Elon Musk on Messaging Platform X Chat’s Features and Bitcoin-Like P2P Encryption

Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk says X will ship a standalone “X Chat” in the coming months while keeping Chat embedded in X, adding that its peer-to-peer encryption approach is “similar to Bitcoin” and that the system avoids advertising hooks.

Speaking on Friday’s “Joe Rogan Experience,” Musk said X has “rebuilt the entire messaging stack” as X Chat and argued security should be viewed in “degrees of insecurity,” not as a binary. He described a peer-to-peer-style model and said the goal is to make Chat “the least insecure” among messaging apps. He added that encryption is “very good” and undergoing thorough testing.

Musk linked his security pitch to business design. He said rival messengers introduce risk when they include “hooks for advertising,” arguing that any pathway used to target ads could become an avenue to read messages if abused. He said X Chat will not include such hooks.

Distribution will be dual track. “We’ll have both,” Musk said, noting a dedicated app targeted “in a few months,” alongside the integrated experience inside X. In either version, users should be able to text, share files, and place audio or video calls once the full feature set lands.

The current status is more modest. Inside X today, Chat functions as an upgraded replacement for legacy direct messages and is in beta for Premium subscribers. The in-app Chat supports text, photos, media attachments, GIFs, and file sharing tied to X handles rather than phone numbers. Audio and video calling were cited by Musk as part of the plan but do not appear in the current version of X.

Musk’s framing centers on two ideas: keep content encrypted end to end and limit what the service must know by stripping out ad-targeting logic. Mainstream messengers often encrypt message content but retain metadata such as counterparties and timestamps; his view is that reducing reliance on advertising narrows the attack surface.