Elon Musk on Sunday announced that a new version of X’s direct messaging (DM) feature, XChat, was rolling out with support for features like vanishing messages, encryption, and the ability to share files, alongside its audio and video calling support.
The new features aren’t yet broadly available, as XChat only recently started beta testing among a select group of users. However, Musk said that the X team expects to bring XChat to all users sometime this week, unless they encounter scaling issues during the rollout.
In a series of X posts, Musk also noted that the updated version of XChat has been built on Rust with “Bitcoin-style” encryption and a “whole new architecture.” It’s not clear what he means by Bitcoin-style encryption, given that Bitcoin itself cannot be described as “encrypted.” (Bitcoin uses public key cryptography and signatures for its security.)
As a result, some are debating whether Musk is using the terminology simply as marketing speak, if he misunderstands encryption, or if he used the wrong word — perhaps meaning to say “cryptography” instead.
The X owner has often spoken of wanting to make X’s DMs a challenger to encrypted platforms like Signal and iMessage. However, calling XChat a service with only “Bitcoin-style encryption” calls into question whether it’s really a potential competitor.
In addition, Musk shared on X that XChat users can now make audio and video calls without a phone number across all platforms.
Ahead of this launch, X said it was pausing work on encrypted DMs, presumably because XChat would soon replace the older system.
Unfortunately for X users, the service has faced some significant instability over the past week or so, as multiple outages left users unable to browse timelines and use other features, including XChat.
