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Jack Dorsey has made a Bluetooth-based messaging app that doesn’t require internet

On Sunday, Twitter cofounder and ex-CEO Jack Dorsey announced that he’d successfully completed his “weekend project” of learning about Bluetooth mesh networks — and created a beta version of “Bitchat,” a new encrypted messaging app able to function entirely via Bluetooth, without the need for internet connection, cell service, phone numbers, or emails.

Dorsey’s “personal experiment” works by connecting users’ phones via local Bluetooth clusters, allowing messages to be sent between devices. Then, “bridge” devices that connect overlapping clusters are used to stretch the mesh network over a greater distance.

Privacy, please

Dorsey has long been a fan of decentralized communications, playing a major role in the development of social networking apps Damus and Bluesky, and his new app’s peer-to-peer encrypted messaging will also rival Meta-owned WhatsApp — without the requirements of identifiable accounts or data collection.

What really separates Bitchat, though, is the use of Bluetooth to keep it functioning offline, similar to mesh messaging apps used during the 2019 Hong Kong protests, per CNBC. While Bluetooth technology isn’t anything new, it’s still impressively prescient in the modern tech world.

Long in the tooth

Based on developments made at Nokia-owned Ericsson in 1994, the first Bluetooth device hit the market in 1999 — the same year that the first camera phone was released. 

With a name that started as a reference to King Harald, who united Denmark and Norway, and a logo resembling Nordic runes for his initials, Bluetooth connected computers, phones, and gadgets with wireless transfer capabilities at breakneck speed in the decades to come. In 2000, an estimated 800,000 Bluetooth-enabled devices were shipped; by 2020, this number had multiplied 5,125x over to 4.1 billion, per company reports.

There are very few technologies that are still growing after 30+ years... but, even after contracting slightly in 2024, Bluetooth looks to have managed it, with the company projecting that shipments will near 8 billion by 2029.

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Porsche is getting crushed in China as deliveries slip again

Porsche just announced delivery figures for the first half of the year and, like a lot of other European luxury car companies recently, stalling sales in China remain a big issue for the VW-owned German brand.

While the company was eager to highlight the success of EV offerings like its bestselling model, the Macan — delivering 45,137 Macans from January to June, almost 60% of which were fully electric — overall shipments slumped 6% from the first half of 2024, with deliveries to China sinking 28% in the same period. 

The worst part for investors? The company doesn’t seem confident that it’ll find the right gear anytime soon: Matthias Becker, the Porsche AG executive board member for sales and marketing, said they “expect the environment to remain challenging” heading into the latter portion of the year.

Though deliveries rose during the period in Porsche’s operations across North America and its “Overseas and Emerging Markets,” where a record 30,158 Porsche cars were delivered in the first half, headwinds in its homeland of Germany, other parts of Europe, and (of course) China all weighed heavy on the company’s sales figures.

911, what’s your emergency?

Famous for its iconic premium sports cars, such as the 911, Porsche has struggled to define itself in an increasingly competitive Chinese market. With EV brands like BYD and Xiaomi offering high-tech saloons and sports cars at a fraction of the price of premium German manufacturers, Porsche isn’t the only brand being left in the dust — BMW, Mercedes, Tesla, and others are all struggling to keep up.

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Trump’s copper tariff will weigh heaviest on Chile

President Trump announced plans on Tuesday to introduce a 50% tariff on copper imports in a bid to boost national production of the metal, sending US copper prices up 13% to an all-time high of ~$5.69 per pound, as reported by the Financial Times.

Though timelines remain unclear, now that import taxes for the red metal are set to match the 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum, the world’s top copper-producing countries will be looking to strike trade deals that could minimize the effect on their copper exports.

While the usual economic heavy hitters wait for details, one nation in particular will be watching closely: Chile, the world’s biggest copper producer, which dug out 5.3 million tons of the stuff last year — nearly 5x as much as the US, according to data from the US Geological Survey.

To the wire

Copper is one of the most widely used commercial metals, with applications in electronics, plumbing, construction, and (until recently) telephone lines, to name a few — all things that the US copper industry wants to get a slice of. 

With rich natural reserves, Chile’s copper industry boomed in the 1990s as the country adopted development strategies and private industry investments in the wake of the Cold War. Today, it’s the largest supplier of copper to the US.

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Off the charts: Which luxury EV maker, based in California, just set a new record for the longest journey traveled on a single charge? [Answer below]. 

Answer here.

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