Elon Musk recently made an announcement. He announced that the social media platform, which he officially changed from Twitter to X in July 2023, will soon provide a new messaging feature called XChat. XChat highlights features such as encrypted conversations, lost messages, file transfers, voice and video calls. However, the only thing that caught the attention of the cryptocurrency community was the emphasis on “Bitcoin style” in its announcement.
Bitcoin style emphasis in XChat announcement
Elon Musk said in a recent statement that X will soon launch XChat. XChat will have features such as encrypted conversations, lost messages, file transfers and video calls. However, Musk said that this new feature is “built on Rust with (Bitcoin-style) encryption, with a completely new architecture.” This has caused cryptography experts and developers to be skeptical of the development.
“Bitcoin doesn't even use encryption,” Bitcoin Core developer and OCEAN CTO Luke Dashjr said in response to Musk's post. Another high-profile figure, Samson Mow, CEO of JAN3 and Pixelmatic, echoed this sentiment, adding, “Bitcoin is not encrypted.”
Indeed, Bitcoin does not use encryption for message privacy. In particular, it uses complex cryptographic techniques such as elliptic curve cryptography and SHA-256 hashing for key generation and transaction verification.
Developers also questioned XChat's connection to Rust following Musk's announcement. Eliza Labs founder Shaw Walters said that Bitcoin was written in C++ and Rust clients joined the network later.
Telegram deal allegations
The encrypted messaging issue comes after a public denial of a deal with Telegram. Last week, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov claimed that Telegram had entered into a one-year partnership with Musk's xAI, including a $300 million payment and app integration. However, Musk responded to this claim by saying, “No agreement has been signed.”
Musk's XChat announcement comes a week after the US announced that he was leaving the D.O.G.E department. X also recently launched a new digital wallet called X Money.
