Microsoft’s GitHub reached into a repository last month and made it disappear for an entire country. Not because the code was illegal. Because a government asked — with a deadline attached.
If you think that cannot happen to your project, you are trusting a platform when you should be using a protocol.
The receipts
- In July 2026, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs ordered GitHub to geoblock the repository for Bitchat — Jack Dorsey’s Bluetooth mesh messenger — and reportedly gave the company three hours to comply.
- Digital rights advocates say it was the first known attempt to geoblock an open-source software repository. Not an app store. Not a website. Source code.
- Bitchat hit an all-time high of 430,000 daily active users in India on July 26, according to Sensor Tower. Between July 20 and July 26, India accounted for 74% of the app’s global downloads. People wanted it. That was the problem.
- One month earlier, GitHub banned several rust-lightning contributors and deleted their pull requests. Those contributions are gone permanently. No export. No appeal. No recovery.
- GitHub went down three times in August 2026 alone.
They did not beat the ban. They deleted the chokepoint
Within days of the order, copies of the Bitchat repository were up and running on ngit — a project built by developer Dan Conway that hosts Git repositories on Nostr relays.
Here is the part that actually matters. ngit publishes a repository’s state as signed events on Nostr relays using NIP-34. A companion tool called GRASP acts as a bridge, so your ordinary Git client talks to those relays like any other remote. GitWorkshop.dev puts a usable face on it.
There is no company in the middle to serve with a court order. No account to ban. No server to seize. There is a key pair. As OpenSats put it in their developer spotlight on Conway: good luck banning a key pair.
Conway’s own framing is the whole ballgame. Of the model where being kicked off one corporate platform just moves your problem to another corporate platform, he says: "That’s not freedom technology."
GitHub is a platform. A platform is a system of control that serves its own interests. Nostr is a protocol. A protocol is a freedom-maximising foundation that cannot rug you. Microsoft owns GitHub. Microsoft does not own the relays.
Them versus us
Notice how familiar this story is.
Your exchange told you it holds your Bitcoin for safekeeping — until a regulator, a court, or a bankruptcy filing says otherwise. Your code host told you your repository is safe — until a ministry gives it three hours.
Same architecture. Same single point of failure. Same people telling you it is all for your convenience.
They spent a decade telling you that you do not need to run your own node, hold your own keys, or host your own code. Centralization is efficient, right up until the moment it is not — and then it is not slow, it is instantaneous. Work that took years vanishes in minutes, and the pull requests are deleted in a way the platform’s own community describes as unrecoverable.
The fix is the same fix Bitcoiners have been shouting about since 2013. Stop asking a chokepoint for permission. Use a protocol.
The Love Is Bitcoin takeaway
You already know this playbook, because you live it with money. Not your keys, not your coins. Now extend it to everything else you build: not your protocol, not your work.
- Host copies of your repositories on Nostr. ngit, GRASP and GitWorkshop are live right now.
- Keep the GitHub mirror if you want the network effect. Just never let it be the only copy.
- Own the keys. A key pair cannot be geoblocked, and it cannot be deplatformed.
And while you are busy making yourself un-censorable, stop paying full freight for the asset this entire fight is about. Bull Bitcoin sells you Bitcoin the way Bitcoin should be bought — non-custodial, straight to your own wallet, without the KYC theatre. Use coupon LOVEISBITCOIN at https://loveisbitcoin.com/bull
The question
If one government email can make a decade of your work disappear, and one court order can freeze the balance sitting in your exchange account, what exactly are you still trusting with the things you cannot afford to lose?
Not financial advice. Love Is Bitcoin publishes news and opinion, not investment advice. Sources: NostrMag "GitHub’s Grip Is Slipping: Why Nostr Is Becoming the New Home for Open Source" (Oct 1 2026); OpenSats developer spotlight "Good Luck Banning a Key Pair" on Dan Conway and ngit (Sep 28 2026); Rest of World on India’s geoblock order against Bitchat (Aug 6 2026); ForkLog (Jul 24 2026); Korben (Jul 25 2026).
GITHUB DELETED BITCOIN DEVELOPERS' CODE ON A GOVERNMENT'S ORDERS. NOW THE EXIT RAMP IS A PROTOCOL NOBODY OWNS.
