Elon Musk Announces Launch Of XChat — But Tech Experts Question Its Supposed ‘Bitcoin-Style’ Encryption

Eccentric tech billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of the X (formerly Twitter) social media platform, announced on Sunday the launch of a brand-new messaging feature called XChat. The feature touts capabilities such as encrypted conversations, vanishing messages, file transfers, and audio and video calls.

However, Musk’s statement that XChat is built on a programming language called Rust with Bitcoin-style encryption confounded Bitcoiners. The comment sparked a flurry of replies from Bitcoin enthusiasts and cryptography experts, who expressed doubts about what exactly it meant.

Experts Are Skeptical Of “Bitcoin-Style” Encryption

JAN3 and Pixelmatic CEO Samson Mow noted that “Bitcoin isn’t encrypted,” while Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr also chimed in, stating “Bitcoin doesn’t even use encryption” and that using the Rust language was “a bad idea for security reasons.”

Bitcoin employs elliptic curve cryptography and SHA-256 hashing for transaction validation and key generation. However, transactions conducted on the Bitcoin blockchain are not encrypted but are signed. Everything you do is broadcast publicly on the blockchain, as all data shared between Bitcoin nodes is unencrypted.

“Seriously,  what is Bitcoin-style encryption? Bitcoin primarily uses signatures, not encryption,” Ian Miers, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, said on X. “This is like saying, we decided to run our rocket on water, since NASA uses Hydrogen and Oxygen.

Musk’s announcement follows a week of revived interest in his various firms after he confirmed his exit from the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.). DOGE, named in part as a nod to Musk’s favored crypto Dogecoin, was created to reduce federal waste.

Bitcoin, the industry’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap, traded lower near $104,159 at publication time, having declined by over 5% over the past week, CoinGecko data shows.

“Needless to say, “Bitcoin style” and “Rust” are not descriptions of an encryption scheme, nor are they strong indicators of security for a messaging app. Also, unless encrypted DMs are only in app, odds are they aren’t just in Rust,” Miers concluded.

It’s worth mentioning that Musk’s EV maker Tesla purchased $1.5 billion worth of BTC in February 2021, calling it a reserve-management strategy. Although the company offloaded the majority of its holdings in Q2 2022, it still holds approximately 11,900 BTC on its balance sheet.