India orders takedown of Jack Dorsey’s bitcoin-linked messaging app Bitchat

India’s Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, part of the Home Ministry, has ordered GitHub to take down repositories associated with Bitchat, an offline messaging app created by Jack Dorsey, CEO of Block and bitcoin advocate. The takedown request cited concerns that Bitchat’s decentralized, registration-free, and encrypted Bluetooth mesh network design impedes lawful interception and investigation by law enforcement agencies. The digital notice demanded GitHub disable access within three hours under a provision of the country’s IT Act.

Bitchat was released as open-source software in July 2025 and is built to relay encrypted messages and bitcoin transactions offline by passing data phone-to-phone until connected devices broadcast them online. This architecture is intended to maintain communication and payments during network outages, blackouts, or government-imposed internet shutdowns—which some bitcoin supporters champion as resistant to censorship or control.

The takedown order comes amid widespread protests in Delhi by student groups called the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ opposing a national exam scandal. Authorities have repeatedly suspended internet access at protest sites to disrupt coordination, but demonstrators have used Bitchat and similar Bluetooth mesh apps to continue organizing offline. This context makes Bitchat one of the tools enabling protesters to circumvent government attempts to block communications.

As of Friday afternoon in Asia, it was unclear if GitHub complied with the order within the specified timeline. The app remained accessible on both Google’s and Apple’s app stores. Experts note that even if GitHub removes the repositories, the open-source code likely exists on other platforms, so takedown requests rarely eliminate the software entirely. The move illustrates the ongoing tension between government control over digital communication and decentralized technology designed to resist such interference.