Jack Dorsey Launches Bluetooth-Based Bitchat Over the Weekend

Most people use the weekend to unwind, not Jack Dorsey, CEO of Bitcoin tech firm Block and former CEO of what was then Twitter. Dorsey spent this past weekend building a messaging app that exclusively communicates via Bluetooth. “My weekend project: to learn about Bluetooth mesh networks, relays, and store and forward models, message encryption models, and a few other things,” Dorsey wrote on Sunday in a post on X. He calls the app “Bitchat,” and has even published a whitepaper on Github and uploaded a test version of the app to Apple’s “Testflight” platform. The whitepaper describes Bitchat as “a secure, decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks.” Bitchat doesn’t even require an Internet connection or phone number, according to the whitepaper. It also features end-to-end encryption, automatically pitting itself against Meta’s Whatsapp, but there’s still work to do. A few people pointed out several key features that are missing from Bitchat. “Yes, will work on these. Started small.” Not bad for a weekend’s worth of work.