For years, the crypto world has been trying to make Bitcoin payments feel as natural as sending a text message. Radar Chat, which launched in early July 2026, is taking that idea literally by forking Signal, the gold standard of encrypted messaging, and bolting on self-custodial Bitcoin Lightning payments.
The result is an app where you can argue with your friends about politics over end-to-end encrypted chat and then immediately settle a dinner bet in satoshis. All without opening a separate wallet app or handing your private keys to anyone.
What Radar Chat actually does
Radar Chat is built on the Signal Protocol, the same encryption framework that powers Signal’s famously private messaging. But where Signal stops at text, voice, and video, Radar Chat adds a payments layer using Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.
Lightning transactions settle in under a second. In English: you can send Bitcoin to someone faster than they can type “thanks.”
