The use cases stem from groups needing coordination in roughly the same area, with no internet. Disaster recovery efforts fit this exactly:

Doctors Without Borders feeding centers in a famine far from anywhere, searching for people in the rubble of a building following an earthquake, searching for people in a refugee camp, etc.

Verizon went down in the US this past week - perfect use case for Bitchat (or Meshtastic with a repeater or some other LoRa BT network). Verizon goes down while you're at the mall or store or Disneyland or whatever and you can still text to find each other.

300m max range with line of sight would cover something like when I go to visit my parents who live in a desert canyon with lousy mobile phone coverage, I can send a message that I'm at the gate and put the dogs in the garage.

I remember reading that men and women in Saudi Arabia are forbidden from interacting directly in a bar setting. So instead they were using Bluetooth to covertly connect and communicate.

> Communication between protestors > Illegal activities

Often one and the same since the first thing those in power try to do is make various activities by protestors illegal

This is simply an app that allows to communicate through bluetooth locally. Why are you saying its only two use cases are protesting and criminals?

I remember when Telegram had a "Nearby" feature. I remember seeing many not-so-legal activities around me, even in the range of 1 km.