Apple has removed Bitchat, a decentralized peer-to-peer messaging app, from its App Store in China for allegedly violating the country’s internet service regulations.

 

In a Sunday post on X, Jack Dorsey, former CEO and co-founder of Twitter, now known as X, shared a screenshot he received from Apple’s review team in February informing him about the removal of his Bitchat app from the China App Store.

 

 

The removal of the app follows a request from the Cyberspace Administration of China, the main government agency in China responsible for controlling and regulating the internet. The Cyberspace Administration of China alleges that Bitchat violates Article 3 of the Provisions on the Security Assessment of Internet-based Information Services, one of the agency’s key internet compliance rules.

 

Since its launch in July 2025, the Bitchat app has grown increasingly popular, especially in regions affected by unrest. Madagascar, Nepal, and Uganda have each recorded several tens of thousands of downloads when the governments of these countries shut down internet service during times of civil crisis. Google Play Store has also recorded over one million downloads, with a user rating above four out of five.

 

China considers blockchain-based lending for traditional finance

Despite the ban on Bitchat and China’s strict rules on digital assets and crypto-related activities, the country continues to push forward with blockchain-based innovation and development.

 

Recently, two of China’s core tax and financial regulators, the State Taxation Administration and the National Financial Regulatory Administration, have urged banks and other financial institutions to incorporate blockchain technology into their lending and credit services. The agencies reiterated the benefits of blockchain in standardizing data and improving transparency among tax authorities, banks, and enterprises.

 

This recommendation aligns with the National Development and Reform Commission’s goal of integrating blockchain into key national infrastructure. In January 2025, the commission, one of China’s top economic planning bodies, released a blockchain-powered data infrastructure roadmap. The plan aims to leverage blockchain technology to build a national digital data infrastructure that could attract about 400 billion yuan, or 58 billion dollars, in investments each year.

 

The commission is currently in the first phase of the roadmap, which focuses on developing core blockchain infrastructure and establishing standardized protocols. The next stages will involve integrating and scaling these blockchain protocols across different sectors of the country’s infrastructure.

 

 

Jack Dorsey's Square has rolled out Bitcoin payments for millions in the United States. Starting March 30, Bitcoin payments are now switched on by default for millions of eligible U.S. sellers on the platform, no opt-in, no lengthy setup, no technical expertise required. For a lot of small business owners, they may not even notice it happened until a customer tries to pay with BTC at checkout.

 

Block, Square's parent company, confirmed the rollout through a post on X, telling merchants they can now "start accepting bitcoin that instantly converts to cash at checkout, with no additional setup." The shift builds directly on the Square Bitcoin initiative the company announced in late 2025, but this time it is not optional infrastructure sitting in the background. Bitcoin acceptance is now baked into the payment stack that millions of American businesses already use daily for point-of-sale, inventory and payroll.

 

 

Zero Fees, Instant Settlement, No Volatility Risk

Square is making it as easy as possible for businesses to integrate Bticoin payments. When a customer pays in Bitcoin, the transaction settles near-instantly via the Lightning Network and converts to U.S. dollars at the moment of sale. The merchant never holds BTC, never worries about the price dropping overnight and does not need to make any changes to their accounting. They just receive dollars, same as always.

 

On top of that, Square is waiving processing fees on Bitcoin payments through the end of 2026. Starting January 1, 2027, the fee becomes 1% per transaction, which is still well below what most card networks charge. For small businesses watching margins closely, that gap is not nothing. It is a real financial incentive to keep the feature on, or at minimum to not bother turning it off.

 

Miles Suter, Block's head of Bitcoin product, framed the goal plainly: making it easier for millions of businesses to accept bitcoin at scale. What he left unsaid is how unusual the default-on design actually is. Most payment processors that support crypto, including PayPal, Stripe and Coinbase Commerce, require merchants to actively enable cryptocurrency in their settings. Square has flipped that logic entirely.

 

 

The Default-On Model Could Be the Whole Story

Industry observers have zeroed in on the opt-out structure as the most consequential design choice here. Merchants who do not want to accept BTC can disable the feature through their Square dashboard. But it is on. For everyone. By default. The expectation is that most won't bother. Inertia is a powerful force in business software. If even a small fraction of Square's millions of active sellers leave Bitcoin payments on, the practical footprint of BTC in everyday commerce expands in a way that years of crypto advocacy has failed to achieve.

 

Lightspark CEO David Marcus, the former president of PayPal, was quick to call the move transformative. He compared it to the early standardization of TCP/IP, the protocol that allowed disparate computer networks to communicate through a shared standard. "Enabling Bitcoin payments at scale could mirror how TCP/IP became the foundational protocol of the internet," Marcus said. It is a big claim. But the underlying logic, that Bitcoin could become a neutral, interoperable layer for value transfer the way TCP/IP became one for data, is not a new idea. Dorsey himself has argued something similar for years.

 

 

Part of a Bigger Block Ecosystem Push

This rollout did not come out of nowhere. Block has been building toward it for a while. Through Cash App, the company already serves consumers who can buy, sell and transfer Bitcoin. Bitkey gives users a self-custody hardware wallet option. Spiral funds open-source Bitcoin development. Proto is building out mining infrastructure. Square's auto-enabled payments are the commercial layer on top of all that, the piece that ties the ecosystem to Main Street.

 

This move also arrives in a regulatory environment that, while still messy in places, is more favorable than it has ever been. The SEC has clarified guidelines for payment processors handling cryptocurrency conversions, giving companies like Square more legal certainty to act. States including Texas and Florida have moved to pass crypto-friendly legislation. Treasury Department officials have signaled support for mainstream payment integration, even as federal frameworks around transaction reporting remain a work in progress.

 

Square's feature is not available to sellers in New York State, where the regulatory picture remains more complicated. The company has not commented on a timeline for expansion there.

 

 

What Comes Next Is the Real Question

There are real unknowns here. Building the infrastructure is one thing. Getting consumers to actually choose Bitcoin at checkout, when they could just tap a card, is another. Merchant adoption, in the sense of sellers actively keeping the feature on and promoting it to customers, is not guaranteed either. And competitive dynamics are shifting. PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin is expanding across 70 markets, representing a different bet on which form of digital money wins out in everyday commerce.

 

Dorsey's position, and Block's broader strategy, is that Bitcoin's long-term infrastructure potential outweighs the short-term predictability of dollar-pegged stablecoins. The company is absorbing the volatility risk so merchants don't have to, which is essentially a sustained institutional bet on Bitcoin's direction. Whether that bet pays off will depend on whether consumers follow the infrastructure that has now been built for them. That part, nobody fully controls, but it will be interesting to watch the numbers and who is actually using this.