CoinDesk
India's top cybercrime coordination body has ordered GitHub to disable repositories for Bitchat, Jack Dorsey's offline Bluetooth mesh messaging app, within three hours of a notice issued late Thursday. The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, a unit of the Home Ministry, acted under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act and named three repositories tied to the project. Whether GitHub complied by the deadline was unclear; the app remained available on Google and Apple stores as of Asian afternoon hours Friday.
The notice, reviewed by CoinDesk, says Bitchat's registration-free, no-account, no-server architecture "significantly impedes lawful interception, attribution, and investigation by law enforcement agencies." Bitchat relays encrypted messages between phones over Bluetooth mesh networks and was designed to pass bitcoin transactions phone to phone until a connected device broadcasts them to the network, a design Dorsey released as open-source in July 2025 to keep payments alive during blackouts or state-imposed shutdowns.
Why it matters
The order lands while Delhi is in the middle of some of its largest street protests in years, as student demonstrators under the "Cockroach Janta Party" banner rally against a national exam scandal and face tear gas and baton charges. The government has ordered repeated internet suspensions around the protest sites, and researchers have documented demonstrators turning to Bluetooth mesh apps, Bitchat among them, to keep coordinating once connectivity drops. The takedown targets one of the specific tools that made the shutdowns easier to circumvent.
Market impact
For bitcoin, the test is symbolic. The property the asset's advocates have sold since the cypherpunk mailing lists, transacting without permission from any government or intermediary, is now being tried against a government actively trying to switch it off. The near-term price impact is limited: Bitchat is a niche messaging client, not a custody or rails product, and the code is open-source so a single takedown rarely erases it.
Frequently asked questions
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What is Bitchat and who built it?
Bitchat is an offline Bluetooth mesh messaging app that relays encrypted messages and bitcoin transactions between phones without servers, accounts or internet connectivity. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Block and a long-time bitcoin advocate, released it as open-source software in July 2025.
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Why did India order the Bitchat repositories taken down?
The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, a unit of the Home Ministry, told GitHub that Bitchat's registration-free, no-account architecture "significantly impedes lawful interception, attribution, and investigation by law enforcement agencies." The order was issued under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act.
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Were the takedown orders connected to the Delhi protests?
The order coincided with student protests in Delhi under the "Cockroach Janta Party" banner against a national exam scandal. Researchers documented demonstrators turning to Bluetooth mesh apps, including Bitchat, to coordinate after repeated internet suspensions around protest sites.
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Did GitHub comply with the takedown order?
Compliance within the three-hour deadline was unclear as of publication. CoinDesk reported Bitchat was still downloadable from Google and Apple app stores as of Asian afternoon hours Friday, and open-source code is typically mirrored across multiple hosts beyond GitHub.
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What does this mean for bitcoin?
The order tests the permissionless, censorship-resistant property bitcoin advocates have sold since the cypherpunk era. Near-term price impact is limited because Bitchat is a niche client and the code is mirrored, but the symbolic read is significant: a major democracy is treating an offline bitcoin-routing…
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