Jack Dorsey made an open source peer-to-peer encrypted Bluetooth messaging app called Bitchat
“Twitter co-founder and Block Head Jack Dorsey launched a new peer-to-peer messaging app over the weekend called Bitchat that runs entirely over Bluetooth. Bitchat relies on Bluetooth Low Energy mesh networks to send encrypted communications directly to nearby devices without requiring internet or cellular service.”
Don't be too concerned about the Bluetooth range as this app sets up mesh connections across multiple peers, much like how Meshtastic and Reticulum radio works. So, hopping across two or more peers will quickly extend this reach.
Bitchat is working over Bluetooth LE and the claims are that distance between peers could be as much as 300m. Certainly, for line of sight such distances should be easy to achieve.
The plan in future seems to be to include Wi-Fi Direct as another connectivity option. I'm wondering if this could evolve in future to work something like the Reticulum network, across all sorts of protocols.
As with Nostr and other similar projects, Bitchat requires no account creation, no servers, no e-mail or mobile phone registrations, and also it has password protected channels, and even a panic mode that will clear all data in the logo is triple-tapped.
Right now, it is working on iOS devices through Apple Testflight, and an Android client is still expected to be released in the near future. As this type of app is normally easier to released for Android, I'm wondering if it was not primarily intended right now to protect the privacy of protesters inside the USA.
See
https://www.theverge.com/news/701272/jack-dorsey-bitchat-bluetooth-messaging-app and the GitHub site at
https://github.com/jackjackbits/bitchat
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