Here is a chess puzzle in which questions of this article are engraved. The more you try to solve this chess puzzle the more you will remember the questions. Answer to this puzzle at the end of this article.
This article also tries to find answers to the most burning ongoing questions regarding crypto.
1. Q: Is Bitcoin’s pullback mainly due to regulation or macroeconomic pressure? A: Both. Regulatory uncertainty and expectations of higher interest rates are pressuring Bitcoin.
2. Q: Could failure of the Clarity Act actually benefit crypto? A: Possibly. The SEC and CFTC could still create clearer rules through their own rulemaking.
3. Q: Why does Bitcoin react to political negotiations before a law is finalized? A: Markets price in expectations, so uncertainty itself can trigger buying or selling.
4. Q: Does the 60-vote requirement show that crypto regulation is politically divided? A: Yes. Republican votes alone cannot guarantee passage, making bipartisan support essential.
5. Q: Could prolonged disagreement over crypto regulation hurt innovation? A: Yes. Uncertainty can discourage companies, investors, and developers from operating in the U.S.
6. Q: Why is Bitcoin still sensitive to political news despite becoming mainstream? A: Because Bitcoin remains a volatile, risk-sensitive asset.
7. Q: What is really behind the political disagreement over crypto regulation? A: A conflict between consumer protection and regulation versus innovation and industry growth.
8. Q: Would dividing crypto oversight between the SEC and CFTC solve the regulatory problem? A: It could improve clarity, but overlapping responsibilities could also create complexity.
9. Q: If regulators create rules without Congress, does the Clarity Act become less important? A: It could become less urgent, but legislation would provide stronger and lasting certainty.
10. Q: Is Brian Armstrong justified in believing crypto will get regulatory clarity anyway? A: His view is plausible because both the SEC and CFTC can pursue rulemaking.
11. Q: Could rising oil prices become a bigger threat to Bitcoin than regulation? A: Yes. Higher oil prices can increase inflation and encourage tighter monetary policy.
12. Q: How can expensive oil indirectly push Bitcoin lower? A: Higher oil can fuel inflation, increase rate expectations, and reduce demand for risky assets.
13. Q: Could rising inflation challenge Bitcoin’s reputation as an inflation hedge? A: Yes. Falling Bitcoin prices during inflation could make investors question its hedge status.
14. Q: How much does Bitcoin’s price depend on Federal Reserve policy? A: A lot. Interest rates and liquidity strongly influence demand for speculative assets.
15. Q: Why would investors choose bonds over Bitcoin when Treasury yields are high? A: Bonds can provide predictable income with considerably less volatility and risk.
16. Q: Could a hawkish Fed cause another major Bitcoin sell-off? A: Yes. Higher rates can push investors toward safer, yield-generating assets.
17. Q: Should investors trust Bitcoin’s technical indicators during regulatory uncertainty? A: Technical signals can help, but fundamental risks should not be ignored.
18. Q: Will Bitcoin eventually become less sensitive to interest rates? A: Possibly, but global liquidity and monetary policy will likely remain important.
19. Q: Does institutional adoption make Bitcoin safer or more vulnerable? A: Both. It increases legitimacy but also ties Bitcoin more closely to traditional financial markets.
20. Q: What is the biggest immediate threat to Bitcoin in this situation? A: Higher interest rates may be the biggest threat because they can reduce liquidity and make safer assets more attractive.
Morgan Stanley became the first global systemically important bank to launch a spot Bitcoin ETP and it crossed $600 million within months of its April debut. Amy Oldenburg, Head of Digital Assets at Morgan Stanley, joins host Spencer Nichols to explain how that product came together, why it was priced below competing spot Bitcoin ETFs, and what still stands between clients and their first Bitcoin allocation. She also details the firm’s 0–4% allocation framework across three investor risk profiles and why Morgan Stanley has no equivalent gold allocation. Plus: whether Bitcoin could land on Morgan Stanley’s own balance sheet.
Host: Spencer Nichols — Bitcoin Magazine Amy Oldenburg, Head of Digital Assets at Morgan Stanley
Chapters: 0:00 — Morgan Stanley on Putting Bitcoin on Its Own Balance Sheet 1:14 — 26 Years at Morgan Stanley: Emerging Markets to Head of Digital Assets 2:10 — First Major Bank to Launch a Spot Bitcoin ETP Tops $600 Million 3:14 — Education, E-Trade Spot Crypto, and What Clients Actually Own 4:49 — Why Morgan Stanley Priced Its Bitcoin ETP So Low 6:40 — The 0–4% Allocation Framework and the Digital Gold Thesis 8:52 — Correlation Regimes: Digital Gold, High Beta Tech, and Volatility 11:41 — Gold 2.0, Market Cap, and Bitcoin on the Balance Sheet 14:37 — Institutional Market Structure, Quantum Risk, and Client Trust 18:02 — Global Off-Ramps, Tokenization, Stablecoins, and Morgan Stanley Research
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.
Bitcoin-focused Block Inc. has become the latest company to apply for a U.S. banking charter.
The company, which manages Square, Cash App, and Bitkey, said Wednesday that it had submitted an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish Builders Bank & Trust, N.A.
Block joins a long-list of digital asset firms that have received conditional approval or are awaiting approval from the regulator to have the license. The charter would allow companies — if fully approved — to have certain banking powers, such as custody assets and move client funds.
JUST IN: Block applies to establish Builders Bank & Trust with the OCC, which would provide federally regulated custody and "fiduciary services" for Bitcoin and stablecoins. pic.twitter.com/Dkq7WIg6Wa
“Building on Block’s experience in the digital asset space, our history with Square Financial Services, and the deep banking expertise of the team we’ve assembled, we believe Builders Bank is well positioned to support Block’s broader vision of economic empowerment,” Lee Woolley, who would serve as President and CEO of Builders Bank, said in a statement.
Block said that, if approved, Builders Bank would operate as a federally regulated national trust bank under OCC supervision and provide custody and related fiduciary services, including for bitcoin and stablecoins.
A number of top crypto companies have received conditional approval, including Coinbase, Circle, Crypto.com, and Paxos.
Decentralized financial protocol World Liberty Financial, backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, also received approval this year.
Block CEO and founder Jack Dorsey, a Bitcoin maximalist, has been pushing for the biggest and oldest cryptocurrency to become everyday money.
His point-of-sale products, Square, last year rolled out bitcoin acceptance for millions of eligible U.S. small businesses, with no setup required and transactions instantly converted to dollars at checkout.
Block has applied to establish an uninsured U.S. national trust bank that would place some of its Bitcoin, stablecoin and digital asset custody operations under direct federal supervision. Block said on Tuesday that it submitted an application to the Office…
Most Web3 teams that close a raise treat the full amount as runway from day one. The money is there to fund the build, so keeping all of it liquid seems like the obvious choice.
But the money usually isn’t spent that way.
A project with six to nine months of development ahead doesn’t deploy the full raise immediately. Spending happens gradually, while a larger part of the capital may only be needed later, when the product moves into scaling.
That means part of the raise can sit untouched for months simply because its planned expense hasn’t arrived yet.
Keeping enough capital available for near-term expenses makes sense. Keeping the entire raise in the same liquid position is a different decision, especially when the project already has a rough schedule for when larger spending begins.
What Laddering Actually Means in Practice
The near-term runway stays liquid. This is the capital the team expects to use for operating expenses and other costs coming up soon.
The tranche that won’t be needed for several months can be matched to that later spending date through a term deposit. Instead of treating money needed next month and money needed in six months exactly the same way, each part of the raise follows its own timeline.
The point isn’t to lock as much capital as possible or chase the longest term. It’s to stop treating capital that won’t be used for months as though it needs to be available next week.
There is also a trade-off. If the roadmap accelerates and the project needs committed capital earlier than planned, the terms of an early exit matter. That needs to be understood before choosing where and for how long the funds are placed.
So What Does “Not Improvising” Actually Look Like?
Once the spend schedule is clear, the next step is comparing what different institutional platforms actually offer.
Zero Hash provides yield and staking infrastructure as part of a broader digital asset stack covering trading, stablecoin payments and tokenization through a single API. The platform has settled $65B+ in total volume across 7M+ end customers, with stablecoin transaction volume growing 690% year over year. In June 2026, it launched Staking-as-a-Service for brokerages and banks, with Interactive Brokers and Morgan Stanley among the initial launch partners.
WhiteBIT Yield-as-a-Service supports institutional placements starting from 600K USDT, with allocation across multiple currencies and terms ranging from 10 days to a few years. Its API can be integrated into existing settlement processes, while an early exit moves a committed tranche to the applicable flexible rate if the original schedule changes.
Coinchange Yield-as-a-Service delivers daily-priced yield portfolios across stablecoins and digital assets through a single API integration, with no minimum placement requirements and no long-term lockups. Compliance coverage spans FATF, MiCA and SEC-aligned frameworks, and the underlying allocation runs across multiple actively managed strategies rather than a single yield source. Partners including Kanga Exchange and Utila have integrated the infrastructure into their existing products.
These products address different treasury requirements. The relevant comparison depends on what assets the company holds, when the capital will be needed, and how much flexibility the treasury requires during that period.
The Assumption That Needed Updating
The issue isn’t whether the full raise counts as runway. Of course it does.
The question is whether every part of that runway needs the same level of liquidity at the same time.
If one portion covers near-term operations while another won’t be used until several months later, those two tranches don’t necessarily have to be managed in the same way. The spend schedule gives the team a way to separate what needs to remain immediately available from what has a later job.
The raise arrives at once. The expenses arrive over quarters.
Treasury planning can follow the same schedule.
Disclaimer: This is not financial or investment advice. DYOR before making any decisions. Use at your own risk.
Crypto didn’t lose its story. The story just grew up.
Crypto markets have always been driven by narratives.
A crypto narrative is a theme that tells the market where to look: what’s worth building, what’s worth buying, and what the next big opportunity is. Narratives are what turn a complicated technology into something people can actually invest in.
For years, one narrative after another has defined the market.
DeFi Summer in 2020 was built around the rapid expansion of decentralised lending, borrowing, trading, and yield farming. All of a sudden, market participants could earn interest, trade, and borrow without a bank, and token prices moved on the promise of an entirely new financial system.
Then came the NFT boom in 2021.
NFTs moved beyond a relatively narrow blockchain use case into digital art, collectibles, gaming and online communities.
During that period, buying a JPEG felt like buying into the future.
Then came a wave of newer stories:
The AI – crypto narrative that gained significant attention in 2024 focused on the potential intersection between artificial intelligence and blockchain, including decentralised computing, data, AI agents and related infrastructure.
There was also the rise of play-to-earn gaming, memecoins, restaking and numerous other themes with each one pulling in capital and attention, at least for a while.
Different assets, different years, same underlying question:
What new things can we create with crypto?
That question hasn’t gone away.
However, the market conversation appears to be changing.
From Applications to Infrastructure
Increasingly, the conversation is moving toward the infrastructure that allows digital assets to function within a broader financial system.
This does not mean speculative narratives have disappeared. Memecoins can still attract enormous attention, and crypto markets remain highly speculative.
The change is more subtle.
The conversation is increasingly extending beyond what can be built on blockchain to how blockchain-based infrastructure can perform recognisable economic and financial functions.
Stablecoins are perhaps the clearest example of this.
Stablecoins Are No Longer Just a Crypto Trading Tool
A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency pegged to a stable asset, for example, fiat currency – one coin is designed to maintain the value of the underlying asset.
Stablecoins initially became popular partly because they allowed crypto users to move between volatile digital assets without immediately converting back into fiat currency.
However, their role has expanded.
Stablecoins are now used for trading, collateral, remittances, payments, corporate treasury management, and settling transactions across on-chain markets.
The Federal Reserve reported that stablecoin market capitalisation grew substantially during 2025, alongside increased transaction activity and DeFi usage.
The significance of this development goes beyond market capitalisation. Stablecoin isn’t just another token competing for attention anymore – it’s becoming the plumbing that connects different parts of the crypto economy.
That changes the way the asset is understood.
That is also attracting traditional financial institutions.
A 2026 institutional investor survey by Coinbase and EY found that institutions were using stablecoins for activities including cash management, moving money and near-real-time settlement, while regulated products had become an important route into digital-asset exposure.
The important point is not that traditional finance has suddenly discovered crypto.
It is that some crypto-native infrastructure is becoming useful to traditional financial activity.
Institutional Capital Changes the Conversation
Institutional participation is another part of this shift.
The emergence of spot ETFs, asset managers, custodians, banks and digital-asset treasury companies has created new channels through which institutional capital can access digital assets. This does not make institutional investors inherently long-term, nor does it eliminate speculation.
It changes the environment in which digital assets are evaluated.
Once a digital asset becomes part of an institutional investment strategy, questions around custody, liquidity, market structure, regulatory compliance, counterparty risk and portfolio construction become increasingly important.
Now the question is:
Can it be held safely?
Is there enough liquidity to get in and out?
Who’s actually providing the infrastructure behind it?
What happens to it under market stress?
How does regulation apply?
What real economic activity supports its value?
Those are infrastructure questions and they matter more the more institutional money is in the room.
What Happened to DeFi?
DeFi hasn’t stopped being experimental, and it certainly hasn’t stopped being speculative.
But alongside that, it’s developed functions that look a lot like traditional finance: lending and borrowing, trading, derivatives, liquidity provision, collateral management, stablecoin settlement, on-chain credit and yield markets.
The evolution is therefore not from “speculation” to “no speculation.”
It’s a shift from an ecosystem where speculative experimentation dominated the conversation to one where the financial infrastructure itself has become part of the story.
This is an important distinction.
A lending protocol does not need to introduce a completely new concept of lending to be useful. The novelty is increasingly found in how financial functions are delivered, rather than simply in the creation of entirely new financial categories.
Tokenisation Is Part of the Same Shift
The growing interest in tokenisation reflects a similar development.
Tokenisation involves representing assets or rights digitally through blockchain or other distributed-ledger infrastructure.
The underlying asset might be a bond, fund interest, real estate interest, deposit, commodity, or another financial or real-world asset. The interesting question is whether placing these assets on the blockchain will improve their issuance, transfer, settlement, liquidity, programmability, or accessibility.
That is a different kind of narrative.
It connects blockchain technology to existing economic activity rather than creating an entirely separate digital economy.
So, What Happened to the Crypto-Native Narrative?
It did not disappear.
It fragmented, evolved and, in some cases, became infrastructure.
DeFi developed into a collection of financial functions. Stablecoins expanded from crypto trading instruments into settlement and payment infrastructure. Tokenisation began connecting blockchain infrastructure with traditional financial assets. Institutional participation created new channels through which capital could enter digital assets.
Some earlier narratives lost relevance after their speculative cycles while others continue to evolve and new narratives will undoubtedly emerge.
The difference is that the market is increasingly asking a different question.
Earlier crypto cycles often centred on:
What can blockchain enable that did not exist before?
The newer question is:
What financial functions can blockchain infrastructure perform, and does it perform them effectively?
That is a different investment narrative and it also creates a different standard for evaluating projects. A protocol promising a new financial primitive may now have to demonstrate more than technological novelty.
Investors may also look at liquidity, revenue, collateral, risk management, regulatory exposure, integration and actual economic demand. The same applies to stablecoins, tokenised assets and other forms of on-chain infrastructure.
The crypto market is still capable of producing the next meme cycle, NFT boom or speculative frenzy. However, beneath those cycles, something else is happening.
Crypto-native infrastructure is increasingly being judged by the financial functions it can perform, rather than simply by the novelty of what it can create.
Perhaps that is what happened to the crypto-native narrative.
It did not disappear.
It became part of the infrastructure.
If you enjoy analytical commentary on digital asset regulation, crypto markets, and emerging financial technologies, consider subscribing to my newsletter where I share additional research, commentary, and industry insights.
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An honest look at what digital assets deliver – and what they don’t.
Digital assets are increasingly presented as a tool for financial inclusion.
A smartphone and internet connection can, in principle, give someone access to digital assets without opening a traditional bank account or visiting a bank branch. In countries where large portions of the population remain underbanked – and where access to international financial services is limited or expensive – that has obvious appeal.
However, access to a digital wallet is not the same as meaningful financial inclusion.
Digital assets can remove some traditional barriers while creating new ones. This results in a shift in where the barriers to financial participation exist.
The Financial Inclusion Promise of Digital Assets
Traditional financial systems typically require a bank account, identification documents, physical infrastructure, and access to regulated institutions. These requirements exclude a significant share of the global population – particularly in emerging markets.
Digital assets can reduce some of these friction points. A person can create a self-custodial wallet without opening a conventional bank account. Depending on the asset and network, they can receive and transfer value across borders without relying entirely on traditional correspondent banking systems that are slow, expensive, and often unavailable in lower-income regions.
Stablecoins have created a particularly meaningful form of access. A person in a country experiencing significant local-currency depreciation may use a dollar-pegged stablecoin to hold an asset whose value is linked to the US dollar. For freelancers, small businesses, and people receiving money from abroad, digital assets can also provide alternative ways to receive and transfer value.
Cross-border transactions can sometimes be faster and cheaper than traditional alternatives, particularly where stablecoins reduce the number of intermediaries involved.
These use cases help explain why digital assets have gained attention as a potential financial inclusion tool, particularly in emerging markets. However, the ability to access an asset is only the first stage.
Access to a Wallet Is Only the Starting Point
Creating a digital wallet can be relatively easy. The key consideration is whether the user can make meaningful use of what is in it.
Liquidity is one of the most immediate issues.
A person may hold cryptocurrency or a stablecoin, but that does not automatically mean they can use it to pay for everyday expenses. They may still need an exchange, payment provider or P2P market to convert the asset into local currency. If liquidity is limited, conversion is expensive, or there are few businesses willing to accept the asset, the practical value of holding it is reduced.
The same tension applies to on-ramps and off-ramps.
Digital assets can reduce dependence on traditional financial institutions for certain transactions – but users frequently still rely on intermediaries when moving between the crypto ecosystem and the conventional financial system. The intermediary hasn’t disappeared; it has just changed form.
There is also a knowledge barrier specific to digital assets – though its significance depends heavily on who is using them.
For someone already familiar with wallets, networks, transaction fees, and private keys, these are routine considerations. For an ordinary person accustomed to conventional banking, they represent a fundamentally different set of responsibilities.
A typical bank customer doesn’t need to understand payment infrastructure to send money. They select a recipient, enter an amount, and confirm. If they lose access to their banking app, there are established procedures for recovery. If a fraudulent transaction occurs, the bank may be able to investigate, freeze an account, or provide some form of dispute mechanism.
Self-custodial digital assets work differently. Users must select the correct blockchain network, verify wallet addresses carefully, account for transaction fees, and protect their private keys or seed phrases. Blockchain transactions are also generally final once confirmed – there is no equivalent of calling the bank.
A single mistake of sending an asset to the wrong address, choosing the wrong network, losing a private key, or approving a malicious transaction can result in permanent loss of funds with little or no practical recourse.
The obvious counterpoint is that crypto exchanges can remove much of this complexity.
A user can hold assets on an exchange and interact with them through an interface that resembles online banking, with the exchange managing wallets, keys, and transaction infrastructure on their behalf.
However, that solution comes with a trade-off. The more accessible the system becomes for an ordinary user, the more it depends on an intermediary. The technical risks of self-custody may fall away, but the user becomes dependent on the exchange for custody, access, withdrawals, and compliance – a different kind of trust relationship, not the absence of one.
This produces two distinct models of participation.
Self-custody shifts responsibility toward the user. Custodial platforms shift some of that responsibility back to an intermediary.
Neither eliminates the underlying knowledge and trust requirements. They distribute them differently.
For someone comfortable with crypto, these distinctions feel routine. For someone whose entire experience of financial services has involved a bank that manages the technical infrastructure and provides recovery mechanisms when things go wrong, they represent a meaningful shift in how financial responsibility is allocated – and who bears the consequences when it isn’t.
Stablecoins: Access to Dollars, But for What Purpose?
Stablecoins illustrate both the potential and the limitations of digital assets as a financial inclusion tool.
A dollar-pegged stablecoin can give individuals and businesses access to dollar-denominated value without requiring a conventional US bank account. This can be particularly useful in economies where the local currency is volatile or access to foreign currency is restricted.
However, the use case for stablecoins is still developing.
Much of their activity today is connected to trading, transfers between exchanges, cross-border payments and other digital-asset activities rather than everyday purchases.
Their broader use as a means of payment, particularly for ordinary consumer transactions, is still evolving, and understanding this distinction matters when assessing their contribution to financial inclusion.
Giving someone access to a dollar-denominated digital asset does not automatically give them access to the financial services or economic opportunities they need.
For example, a user may be able to acquire USDT or USDC but still depend on an exchange, P2P market or other intermediary to convert it into local currency. If local liquidity is limited or there are few practical ways to spend the asset, its usefulness outside the digital-asset ecosystem may be restricted.
This does not undermine the financial inclusion potential of stablecoins. It simply means that their impact should be assessed against their actual and emerging use cases rather than assuming that access to a stablecoin is equivalent to access to a dollar bank account or a conventional payment system.
Stablecoin adoption is expanding beyond trading and into payments, remittances, and other financial activities, their contribution to financial inclusion may become more significant. For now, the extent of that contribution depends heavily on whether users can move between the digital-asset ecosystem and the wider economy.
Regulation Can Create Another Divide
Regulation affects who can participate and on what terms. Clear rules can provide consumer protection, establish standards for service providers and give legitimate businesses greater certainty.
Poorly designed regulation can have the opposite effect. Rules that are unclear, excessively restrictive or disproportionately expensive to comply with may reduce the number of regulated providers serving ordinary users. At the same time, weak regulation can expose users to fraud, poor custody practices and other forms of abuse.
In either case, the people with the fewest alternatives may bear the greatest consequences.
The regulatory challenge is whether regulation can provide protection without making legitimate access unnecessarily difficult.
What Financial Inclusion Actually Requires
Creating access is only the first step.
For digital assets to contribute meaningfully to financial inclusion, users must also be able to make practical use of them.
That means looking beyond wallet creation and considering several dimensions that determine whether participation is real:
Usability – can ordinary users understand and operate the technology without taking on risks they don’t fully understand?
Liquidity – can they convert or spend their assets when they need to, at a cost that makes sense for their circumstances?
Consumer protection – what recourse exists when an exchange fails, an account is compromised, or a transaction goes wrong?
Regulatory clarity – can legitimate users and businesses operate within a predictable legal framework, or does uncertainty push activity into poorly regulated channels?
These question also reveal an important distinction between access and inclusion.
A person may be able to open a wallet and receive cryptocurrency but if they cannot easily convert it, don’t understand the risks involved, have limited recourse when something goes wrong, or operate in a market without regulatory clarity, that access has limited practical value.
Digital assets can reduce certain traditional barriers to financial participation but they don’t eliminate barriers altogether. They move them – and in some cases, they create new ones for the people least equipped to navigate them.
It’s important to explore where the remaining barriers exist, who is affected by them, and how effectively the system facilitates meaningful financial participation for the people it aims to serve.
My Honest Assessment
Digital assets have genuine potential to promote financial inclusion. They offer alternative payment channels, facilitate cross-border transfers, provide access to dollar-denominated value, and allow people to participate in financial networks without depending entirely on traditional banking infrastructure.
However, they do not eliminate financial barriers. They redistribute them.
The traditional financial system places barriers around bank accounts, documentation, physical branches, and financial intermediaries. Digital assets can shift those barriers toward digital literacy, liquidity, on- and off-ramp access, consumer protection, and regulatory clarity.
That distinction matters when evaluating whether digital assets are actually advancing financial inclusion.
The number of wallets created is not, by itself, a meaningful measure of inclusion. A more useful measure is whether people can access digital assets, understand how they work, use them effectively, convert or spend them when necessary, and have meaningful protection when things go wrong.
Digital assets can contribute to financial inclusion. However, the effectiveness of access depends on the surrounding ecosystem, which includes regulation, infrastructure, education, liquidity, and consumer protections that facilitate meaningful participation.
If you enjoy analytical commentary on digital asset regulation, crypto markets, and emerging financial technologies, consider subscribing to my newsletter where I share additional research, commentary, and industry insights.
Also, if your company, startup, or publication needs clear, well-researched content on blockchain, digital assets, fintech, or emerging technology law, my inbox is always open.
Bitchat, Jack Dorsey’s censorship-resistant, Bluetooth-enabled messaging app, has gone viral again, this time due to the Indian Government trying to get it banned from GitHub. In this latest round of authoritarian measures versus decentralized technologies, Bitchat has won.
In July 2025, Jack Dorsey announced a new messaging application he described as a weekend project. The app, called Bitchat, was designed to work without internet access, phone numbers, user accounts, or central servers. It relied instead on Bluetooth mesh networks for local communication and the Nostr protocol for wider reach.
A year later, that same application became the subject of a formal takedown request from India’s cybercrime authorities during a period of student protests. The episode offers a clear illustration of how cypherpunk ideas—building systems that function without permission from intermediaries—continue to shape tools used in moments of political tension.
Calle, one of the main developers behind the Android version of the app, took the statements from the Indian government as a positive review of Bitchat’s effectiveness, tweeting:
“India forces GitHub to take down Bitchat
‘Bitchat enables anonymous communication without mandatory user registration, phone number verification, or centralized logging of communications.
The technical architecture of the application significantly impedes interception, attribution, and investigation by law enforcement agencies.’ – Government of India”
What Bitchat Is
Bitchat is a peer-to-peer encrypted messaging application. Devices form local mesh networks over Bluetooth, automatically discovering nearby peers and relaying messages across multiple hops. When internet connectivity is available, the app can fall back to Nostr relays. Users can join public local channels, send private end-to-end encrypted messages, and access location-based channels organized by geographic zones.
The application requires no registration and includes a panic feature that clears stored data. The code is open source, with the primary repositories hosted under the permissionlesstech organization on GitHub. The iOS version is available on the App Store; the Android version is on Google Play and distributed via GitHub releases, as well as many other app stores like Nostr’s Zapstore. Recent updates added the ability for Android devices to share the installation file directly with nearby phones over Wi-Fi or Nearby Share, letting new users join the mesh easily without the need for internet access.
Key figures associated with the project include Jack Dorsey and open-source developer Calle, known for work on Cashu ecash. Bitcoin Magazine has previously noted experimental demonstrations of offline Bitcoin-related payments moving across the same mesh.
Earlier Deployments
Bitchat first saw significant real-world use during periods of government-restricted connectivity. In September 2025, during unrest in Nepal, the app recorded nearly 50,000 downloads from that country in a single day, according to data shared by Calle and reported by Bitcoin Magazine. Similar spikes occurred during blackouts in other regions. In January 2026, Iranian users turned to Bitchat and a localized fork during internet restrictions, as covered in Bitcoin Magazine.
These earlier cases established a pattern: when conventional mobile networks or social platforms become unreliable or restricted, tools that operate independently of those networks see rapid adoption.
The India Events
In May 2026, India’s National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET-UG) for medical school admissions was canceled after evidence of a significant leak of the test’s questions. The controversy, involving millions of candidates, undermined the fairness of the exam and was linked to student suicides, contributing to the growth of a youth-led satirical movement known as the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). Protests centered on demands for accountability from Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and broader reforms to the examination system.
By mid-July, demonstrators had gathered at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi and attempted marches toward Parliament. Reports indicated blackouts on mobile data or internet access in areas around the protests. On 24 July 2026, the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), issued a notice directing GitHub to restrict access to three Bitchat repositories within three hours. The notice cited the application’s ability to function during network restrictions and internet shutdowns, arguing that this architecture could impede lawful interception and attribution.
On 24 July, Dorsey posted the notice on X with the statement: “the government of India does not like technologies like bitchat and wants it taken down.” Market data from Sensor Tower, according to TechCrunch, reported across multiple outlets, showed that India accounted for approximately 85 percent of the app’s global downloads between 17 and 23 July, with more than 91,000 downloads in India over five days and daily active users exceeding 330,000 at the peak.
The GitHub repositories remained accessible in the immediate aftermath, despite the takedown attempt by the Indian government. Developers and users circulated mirrors, including on decentralized platforms such as Radicle. The application itself continued to function on devices that already had it installed, and the offline file-sharing feature reduced reliance on app stores or GitHub for further distribution. Pradhan resigned on 25 July.
Historical Context
The use of messaging tools during protests is not new, nor is Dorsey’s role in support of technologies useful during tense democratic protests. During the Arab Spring, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook were widely credited with helping coordinate demonstrations and amplify information, leading some observers to describe the events as “Twitter revolutions” or “Facebook revolutions.” Those centralized services, however, remained dependent on internet access and corporate intermediaries that could be pressured or blocked and in some cases were.
A closer technological predecessor appeared in 2014 during Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Protesters downloaded FireChat, a mesh-networking application that allowed devices to communicate directly over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi without internet. The app saw hundreds of thousands of downloads and millions of chat sessions in a short period as mobile networks became congested or as users prepared for possible disruptions.
Bitchat continues this line of development, though more closely integrated with Bitcoin-associated technologies. It combines mesh networking with an open protocol (Nostr), stronger cryptographic defaults, and fully open-source code. The response to the Indian GitHub notice, which saw rapid mirroring and peer-to-peer distribution of the application itself, illustrates a further step: the tool is no longer dependent on a single company or platform for its survival; once it has been distributed, it self-replicates.
Cypherpunk Principles in Practice
In 1993, Eric Hughes published A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto. It opens with the statement: “Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age.” The manifesto argues that individuals cannot rely on governments or corporations to protect privacy and that the practical response is to write and deploy code that makes surveillance and control more difficult.
Bitchat is an application of that approach to communication. It does not require user information to function; identities are purely based on cryptography. Users do not need to trust a central operator. It continues to function when conventional infrastructure is restricted. When an intermediary such as GitHub is asked to remove the source code, the popularity and the offline distribution methods of the project limited the effectiveness of the request.
This does not make the technology inherently aligned with any particular political outcome, but this is now the third time it goes viral in the context of democratic demonstrations as a solution to government-driven internet censorship. From FireChat in Hong Kong to Bitchat in Nepal, Iran, and now India, the same underlying demand appears: communication that does not disappear when the network does. Bitchat servers that demand by giving people tools to communicate and coordinate without centralized infrastructure.
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