical creators. Drag your file, SHA-256 is computed in-browser (the file never leaves your machine), hash goes to OpenTimestamps, and when a Bitcoin block confirms it you get a certificate PDF. Public verification at /verify/[hash], no account needed.
I wanted it explainable in one sentence to someone who's never heard of blockchain.
The certificate from my own launch-day submission is live at incipite.com/genese if you want to see what the output looks like.
A few weeks in
A handful of beta testers, mostly friends at first. Two paying customers. The payment funnel broke at launch and blocked people from actually completing checkout — found that out the hard way. Fixed now, but it was a good reminder that "it works on my machine" is not a launch checklist.
Doing outreach on Reddit and Twitter now, going to places where people are already frustrated about the problem.
The part that's actually hard
The technical side was fine. The hard part is convincing someone that blockchain timestamping is meaningfully better than emailing yourself. The answer is: a blockchain timestamp is verifiable by a third party without trusting you. An email only proves you have access to an email account.
I've rewritten the landing page copy every week since launch trying to get this across without using "SHA-256" or "blockchain" in the hero. Not there yet.
What I'd love to hear
Has anyone here built for the creator economy? How did you find your first 10 paying users?
And if you create things — code, music, text, anything — would you pay 2€ per certification for a verifiable, dated proof of authorship? Or would you expect this to be free?
Happy to go into the technical side or talk OpenTimestamps if there's interest.
Stack: Next.js 16, Supabase, Stripe, Clerk, Vercel, javascript-opentimestamps (Peter Todd's official library)
That's a creative use of Bitcoin beyond payments. Timestamping highlights one of blockchain's strongest capabilities—providing a verifiable, tamper-evident record of data. As these use cases evolve, reliable infrastructure, secure integrations, and long-term operational reliability will be key to making them practical at scale.
The interesting part here isn’t blockchain timestamping—it’s the attempt to replace “trust me” with something independently verifiable.
Most creators don’t lose ownership because of missing timestamps; they lose it because there’s no neutral reference point that outlives platforms, accounts, or access. This is really a question about what counts as proof when trust can’t be assumed.
You've put words on something I've been circling around for six weeks. "Replace trust me" is exactly it — and I hadn't connected it explicitly to the platform durability problem until you said it.
That's actually what makes the blockchain anchor different from any SaaS timestamp, including mine. Bitcoin blocks have been immutable and publicly replicated for 15 years. If Incipite shuts down tomorrow, the verification still works — it runs against the blockchain, not my server. I can't modify or retract it. That's the guarantee no platform can offer about itself.
The framing that keeps coming up with creators is slightly different but related: the fear isn't usually "someone will steal this." It's "I'll end up in a situation where no one has to believe me." The timestamp doesn't make you right — it makes the truth checkable without your involvement. That's the thing that actually matters when something goes wrong.
That's exactly the point that made me think there's a bigger strategic decision underneath Incipite.
I don't think it's really about timestamping or even proof. It's about a business decision that becomes much more significant as the product grows, and I don't think I can explain the reasoning properly in a thread without oversimplifying it.
If you're interested, what's the best email to reach you on?
Absolutely want to hear this. hadrien@incipite.com — happy to go deeper there.
Thanks! I’ve just sent it over.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts whenever you have a chance.