CoinWorld reported on October 31 that this week, Hurricane "Melissa" struck Jamaica, being the strongest cyclone in decades, it caused power and telecommunications outages across the island, severely disrupting communication. Network monitoring organization NetBlocks reported that the national internet connectivity rate dropped to about 30% of normal, with widespread outages caused by strong winds and line disruptions. During this time, the peer-to-peer instant messaging application Bitchat, which can operate without an internet connection, saw a surge in downloads in Jamaica. According to AppFigures, at the time of writing, Bitchat ranked first among social networking apps for Apple users and second in the overall free apps list for both Apple and Android. Its developer Calle stated on the X platform that this was the application's download volume "surging for the first time due to a natural disaster."