X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk said that this week, users of the social network will get access to a new messaging service called XChat. And while X already had messaging capabilities, the new service will get more features and "Bitcoin-style" encryption.
While a more secure messaging service could be useful for many, including journalists who communicate with company representatives through the platform, the aforementioned “Bitcoin-style encryption” is questionable — since the cryptocurrency itself does not actually use encryption.
For security, cryptocurrency uses cryptography, which is paramount to the security of transactions on the blockchain network. Cryptography helps protect assets from unauthorized access and transfer, as well as ensure user privacy. However, Bitcoin transactions themselves do not use encryption and are publicly available, which is definitely not the best option for messengers.
In the promotional message about the launch of XChat on the X platform, the developers stated that the service supports end-to-end encryption. However, this somewhat contradicts the words of Elon Musk, who claims that XChat is built on a new architecture using the Rust language and “Bitcoin-style” encryption. This statement of the billionaire was also picked up by his supporters, but Musk did not provide any explanation as to what kind of encryption this is.
As a reminder, details about XChat first surfaced back in April. Overall, the new service features significant improvements over existing messaging in X. In addition to file sharing and calling, users will also have the ability to mark messages as unread, delete individual messages for all users, and even set a PIN for additional protection.
Musk stated back in 2022 that one of the goals for X, which is to become an app for everything, is to compete with secure messengers like Signal.