en.coinotag.com
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Context: Protests over water and power cuts triggered broad civil unrest and a surge in demand for decentralized messaging.
Bitchat downloads Madagascar spike amid protests — learn why users turned to offline encrypted messaging during outages.
Protests in Antananarivo over recurring water and power cuts triggered a surge in interest and downloads for Bitchat, a decentralized, Bluetooth-mesh encrypted messaging app, as residents sought offline communication options during unrest.
Block CEO Jack Dorsey’s decentralized peer-to-peer messaging service Bitchat registered a notable increase in downloads in Madagascar amid nationwide protests, following similar patterns seen in Nepal and Indonesia earlier in September. Local searches and installation metrics point to a rapid, protest-linked adoption spike.
A Bitcoin open-source developer using the X handle callebtc, who contributes to the messaging service, posted on Sunday that “Bitchat downloads spiking in Madagascar,” and shared screenshots of local news coverage of the demonstrations.