Jack Dorsey spent a weekend coding a mesh network messaging app called Bitchat. Two months later, that same app became instrumental in coordinating protests that overthrew Nepal’s government – the same coup where Zoomers used Discord polls to select their new Prime Minister.
On the latest Bitcoin Season 2, Blockspace’s Charlie Spears and Colin Harper discuss this extraordinary intersection of Bitcoin-adjacent technology, political upheaval, and the Bitcoin advocacy of Charlie Kirk.
Below is an edited transcript of the conversation.
Listen to the full podcast episode on YouTube by clicking here.
The revolution will be mesh networked
Charlie: Colin, we’ve got a wild story this week. The Zoomers are rebelling in Nepal using an app called Bitchat. Isn’t this what DAOs should have been doing this whole time?
Colin: It’s an incredible intersection of different things. You’ve got Bitchat, this mesh network messaging app that uses Bluetooth and can also use Nostr. You’ve got Discord, where apparently votes for the new prime minister are happening. And you’ve got Zoomers rising up and reworking the state using all the tech tools they’re so savvy with. It’s almost like the sovereign individual, network state thesis playing out.
Charlie: The revolution will not be televised, it will be vlogged. There’s this travel vlogger who just happened to be in Nepal on vacation when the protests, which had been warming up for weeks, really ignited. The parliamentary building was completely set ablaze. Imagine walking on Capitol Hill and the House of Representatives is just on fire.
In classic vlogger format, he’s got the quick cuts, the “oh no” moments, starting with things literally hitting the fan, then cutting to “six hours earlier.” We’re getting firsthand accounts from people who weren’t even there to cover the protests. This guy was just touring Nepal as a travel vlogger and ended up in the middle of this.
When Nepal shut down the internet, Bitchat stepped in
Charlie: Each major revolution that happens in the world is increasingly online. Jack Dorsey this summer vibe-coded an app called Bitchat, which creates a mesh network. This app basically lets people communicate without having to go through their centralized internet service provider, your Cox or Comcast. Those are usually turned off by administrations and regimes to quell protests by limiting communication.
Leading up to the Nepalese overthrow, there were posts on the r/Nepal subreddit asking: which apps can we use that are platform agnostic, iPhone and Android, open source, and work today? Bitchat was the one. We saw downloads go from 3,000 to 50,000 in like a day.
Colin: Let’s give some context. On September 4th, the government in Nepal ordered the shutdown of 26 social media platforms like Facebook, X, YouTube, Reddit, Signal, Snapchat. They banned all these platforms for failing to register under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology’s new rules, partly to enable enforcement of a new digital services tax. Kind of similar to what Canada has been proposing for tech companies, funnily enough.
Charlie: Canada and Nepal, strange bedfellows.
Colin: Critics allege the shutdown was prompted by a social media trend highlighting nepotism, focusing on the undue privileges enjoyed by children and relatives of influential political leaders. The social media ban was the last straw. Where do you go when you can’t use any of the usual apps?
According to reporting, Bitchat saw 48,000 downloads on September 8th from Nepal alone, representing more than 38% of total installs at the time. The second largest contingent comes from Indonesia with 11,300 downloads, also seeing political strife.
How Bluetooth makes Bitchat a revolutionary tool
Colin: Jack Dorsey coded the iOS version and Calle, a notable Bitcoin privacy developer, did the Android version. To explain how it works: I have Bitchat, you have Bitchat. We connect using our Bluetooth to each other’s devices. Now we can message each other. Each of our phones acts as a node within the mesh network, and we can connect different users. That’s how you expand access.
The range is pretty modest, maybe max 30 meters depending on conditions. But in an urban setting with all those bodies packed in, you can create pretty strong links.
Charlie: Mesh networks aren’t new. During COVID, I was installing these things called goTennas. This is something the freedom and cypherpunk movement people have really wanted because Bitcoin has to operate on really centralized rails, your ISP. While that’s relatively free in the United States, other countries literally have a playbook: turn off the internet.
The thing about mesh networks is they really rely on network effects. It’s less about whether you’ve got the optimal antenna system or perfect cryptography or UI design. The most important thing is that more people use it. Mesh networks historically have almost always been limited by the fact that they aren’t adopted in the first place. When you have viral sensations like Bitchat with 50,000 people in Nepal, a bunch of Zoomers with their phones, this can actually be an instrumental, censorship-resistant communications network.
Discord Democracy: how a gaming app choose Nepal’s next Prime Minister
Charlie: This app doesn’t just work as a mesh network. It can also plug into Nostr, which is a social network with relays that power the network. It’s theoretically more censorship resistant as a communications platform. You can communicate globally or regionally if you wish, though that requires going over an ISP.
Now here’s where it gets really wild. When you overthrow a government, you have to figure out who takes its place. When you don’t have people appointed to run polling stations or an actual junta or militia that self-appoints the next dictator, this becomes an open question of crowdsourcing the next leader.
They used Discord to hold a big chat and put up a poll where people actually voted for someone. What’s crazy is the military and police on the ground in Nepal appear to actually be upholding the results of this Discord poll. It’s like if you join a giant chat room, a video chat with all these cartoon avatars, moderators and admins, and they’re like “Okay everybody, poll closed!”.
Why this isn’t what DAOs promised (but it’s better)
Colin: The Discord aspect is fascinating. Every revolution ends up imposing its own form of tyranny. Sometimes it’s slaughtering millions, sometimes it’s softer forms of control. But the overthrowers always bring some aspect of their in-group culture to the political process. That’s what we’re seeing with Discord. If you don’t know how to use Discord, I guess you just don’t vote. Obviously this is a makeshift solution right now for them to get an interim prime minister.
On the “what the hell” bingo card for 2025, this one’s pretty far up there. Not only are they using Discord to coordinate decisions for a coup, but they’re actually using a Bitcoin-adjacent protocol to coordinate the protest and government ouster.
Charlie: Crypto does play a role here. When they cut off Stripe and other financial rails, crypto was an alternative. Bitcoin obviously being the biggest one. But isn’t this kind of what DAOs imagined themselves to be? If you go back to 2021 and all those Twitter threads about giving people the ability to vote using cryptographic systems and networks—notably, we’re not using a blockchain for this, but this is validation of the internetification and new types of networks being leveraged to enact real change and mobilize real people.
Colin: It’s a good example of not overthinking what you need to deliver, especially to protesters, dissidents, and human rights advocates. They don’t need a DAO with some convoluted Rube Goldberg token voting mechanism for deciding how to execute the next general in the streets. You don’t need a token vote on whether it’s going to be the guillotine or the firing squad.
A censorship-resistant, highly resilient chat platform like Bitchat is perfect, and probably not something a lot of people would think to produce because it’s so simple and seemingly inconsequential. Sometimes we try to not just reinvent the wheel, but make the wheel something it can’t be. Add a token to the wheel.
The three legs of Bitcoin’s revolutionary toolkit
Colin: Sometimes all you need is Bitchat or good money like Bitcoin or, don’t shoot me, stablecoins. They’ve provided financial tooling for protesters, dissidents, and political exiles all around the world — people who have been cut off from the financial networking and plumbing of the world around them.
To me, it almost seems like Bitcoin and these crypto systems provide three legs of a chair. The first and most obvious is financial, everything from saving money to sending remittances to day-to-day payments. I don’t think we need to quibble over the difference between a savings technology and payments technology.
The second leg is communications. Nostr is a good example, Bitchat uses Bluetooth, and even Bitcoin itself can send messages in OP_RETURN.
The third, dare I say, is storage. Not big storage, not a lot of storage, but still potentially very useful for journalists, whistleblowers, people who want to leak information and publish it to a database that is incorruptible.
Charlie: We have multiple cases of someone posting a hash and then later revealing, through the Bitcoin transaction, that they had verifiably committed to this thing two years ago. That’s a powerful technology.
Charlie Kirk’s Bitcoin takes
Charlie: We’re going to pivot to the political and cultural hot topic of the week. This relates to Charlie Kirk. We’re not going to talk about the assassination, except to say that we condemn violence of all kinds.
Charlie had historically, in these culture war discussions, talked about Bitcoin. A lot of people are going to be hearing this because of the notoriety of the topic and because it’s from a very relevant person. But he spoke about Bitcoin, and I had not heard this because I don’t really listen to the podcasts he was on. But he had a good grasp of Bitcoin.
“Should the US do a Bitcoin reserve? Absolutely yes. The United States should have a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Who should pay for it? That’s a good question. Hopefully some of the tariff money could potentially be used. There is something called the mass adoption theory, which is that over a period of time, like the English language or US dollar, things just catch on. They’re volitional and there’s no stopping it. I think Bitcoin is that. You have to watch out though – quantum computing could be a real problem.”
Man goes straight from saying we should have a strategic reserve to mentioning the quantum issue!
Colin: It’s like barbell theory but for bull and bear FUD. You’ve got the strategic reserve bull fuel and then you’ve got the quantum bear FUD.
Charlie: This particular interview was submitted by Hunter Beast, who I’ve had on the show, who’s been leading the quantum discussion on how we mitigate a potential quantum issue.
The second part of this interview is also interesting because he talks about Bitcoin being adopted very rapidly among the wealthy.
“There’s only so many penthouses in London and Paris they could buy. There’s only so many ranches in Wyoming they could buy. You create all this money, the money goes upward to wealth inequality. The question is, what do rich people do with money? There’s only so many equities they can buy, only so many shares in Nvidia and Apple and Microsoft they could justify. Well, money needs to find a home and it’s found a home in Bitcoin. Literally the wealthiest families on the planet are starting to park serious money in Bitcoin, and because it’s scarce, it’s easy to transfer, and it’s just a winner. Sometimes there’s mass adoption and it just rises to the surface. I think Bitcoin is that.”
That is a clip that a lot of people are going to hear due to everybody following up old Luigi quotes.
Colin: It goes to show how many proponents Bitcoin has behind the scenes. They’re just not as rabid or dogged as some of the maximalists who make it their entire identity. I didn’t know that at all about Charlie.
That’s probably going to become one of those posthumous viral videos. Our heart goes out to the Kirk family, and we condemn acts of violence. It’s very sad. To me it shows we’re at a very sad and critical juncture in our nation’s development. Political violence is creeping back into the fray, and it’s popular with some people — that’s the thing that worries me.
