Beginning late June, Gliph’s founders (Rob and Nick) will relocate to Boost’s provided housing and office space in San Mateo, California. There we will join a group of startups specifically focused on the Bitcoin digital currency. The team will be working throughout the summer to refine the Gliph experience and further integrate Bitcoin into Gliph’s digital identity platform.

We chose Boost because founders Adam Draper and Brayton Williams have shown themselves to be early advocates for the Bitcoin currency. They’ve also put together a stellar program for startups that is a great fit for Gliph’s stage as a company.

As if this wasn’t exciting enough, this past Tuesday, Boost announced an additional $50k in funding for Bitcoin companies in Gliph’s class. The money comes from a collection of Silicon Valley based investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, angel investor Ben Davenport (founder of group messaging client, Beluga), and Rothenberg Ventures and the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund.

Gliph is typically headquartered in Portland, Oregon and previously raised a round from the Portland Seed Fund. We are grateful for the support of PSF and the Portland community.

We hope you are as excited about this important step as we are. A heartfelt thank you to our most loyal supporters who helped Gliph get to the point it is today.

People value Cloaked Email so highly that they don’t feel like one Cloaked Email address is enough.

We initially launched by giving one Cloaked Email address free and asking people to please invite additional users in order to earn additional addresses. As we mentioned in our previous blog post, not everyone liked that system. In fact, many people asked us for a paid option for getting more cloaks. So we’re responding to that feedback with our first for-pay Gliph release today.

How Much Does It Cost?
You can now optionally purchase additional Cloaked Email addresses individually or as a bundle. Here are the packages and pricing:

• 1 Cloak: $2.99
• 3 Cloak bundle: $4.99
• 25 Cloak bundle: $14.99

Each Cloaked Email address you purchase works forever, and will not require additional payments to keep alive. However, each time you discard a cloak, it is gone for good and you must either purchase or earn a replacement.

Enable Outbound Attachments 

We’re including the option to upgrade your Gliph send attachments over Cloaked Email for $4.99. For example, imagine you are using a Cloaked Email address on Craigslist and need to send an additional photo to a potential buyer.

Once you’ve upgraded your account, this is permanent, and all existing and future Cloaked Email addresses you use will have the ability to include attachments.

You can use file attachments in reply to emails, or when sending a new email from the mobile web app or using one of the Gliph browser plugins. Here’s a screenshot of what you’ll see after you upgrade:

How Can I Pay?
We have two options for paying. The first is in the iPhone application, which allows you to use Apple’s in-app purchasing with your Apple ID. You’ll find the option to pay under Cloaked Email -> Get More Cloaks.

For Android, Blackberry and Mobile Web users, we have a web payment system that lets you pay by Credit Card. All of those transactions are processed via Stripe payments.

What about the Invite System?
Gliph is still in its early stages of growth and we want you to get great value out of inviting new people. As a result, we are keeping our 1 free cloak per successful invite in place. We’re also continuing to allow you to enable attachments for free by getting five people to join the site.

We’re also returning the number of free cloaks given to each new Gliph user down to one cloak. We think that one permanent, free Cloaked Email address is enough to see the value of what we’ve worked to create. We’re proud to say that as a thank you for being an early adopter of Gliph, all existing users will retain the free additional cloaks they got.

Why support Gliph?
Beyond the real value you get out of Cloaked Email, each time you spend money at Gliph you are supporting a company that puts the highest value on your privacy. We will continue to release free and paid features that help you connect with others more safely.

Supporting the company with a purchase helps our team pay costs of maintaining Gliph. It is also shows you support the work we’re doing. It allows us to confidently continue building privacy services and secure communication tools for people around the world.

We would love to hear from you. Please send the support gliph, [wrench, pencil, heart] a message or email us at support@gli.ph.

We are planning to charge smartphones throughout SXSW. Keep an eye on our twitter feed and come by to visit us at:

Gliph Charge Cart
400 N. Congress
Austin, TX 78701

We’ve created a Gliph press page with more information about what we have going on.  Also, keep an eye on our twitter feed for updates throughout SXSW Interactive and Music.

We are very proud to be joining a collection of other great startups from the Portland area.  Here are some links to learn more about the announcement:

• Official PSF Class 2 Announcement
• Portland Seed Fund Names Second Class of 8 Startups

We spent the most weekend focusing on what we are creating and why.  It was important for us to all discuss in person how we felt about personal privacy and how we could help people communicate and connect with each other.  Most of our sessions were led by Ben, and they involved many Post-It notes.

The photos tell the story:

Nick assures me he is awake in this photo.