Jack Dorsey’s decentralized messaging application Bitchat has climbed to the top of Apple’s Social Networking App Store chart in France, following nationwide demonstrations and a prolonged mobile network disruption.
The application reached first place in the category on October 22, 2026, ahead of established messaging platforms including Telegram and Signal. By the morning of October 23, Bitchat had also reached second place among all free applications in France, behind Anthropic’s Claude.
An October 26 ranking continued to show Bitchat leading the country’s Social Networking category. The surge followed demonstrations on October 17 and an October 21 outage affecting Orange and Sosh mobile customers across France for nearly ten hours.
The combination of network instability and public discussion about potential restrictions on social media platforms brought renewed attention to messaging services that do not depend on conventional telecommunications infrastructure. However, the rankings measure relative download activity rather than total active users, and verified French download figures have not been disclosed.
Bluetooth Mesh Network Enables Offline Communication
Dorsey introduced Bitchat in July 2025 as an experimental peer-to-peer messaging application. Unlike conventional messaging platforms, Bitchat allows nearby smartphones to communicate through Bluetooth Low Energy without requiring mobile data, Wi-Fi, phone numbers or registered accounts.
The application creates a mesh network in which participating devices relay messages between one another. Individual Bluetooth connections generally operate over relatively short distances, but messages can travel farther when multiple devices form a connected network. This design makes Bitchat potentially useful during telecommunications outages, large public gatherings and periods of restricted internet access.
Private messages use end-to-end encryption through the Noise Protocol Framework, while a public mesh channel allows nearby participants to exchange messages. Bitchat also supports communication through the Nostr protocol when internet connectivity is available.
Its Bitcoin-related functionality includes integration with Cashu, a privacy-oriented eCash system backed by Bitcoin. Cashu uses cryptographic tokens representing claims on funds held by participating issuers, enabling certain payment interactions without recording every transfer directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.
However, the offline messaging network does not itself require Bitcoin transactions, and Cashu payments introduce different trust assumptions from direct Bitcoin self-custody. The application is open source and is distributed under the name Bitchat Mesh by Permissionless Tech.
French Protests and Orange Outage Drive Interest
Bitchat’s rise coincided with heightened demand for alternative communications infrastructure in France. Demonstrations against rising living costs on October 17 were followed by political discussions about restricting access to social media during periods of unrest.
French officials discussed possible targeted restrictions, although no nationwide social media shutdown was implemented on October 24. Separately, Orange experienced a major mobile service disruption on October 21, affecting calls, text messages and mobile internet access.
The outage lasted from approximately 11:20 a.m. until 9 p.m., according to French technology publication iGeneration. Bitchat’s ability to exchange messages without relying on mobile operators offered a practical alternative for users concerned about future disruptions. The application had previously attracted attention during periods of political unrest and internet restrictions in Nepal, Madagascar, Iran and Uganda.
Nevertheless, its usefulness depends on having enough nearby users to maintain a functioning mesh network. Messages cannot travel indefinitely without intermediary devices, and users must generally install the application before losing internet access.
Public mesh messages are also visible to nearby participants, while the application has undergone less extensive security scrutiny than established encrypted messaging platforms. Bitchat’s French App Store performance demonstrates growing interest in decentralized communication infrastructure, but it does not establish sustained adoption or widespread use of its Bitcoin payment features.
For Dorsey’s broader ecosystem, the development illustrates how Bitcoin-adjacent technologies are expanding beyond financial transactions into communications and privacy-focused applications.