On Monday, September 8, 2025, Nepalese youth started protesting on the streets of Kathmandu in response to the Nepali authorities’s banning 26 main social media platforms on Thursday, September 4, 2025.
On the peak of the protests, the Nepalese protestors started downloading Bitchat, a brand new app created and developed by Twitter/X and Block founder Jack Dorsey and open-source developer Calle.
The app, a censorship-resistant messaging app that harnesses Bluetooth mesh expertise in addition to the Nostr protocol and that doesn’t even require an web connection to make use of, was downloaded virtually 49,000 instances on September 8 in Nepal, in response to information shared by Calle on X.
Bitchat allowed the protestors to permissionlessly talk with each other as they ousted the nation’s prime minister (and burned down the nation’s parliament constructing).
The Lesson for Nepali Youth
The lesson right here is that apps like Bitchat are usually not solely necessary instruments to make use of within the wake of the blackout of centralized communications providers and through protests, however that they’re instrumental in preserving rights that underpin free and open societies.
In our trendy digital world, we should protect the liberty to not solely talk on-line but additionally to transact within the digital area.
A instrument like Bitchat, which at the moment allows the previous, also needs to quickly allow the latter, in response to reporting from Forbes, which cited Calle, who voiced his objective of enabling Bitcoin-based Ecash transactions through Bitchat within the close to future.
By embracing instruments like Bitchat, Bitcoin, Ecash, and Nostr — freedom tech staples — the Nepali youth can assist to stop the kind of abuse of energy that they simply protested towards.
For instance, Nostr and the varied social media purchasers constructed on prime of it, can’t be banned or shut off, which implies the Nepali authorities wouldn’t have even had the ability to take the motion that sparked the protests.
Freedom tech doesn’t simply exist to assist folks struggle the battles to get their freedom again — it’s there to assist them keep it, as nicely.
This text is a Take. Opinions expressed are totally the creator’s and don’t essentially mirror these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.
