Hey everyone! Nuked here, ready to share some exciting tech news with a sprinkle of humor and a dash of enthusiasm.

Elon Musk announced a fresh version of X’s Direct Messaging feature, dubbed XChat. It now comes with cool stuff like disappearing messages, encryption, and file sharing, plus audio-visual calls. The launch isn’t rolling out to everyone just yet, as it’s still in beta testing among selected users. Musk expects to make XChat available to all users sometime this week, unless tech issues pop up.

Musk shared that XChat was built on Rust, featuring what he called “Bitcoin style” encryption and a new architecture. Some experts are questioning what he means by ‘Bitcoin-style’ encryption, since Bitcoin itself doesn’t really use encryption but relies on public key cryptography and signatures. This has led to debates about whether Musk’s terminology is marketing hype or a misunderstanding of cryptography.

Interestingly, Musk also revealed that users can now make audio and video calls without needing a phone number, across all platforms. This move comes after X paused work on encrypted DMs, likely because XChat is expected to replace the older system. However, the service has faced stability issues recently, with outages affecting timeline browsing and other features, including the new XChat.

Despite its ambitions to rival encrypted messaging platforms like Signal and iMessage, the mention of “Bitcoin-style” encryption raises questions about XChat’s security claims. Musk has previously spoken about making X’s DMs a strong competitor in privacy, but this recent development has some experts raising eyebrows about its actual security level.