33 ms·

Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

• josh2600 6y ago
  Hi! I'm the CEO of MobileCoin. If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask here. We've been working on this project for four years and it has been a labor of love. There's a lot of new technology here. We exist in a highly regulated space so it's possible some questions will require reaching out to lawyers to make sure we answer them in a way that's compliant so please don't feel offended if a response takes a while to come back. The best set of docs for how the whole thing fits together is our book "The Mechanics of MobileCoin"[0]. We'll be around here and on our forums [1] to answer questions. Please also check out our foundation website[2]. The github[3] is also a lot of fun, especially the section on Fog[4]. [0]https://github.com/UkoeHB/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin/blob/master/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin-v0-0-39-preview-10-11.pdf https://github.com/UkoeHB/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin/blob/maste... [1]https://community.mobilecoin.foundation https://community.mobilecoin.foundation [2]https://mobilecoin.foundation https://mobilecoin.foundation [3]https://github.com/mobilecoinfoundation/mobilecoin https://github.com/mobilecoinfoundation/mobilecoin [4]https://github.com/mobilecoinfoundation/fog https://github.com/mobilecoinfoundation/fog
  • bdcs 6y ago
    The Oblivious RAM implementation is incredible
  • Forbo 6y ago
    I tried going to https://buymobilecoin.com/ https://buymobilecoin.com/ as referenced in https://www.mobilecoin.com/terms-of-sale.html https://www.mobilecoin.com/terms-of-sale.html but get a Cloudflare "Error 1020" page. What's up with that?
    • josh2600 6y ago
      This occurs when you try to access it from a US-IP.
      • deftnerd 6y ago
        Cloudflare lets you create custom error pages [1]. I would recommend making one for any geo-restricted pages. The benefit is that you can emulate your site theme and have an opportunity to explain the reasoning for the geographic restrictions. [1] https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200172706-Configuring-Custom-Pages-Error-and-Challenge- https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200172706-C...
      • ohyeshedid 6y ago
        and why are you geofencing in this way?
      • bassdropvroom 6y ago
        Why do you feel the need to geofence it outside of the US? Where is the foundation based/registered? Where is the for-profit that you are the CEO of registered? How much is Signal getting for this?
      • hanniabu 6y ago
        Much privacy, such decentralized
  • CynicusRex 6y ago
    Can late MobileCoin adopters buy the same amount of coin for the same price as early adopters or is it a multi-level marketing pyramid scheme like the rest of the crypto“currency” greed and spam inducing cesspool? https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html
    • troquerre 6y ago
      MobileCoin is already liquid on multiple exchanges so the coins would just be purchased at whatever the market price is. It also doesn't make sense for late adopters to get the same price because there's a lot more risk associated with being an early adopter than a late adopter. This works both ways — if something bad happens to MobileCoin that tanks the price late adopters would be able to buy at a cheaper price because the new information gets priced in.
      • CynicusRex 6y ago
        >“It also doesn't make sense for late adopters to get the same price because there's a lot more risk associated with being an early adopter than a late adopter.” Often repeated but false. Early adopters mine or buy large proportions at negligible prices while late adopters mine or buy negligible proportions at large prices.
        • gsich 6y ago
          There is no guarantee that there will be late adopters. So yes, there is risk.
          • sudosysgen 6y ago
            Not when you know beforehand that it will be implemented into signal :)
            • gsich 6y ago
              True, but in general.
  • hiq 6y ago
    Hi, I still have to read the docs more thoroughly, but given that these HN threads die out quickly, I'd rather ask now that I have the chance, so forgive me if some of these are answered in the docs: 1. how does MobileCoin make money? 2. how many coins do you / does MobileCoin own? 3. related to that, are there mechanisms in place to prove that this is not a pump and dump? Or simply, how do I know it's not one and it's here for the long-term? 4. what's the threat model of the blockchain you're using? E.g. for Bitcoin, the chain is compromised once 51% of the hashing rate belongs to collaborative evil miners (as a rough approximation). What about MobileCoin? When would something bad happen? How is it prevented? 5. how does MobileCoin compare with privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies such as Monero? P.S.: you might wanna add a F.A.Q. section somewhere for the questions I've mentioned and the others in this HN thread, right now we either have to blindly trust the claims on https://www.mobilecoin.com/ https://www.mobilecoin.com/ or going through the 133 pages of https://github.com/UkoeHB/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin https://github.com/UkoeHB/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin, there should be some intermediate tech documentation (or does it exist already?)
    • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
      > 1. how does MobileCoin make money? MobileCoin pre-mined the coins and is selling them to users. According to other comments, they hold 85% of the coins. The CEO is commenting in this thread with a link to buy the coins. They make money by selling these coins.
      • frombody 6y ago
        I think the more pertinent question is how much of a stake Signal has in MobileCoin and why the details of this relationship are not being disclosed. MobileCoin isn't even on the list of cryptocurrencies you can make a donation in.. which makes this seem more like a cash grab rather than something that was thought out.
    • josh2600 6y ago
      1) MobileCoin will build a payments ecosystem around the protocol. 2) I have to check with the lawyers on whether we can disclose exact amounts, but our intention is to own a small minority of coins over the long term. We want the supply to circulate. 3) I don’t know how to prove this other than to tell you that MobileCoin is here to stay. You’ll know us by our deeds. 4) the threat model is 100% of nodes being compromised with an active attack against SGX. If there is even a single honest machine, the network will scream on any fault. 5) MobileCoin is fast and privacy-protecting (and it works on mobile without consuming tons of energy). There aren’t any other cryptocurrencies that presently fit that bill.
  • mbesto 6y ago
    Why does a decentralized communication system need a defi based payment system that has the requirement of a CEO to run it?
    • josh2600 6y ago
      I don't run anything related to the protocol. The protocol governed by the MobileCoin Foundation, an independent board of directors. The foundation makes recommendations about how the network might behave, but ultimately it's up to the node operators to decide what code they run.
      • mbesto 6y ago
        So what organization are you the CEO of? Is it a for-profit entity? What is that entities relation to the protocol?
      • 3np 6y ago
        If that is true, what is it that makes it inaccessible to US individuals? My understanding is that a “real” decentralized cryptocurrency not misrepresented by the issuers will not fall under regulation like that.
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    Assuming an attacker fully compromises SGX for machines under his physical control (e.g. can execute arbitrary code inside an attested enclave), what can the attacker do/what security properties of MobileCoin break? I know Moxie seems to put near-complete trust in SGX, but many security professionals don't.
  • codethief 6y ago
    Hi Josh, thanks for taking the time! My question, to both you and (especially) Moxie: Why do you trust Intel SGX so much (for Signal but now also MobileCoin)? Why are you not worried about vulnerabilities? As you're surely aware, even Matt Green who is/used to be(?) the biggest fan of Signal[0] is very concerned[1] about SGX. I don't question your intentions but the fact that Signal as an organization has stayed completely silent about this is… worrisome and at the very least taints its reputation of openness and trustworthiness. With MobileCoin now relying on it, too (more or less), this only seems to be getting worse. [0]: http://web.archive.org/web/20200201112751/https://signal.org/ http://web.archive.org/web/20200201112751/https://signal.org... [1]: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/07/10/a-few-thoughts-about-signals-secure-value-recovery/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/07/10/a-few-th...
  • fblp 6y ago
    Hi Josh, thank you for taking questions. Can you speak to the financial distribution of coins/funds for the employees and foundation?
  • qqii 6y ago
    Thanks for answering questions, it's nice to see that MobileCoin shares so many similarities with Monero with changes that seems to make decent tradeoffs for usability. I have a few questions: What is the identity and distribution behind the current mobilecoin nodes? What are the requirements for running a node? Since there is no node rewards how will nodes funded in the long term (10+ years)? Does mobilecoin employ something similar to Dandelion++? What prevents nodes or those running fog from performing timing based attacks? Is mobilecoin suseptable to any other attacks (e.g. Poisoned output, subaddress association)? How will the mobilecoin foundation and continued development be funded in the long term (10+ years)? If SGX is found to be vulnerable/no longer fit for purpose is there a mitigation plan?
  • makeworld 6y ago
    Elsewhere[1] in the thread it's been claimed your organization owns 85% of the total market cap of this coin. Can you speak to this? Is it true or not? If not true, what is the correct percentage? How much is left? 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26715348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26715348
    • Vinnl 6y ago
      And a follow-up question in case it's not true/unanswerable: any idea where they got that number from?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • Shank 6y ago
    Hi Josh! Why does nothing, in plain English, explain why MobileCoin should be used over another decentralized digital currency that exists? For example, if I look at your GitHub [0], the first FAQ item is about Intel SGX, and the overview is just...a blockchain overview. Why does it make sense to integrate MobileCoin into anything? Why not use Monero or zCash? Sure, you can definitely explain this to me, but nothing explains that to general people on your GitHub page. Same thing on your foundation page, which simply has logos and "Private Payments for everyone" [1]. I've spent a lot of time working on blockchain and perceptually, it feels like you're trying to sell snake oil here. For example, the mechanics paper [2] starts with "Cryptography. It may seem like only mathematicians and computer scientists have access to this obscure, esoteric, powerful, elegant topic." Cryptography is a tool. What's obscure about it? People are using it right this second. Why is it esoteric? The paper then continues with a brief overview of 'blockchains' (why the scare quotes?). In the same paragraph, it states that the purpose of blockchains is that "no piece of money can be duplicated or created at will" but this is only one of many points of the entire point of a blockchain. Why does it not explore other facets of blockchains if the goal is to be introductory? Then, in the fifth paragraph, the paper remembers that people may not be reading this for the first time with no experience, and suddenly jumps up to 11, with this paragraph. Note, this paragraph is one single 91-word jargon-filled sentence: > MobileCoin is a standard one-dimensional directed acyclic graph (DAG) cryptocurrency blockchain, where blocks are consensuated with an implementation of the Stellar Consensus Protocol, transactions are validated in SGX secure enclaves and are based on elliptic curve cryptography using the Ristretto abstraction on curve E25519, transaction inputs are shown to exist in the blockchain with Merkle proofs of membership and are signed with Schnorr-style multilayered linkable spontaneous anonymous group signatures (MLSAG), and output amounts (communicated to recipients via ECDH) are concealed with Pedersen commitments and proven in a legitimate range with Bulletproofs. While I want to assume good faith here, I find that the blockchain community often has a history of attempting to "smooth over problems" with lots of jargon and hoping for the best. This sentence, when run through Hemingway [3], gives it a post-graduate reading level. But that's not anything about the cryptography: the paragraph/sentence is simply unreadable to most people. It serves no purpose in the middle of this section. While I'm sure you'll mention that this is a preview document, you're pointing people to it as the primary resource for people to learn "how the whole thing fits together." Other warning signs that make me wary are everywhere. The foundation about page has the Intel, Azure, and IBM logos under a "powered by" footer [4]. The meaning is ambiguous, and the intent is clear: you want to use these big tech company logos, because they're recognized. Yet, this is the exact same thing companies do when they're sponsored by other companies. To the untrained eye, these are indistinguishable things. Is MobileCoin sponsored by Intel, IBM, or Azure? If not, you should remove the logos. It feels like a "trust play." You're not linking to any sites or providing any information as to your relationships with these companies, but it seems like you just have cloud services with Azure and IBM, and use Intel SGX. There's a typo on the "Foundation Trusted Nodes" page (two words slammed together): "MobileCoin Consensus is built on trust relationships between individuals and organizations who are running MobileCoin Consensus Validator Nodes.Determining" [5]. So, I suppose, if I had a question, it's: why, in all of this documentation and all of the websites that you've linked to, is there not a single "you should use MobileCoin over Monero and zCash because of ..." comparison? Why does it seem more like it's interested in propping itself up and being trustworthy, rather than conveying details about how it's superior to its competition for mobile payments? [0]: https://github.com/mobilecoinfoundation/mobilecoin https://github.com/mobilecoinfoundation/mobilecoin [1]: https://www.mobilecoin.foundation/ https://www.mobilecoin.foundation/ & https://archive.is/ktf3o https://archive.is/ktf3o [2]: https://github.com/UkoeHB/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin/blob/master/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin-v0-0-39-preview-10-11.pdf https://github.com/UkoeHB/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin/blob/maste... (archive: https://files.catbox.moe/1wal8z.pdf https://files.catbox.moe/1wal8z.pdf) [3]: https://hemingwayapp.com/ https://hemingwayapp.com/ [4]: https://www.mobilecoin.foundation/about https://www.mobilecoin.foundation/about & https://archive.is/JNDbG https://archive.is/JNDbG [5]: https://www.mobilecoin.foundation/foundation-trusted-nodes https://www.mobilecoin.foundation/foundation-trusted-nodes & https://archive.is/Pr868 https://archive.is/Pr868
  • mplewis 6y ago
    What is the total supply of MobileCoin, and what percentage of MobileCoin is owned by folks inside (or related to) the company?
  • AlexCoventry 6y ago
    > The best set of docs for how the whole thing fits together is our book "The Mechanics of MobileCoin"[0]. There's a missing reference on p. 61 (physical page 68) > ...Chapter ?? discusses how enclaves fit into the broader picture of consensuating transactions and growing the MobileCoin blockchain. I assume it means chapter 10.
  • happosai 6y ago
    What are the co2 emissions of mobilecoin usage?
    • runeks 6y ago
      The MobileCoin consensus protocol does not use proof-of-work, so CO2 emissions should be negligible compared to e.g. Bitcoin.
• leifg 6y ago
  What's the consensus function you use on the mobile coin blockchain. Couldn't see if it's proof of work or proof of stake.
  • josh2600 6y ago
    We use a modified version of the Stellar Consensus Protocol that we reimplemented from scratch using Rust. https://github.com/UkoeHB/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin/blob/master/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin-v0-0-39-preview-10-11.pdf https://github.com/UkoeHB/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin/blob/maste... << Page 81 is where you want to go.
    • crazypython 6y ago
      How does Stellar Consensus prevent double-spends? Imagine I have a private key to an address with 10 coins. Imagine I spend the same amount of money (10 coins) on Mars and Earth at the same time. There is a 10-lightminute gap between Mars and Earth. Assume Mars and Earth have a similar number of Stellar nodes. What happens in Stellar Consensus?
      • josh2600 6y ago
        Stellar actually does nothing to prevent double-spends as it is the consensus layer and not the ledger. The ledger prevents double spends in mobilecoin by using a proof called a "key image" which is part of CryptoNote (https://bytecoin.org/old/whitepaper.pdf https://bytecoin.org/old/whitepaper.pdf). Essentially, a ring signature is produced by the user which says "one of these N transactions belong to me" and the key image proves that one of the members of the set is a valid transaction without revealing which transaction was valid (and preventing future reuse of the valid input).
        • fourstar 6y ago
          So essentially, this is a mashup between XMR (ring sigs) and XLM (consensus protocol)? Why not use zk-proofs?
• edsimpson 6y ago
  MobileCoin looks fantastic! Seems to solve the major pain points of Bitcoin: fast transactions, low transaction fees, private and no massive environmental impact with mining. Any ETA on when this will come to the USA?
  • hhjj 6y ago
    Looks like it depends on SGX, so basically delegates trust to Intel. Bitcoin doesn't depend on trusting anyone.
    • alexmingoia 6y ago
      You have to put the keys somewhere. Storing keys in SGX and using attestation to ensure only valid nodes access them is significantly more secure than not using the SGX. Using SGX gives a Signal user’s phone the same level of security as using a hardware wallet like Ledger Nano.
      • orph 6y ago
        Keys are not stored in SGX. Keys never leave the phone.
        • alexmingoia 6y ago
          Can you provide more detail? ”Running MobileCoin in an SGX enclave allows nodes to securely manage keys for users. A client can perform remote attestation to its MobileCoin node before transmitting its keys into the remote enclave along with a short recovery PIN. The MobileCoin node can then rate limit authenticated access to the keys, while the enclave prevents the node operator or anyone who compromises the node from circumventing the software and attempting to brute force access to the keys directly. In this way, user keys can reside safely in a node and survive across application reinstalls or lost devices, without having to trust the node operator or the security of the node computer, and without having to memorize or safely store extremely long recovery passphrases.” https://mixin.one/assets/MobileCoin-Whitepaper-EN_FINAL.pdf https://mixin.one/assets/MobileCoin-Whitepaper-EN_FINAL.pdf
• seany 6y ago
  What are the KYC requirements? I'm going to assume that it's none, since it's privacy focused
  • rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
    Does KYC apply to all transactions or only to purchase of currency? Because I can get bank notes from an ATM and pay anyone in cash without having an intermediary verify my identity when money changes hands.
    • kasey_junk 6y ago
      Not over certain spending limits you can’t.
      • seany 6y ago
        In practice, sure you can. You have to be careful about getting it back into the normal banking system if you want to do that; but you aren't going to be raided by the secret service for handing someone 30k in a parking lot (something I have done before)
• qrbLPHiKpiux 6y ago
  Is your backend open source, or not? Haven’t seen the git updated in a while.
  • brodo 6y ago
    Effectively not anymore. Here is a very recent german article about it: https://www.golem.de/news/crypto-messenger-signal-server-nicht-mehr-open-source-2104-155376.html https://www.golem.de/news/crypto-messenger-signal-server-nic... No updates in the repo for over a year and no answers from the team. The whole crypto currency thing is also a red flag for me. Matrix seems to be the better option by now...
    • rogers18445 6y ago
      Just what are they trying to do? They are a non-profit which would make a money grab somewhat impractical. Are they worried they are going to get successfully forked or something? Their unquestioned faith in Intel SGX is somewhat pathetic to be fair.
    • dunefox 6y ago
      If anything, Threema is the best alternative.
      • pmlnr 6y ago
        No, it really is not. Matrix or XMPP.
        • approxim8ion 6y ago
          XMPP has issues on Android and iOS: the app needs to be running and connected to the server at all times to fetch new messages. iOS explicitly disallows this from what I understand, and on Android you are at the mercy of your OEM's battery optimizations unless you specifically keep the app running by pinning it or if the app has persistent notifications. Either way, not something that is easy to explain to normal users, meaning pain points arise very soon. Matrix is a little more promising, but Element (at least on matrix.org servers) is slow, especially at scale.
• edent 6y ago
  The UK already has faster payments in all major banks. I can send and receive money instantly from app or Web. Will yours be as fast as that? The UK has a problem with authorised push payment fraud. Banks can recover funds which have been sent as a result of phishing / fraud. How can I reverse a payment on your platform if it was fraudulent? The UK also has receiver verification. If I try to send to an account and it doesn't match the name I'm sending to, my bank will warn me. How do you stop impersonation? There's no cost to sending payments on most mainstream banks. How much do you charge? Most banks let the user block receiving payments from specific accounts. How do you stop harassers sending unwanted money? Thanks!
  • josh2600 6y ago
    >>The UK already has faster payments in all major banks. I can send and receive money instantly from app or Web. Will yours be as fast as that? A: MobileCoin is as fast (or faster in some cases) than a bank payment in the UK with greater privacy. As far as settling back to Fiat, if that's what you're asking about, the velocity of that depends on on-ramp and off-ramp integrations which will come over time (but it looks like there's no reason MobileCoin can't help developers deliver payments at the same speed as banks). >>The UK has a problem with authorised push payment fraud. Banks can recover funds which have been sent as a result of phishing / fraud. How can I reverse a payment on your platform if it was fraudulent? A: Payments on MobileCoin cannot be reversed at the protocol level. If you want escrow and reversibility, you should use a wallet or payment service that supports those primitives. We believe that developers will build such services on top of the foundation of the MobileCoin protocol. >>The UK also has receiver verification. If I try to send to an account and it doesn't match the name I'm sending to, my bank will warn me. How do you stop impersonation? A: Signal relies on phone numbers for identities. Other apps that integrate MobileCoin may have a higher threshold for identification. >>There's no cost to sending payments on most mainstream banks. How much do you charge? A: Fees are set by the foundation (which has a stated goal of keeping transaction fees to around $.04 when the network isn't congested). Currently fees are higher as they need to be adjusted by a foundation vote. >>Most banks let the user block receiving payments from specific accounts. How do you stop harassers sending unwanted money? A: Signal doesn't allow people you haven't keypaired with to send you funds. If you have accepted a message request from someone, they can send you money.
• yoavm 6y ago
  I really wish Signal had stable voice and video calls before it added this blockchain thing.
  • fastball 6y ago
    My voice calls have been very stable. What kind of issues are you experiencing?
    • yoavm 6y ago
      They basically only work if I'm on a great Wifi and the other side is too. As long as the connection isn't perfect, the only way to continue the conversation is on Whatsapp (or Zoom).
• donclark 6y ago
  So is this testing only available in the UK? If so, maybe make that more clear or prominent?
• RL_Quine 6y ago
  This is garbage, and shouldn't be part of Signal. Everything on the internet is being corrupted with adding cryptocurrency scams where they absolutely don't belong, it turns Signal from an obvious recommendation into something that makes me hesitate. There's something to be said for focusing on doing one thing well, and that doesn't mean turning a communication platform into a kitchen sink.
  • TheCraiggers 6y ago
    Signal is competing against some big players in the messaging space, at least some of which have money transfers. As long as they abide by their principles and none of these features impact privacy, I don't see how it wouldn't be viewed as a win. A case could be made for it being bloat, but most consumers don't care, and for Signal (or any messaging app) to be successful, it needs to appeal to the common denominator. And frankly, if this means I can send money to a friend without Google getting yet more data about me, then even better.
    • RL_Quine 6y ago
      Signal needs to be reliable, safe and have a low barrier of entry to achieve its goals of allowing widespread private communication. I thought that when I recommended that my peer group use it (at this point, all of my normal contacts use it extensively), I could trust that it would remain clearly focused on its mission- now I'll need to recommend it with a caveat to just click through the scam marketing, ICO offers and "airdrops".
      • kf 6y ago
        You’re being really cynical in a way that doesn’t reflect the reality of the situation. This doesn’t entail scam marketing, ICO offers, and airdrops just because that’s something that happens in a lot of the rest of cryptocurrency space.
        • RL_Quine 6y ago
          You missed the point. Even if Signal doesn't do the typical cryptocurrency scam behaviour, I now somehow need to try to explain to people why it is different to every other thing in the space that does act like that. On the face of it, if we assume that the inclusion of MobileCoin in Signal is completely benign, it's something that's never happened before. Smoking causes cancer, but smoking these specific cigarettes won't. Do you see the problem with trying to describe such an absurd situation to somebody?
• airza 6y ago
  The technology is cool, but I don't really know if I want KYC regulatory risk in my encrypted messaging client. I just want italics.
  • josh2600 6y ago
    I don't think Signal has any plans to scan your driver's license. What they've built is a non-custodial wallet (IE, they can't help you if you lose your keys, and they have no ability to authorize or deny a payment on your behalf).
    • airza 6y ago
      In my opinion a lot of the spicy regulatory issues around coins with private transactions are still not fully realized because none of them have mainstream adoption. The problem here is that Signal's goal to succeed as a mainstream encrypted messaging client could have the unpleasant side effect of bringing this technology under regulatory scrutiny. Hopefully things won't come to that, of course...
      • senectus1 6y ago
        This is probably why they done sell (MobileCoin) to anyone in or from the US...
        • AJ007 6y ago
          And they need to exhaustively verify who is really buying these to be sure they really aren’t in the US so they don’t end up in a Bitmex style situation. The larger problem here for Signal is US legal claims could nuke it off the (very) centralized Apple App Stores and Google Play Store. Then what?
    • qqii 6y ago
      > To try to tame that volatility problem, Marlinspike and Goldbard say they imagine adding a feature in the future that will automatically exchange users' payments in dollars or another more stable currency for MobileCoin only when they make a payment, and then exchange it back on the recipient's side—though it's not yet clear if those trades could be made without leaving a trail that might identify the user. This would have to involve KYC or harsh limits.
• gojomo 6y ago
  Wow, a cryptocurrency that's also dependent on Intel™ SGX®! What wonders will Intel's Signal subdivision offer next?
• RL_Quine 6y ago
  How much did MobileCoin pay for inclusion in Signal?
  • josh2600 6y ago
    MobileCoin has not yet paid Signal anything for integrating MobileCoin. We intend to donate a great deal of money to Signal over the coming years. We believe in Signal's mission and we think that the world is a better place with Signal in it.
    • RL_Quine 6y ago
      Moxie Marlinspike is listed as an advisor for MobileCoin, was this not a paid position?
      • josh2600 6y ago
        Moxie != Signal. Moxie, as an individual, is a paid technical advisor to MobileCoin but the reality is that we could never pay Moxie what his time is worth. I am thankful that he has chosen to help make this project a reality.
        • BlueMatt 6y ago
          The revelations from the Platformer article [1] about how Signal works inside make it pretty clear that Moxie ~= Signal. [1] https://www.platformer.news/p/-the-battle-inside-signal https://www.platformer.news/p/-the-battle-inside-signal
        • fourstar 6y ago
          >Moxie creates Signal >Moxie advises MobileCoin >MobileCoin gets integrated into Signal Hm, yes, must just be one large coincidence that this "integration" happened.
          • pixxel 6y ago
            And a reason surfaced to continue to connect users to their phone numbers... >>The UK also has receiver verification. If I try to send to an account and it doesn't match the name I'm sending to, my bank will warn me. How do you stop impersonation? A: Signal relies on phone numbers for identities. Other apps that integrate MobileCoin may have a higher threshold for identification.
• vitno 6y ago
  I am incredibly disappointed in the Signal team. I don't want cryptocurrencies (or even any payments!) in my primary text app. Crypto/blockchain is fine, but if I want to use it I'll download a different app. I'm finding this announcement creates some uncertainty in my head about Signal's long-term future.
  • fastball 6y ago
    How did you want Signal to monetize?
    • RL_Quine 6y ago
      > Signal Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit. We’re proud of that designation and we’re out to prove that a nonprofit can innovate and scale as well as any business driven by a profit motive. https://signalfoundation.org/ https://signalfoundation.org/
      • fastball 6y ago
        Unsurprisingly money is still needed to pay for development and hosting costs, and Brian Acton's loan won't last forever.
        • vitno 6y ago
          This explicitly doesn't monetize Signal so this line of argument isn't particularly relevant.
          • TameAntelope 6y ago
            There seems to be a very large amount of outstanding coin that the founders just happen to control...
          • ranguna 6y ago
            The CEO of the coin itself said they they are planning on donating a lot of money to signal in the future.
• lvs 6y ago
  Why this particular coin that nobody uses? This seems weird. Is this a monetisation scheme we should be worried about?
  • fourstar 6y ago
    IMO Signal/Moxie "advises" this project, so to me this seems like their way of cashing out (I'm assuming they hold the majority of coins), given that Signal itself is a not-for-profit organization. At least that's what I'd do if I were Moxie.
    • tradertef 6y ago
      They hold majority.. Geee 1 hour ago | unvote [–] There are 250 million units of mobilecoin, and majority of them are owned by the founders. Only 37.5 million have been distributed. With current price ($65), they're worth $14B already. This makes the project a scam and impossible for it to work as a reliable money that holds value. Bitcoin had no pre-mine and has been fairly distributed from the start.
      • rOOb85 6y ago
        I haven't seen any sources to back that up. Just that one comment claiming those facts.
        • kokx 6y ago
          On the other hand, these comments are only met with responses indicating that the source for that is an old whitepaper without any more information. While the person replying is the MobileCoin CEO. So they at least try to embellish the current situation in some way. Which doesn't tell me much good.
• dash2 6y ago
  I don't know if crypto is good or bad, but I can't imagine this feature driving Signal uptake. It would be better to focus on allowing ordinary payments in GBP via Signal. Even if the payments themselves weren't private, the messages still would be.
• corobo 6y ago
  oh here we go.. I can't wait till we stop sprinkling bitcoin over everything. At least when we go back to ads we'll stop getting the spam from bots trying to claim their free $0.00003 in cryptocoin of the week
• approxim8ion 6y ago
  Them not allowing federation sucks, because I would absolutely use a client with this removed.
  • RL_Quine 6y ago
    On some level, they can't prevent you from just using the backend. Unfortunately just maintaining a fork with different branding is essentially a full time job, I used to do this so that I could use a work and personal number in two instances of the app but it was too much effort to be worthwhile.
• mLuby 6y ago
  Is this bizarre feature actually some kind of warrant canary? I thought Signal was already financially secure.
  • qqii 6y ago
    If it is then the bird squawked in 2017: https://www.wired.com/story/mobilecoin-cryptocurrency/ https://www.wired.com/story/mobilecoin-cryptocurrency/
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• otoburb 6y ago
  Congratulations on the announcement. >>Those outputs contain the entire original supply of MobileCoin (250 million MOB)[1] Is the entire supply of 250M MOB available for sale on FTX, or is only a restricted number of MOB tokens available for sale to UK residents? Is it fair to assume that the MobileCoin Foundation has no plans for an airdrop (unlike Stellar)? [1] "Mechanics of MobileCoin", v0.0.39, pg. 133
  • josh2600 6y ago
    A majority of the supply of MobileCoins is available for purchase at https://www.buymobilecoin.com https://www.buymobilecoin.com. We have many plans for how to help users get coins but none that we are prepared to disclose today beyond the aforementioned website.
    • lrvick 6y ago
      Down
• m4lvin 6y ago
  It seems this was posted five days too late.
• mikeiz404 6y ago
  For those wondering about volatility... > MobileCoin also remains even more volatile than older cryptocurrencies, with constant price swings that will significantly change the balances in a user's Signal wallet over the course of days or even hours—hardly the sort of issue that Venmo users have to deal with. (Since March 27, MobileCoin's value has shot up nearly 600 percent, possibly due to rumors of the impending Signal integration or possibly the result of a "short-squeeze.") > To try to tame that volatility problem, Marlinspike and Goldbard say they imagine adding a feature in the future that will automatically exchange users' payments in dollars or another more stable currency for MobileCoin only when they make a payment, and then exchange it back on the recipient's side—though it's not yet clear if those trades could be made without leaving a trail that might identify the user. "There's a world where maybe when you receive money, it can optionally just automatically settle into a pegged thing," Marlinspike says. "And then when you send money it converts back out." https://www.wired.com/story/signal-mobilecoin-payments-messaging-cryptocurrency/ https://www.wired.com/story/signal-mobilecoin-payments-messa...
  • wjntzf 6y ago
    The project is brand-new, what do you expect? In any case, the end-game is to use MOB for the transaction and instantly convert to fiat, so volatility would not be of concern to the end-user
    • Jommi 6y ago
      " the end game is to make the user buy a house, sell the house to the other user, and make that user sell the house into fiat, it's that simple!"
    • qqii 6y ago
      How would that be any more private as every transaction can be deduced by the on/off ramp.
      • runeks 6y ago
        Exactly. Inside MobileCoin, transaction amounts are disguised. But if every MobileCoin transaction is preceded and succeeded by conversion into national currency at a centralized exchange (to whom you are not anonymous) then using MobileCoin becomes completely pointless.
• mek 6y ago
  I’d be super excited if this was about Monero :/
• Forbo 6y ago
  > For now it's listed for sale on just one cryptocurrency exchange I think the article might be inaccurate. According to this, there's at least four exchanges currently: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/mobilecoin#markets https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/mobilecoin#markets
• WaitWaitWha 6y ago
  I think Signal should not marry a single crypto-currency, or intermediary. Add the feature, but come up with a solution that is currency agnostic.
  • hiq 6y ago
    The arguments against federation would also apply to this solution. Given that they don't like federation, it's logical that they also reject this approach for their payment solution.
• ivoras 6y ago
  Well, if any cryptocurrency is to gain really wide adoption, this is the way to go: integrate it into something a large number of people already use. And judging by what WeChat does, a chat client is an excellent choice - after all, money sending is a way of communicating something (an abstract form of "value" in this case). I only wish it were done differently - maybe we'll get answers to these questions: - Why not airdrop everyone a 100 pieces of whatever coin (or even just 1, assuming the coin can be subdivided into tiny bits)? I'm asking because I believe the value of this kind of coin usage will come from its daily users, not from exchanges, but that's a long game. Even if today it's worth 0, if the UX is good enough and it proves to be secure, people will start assigning value to it. - Why pick a cryptocurrency almost noone has heard of? For example, related to the above question, why not buy or mine a million Doge and gift every account a 1 doge (presented as 1 thousand mili-doge)? People will start assigning (more) value to it sooner or later if it's easy to use. Feel free to substitute almost whatever instead of Doges (maybe something with PoS and give the users the warm fuzzies with apparent increase in value).
  • qshaman 6y ago
    I feel like I can answer the second question, the reason why they are using the unknown coin is because thats how they make money, they get into a shitcoin (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/mobilecoin/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/mobilecoin/) that they already have mined a good amount, using Signal popularity, then pump it to the moon(like they say) and sell their positions.
    • EMM_386 6y ago
      > they get into a shitcoin It's not like MobileCoin was created by the same person who created Signal. Nevermind .. that's exactly what it's like. The rabbit hole is deep on this one.
  • qqii 6y ago
    INAL but an airdrop may run afowl of securities laws. As for the seccond point I think the choice is actually pretty apt - most other cryptocurrencies aren't private and those that are aren't especially user friendly (they cite block times). Since Signal's sever is centralised, uses SGX and they have no intention of federation it makes sense that the cryptocurrency they chose has similar tradeoffs.
• hlieberman 6y ago
  Why not use GNU Taler, if you insist on integrating a irrelevant payment mechanism?
  • alexnewman 6y ago
    What’s that?
    • viro 6y ago
      I can't upvote this enough.
    • remirk 6y ago
      Their website is pretty good and answers your question better than I could: https://taler.net/en/principles.html https://taler.net/en/principles.html
  • olah_1 6y ago
    GNU Taler would have been far _more_ relevant because it is a generic payment processing service and not tied to any specific coin.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • summm 6y ago
    Because GNU Taler wouldn't allow them to get rich quick.
• txr 6y ago
  I'm not sure this solves any problem users have. Due to the nature of Signal requiring the phone number of the counter part to be in the phone book this feature will mostly be usable with friends or people you know directly. A feature which some users might want is to easily send money to a friend. These transfers will therefor be inherently be based on the countries currency. I'm not sure people will accept a cryptocurrency which value fluctuates in relation to the normal currency. For other uses cases they can use a cryptocurrency directly (even MobileCoin) from another app. I can understand that cryptocurrencies are very interesting from a technical and cryptographic point of view. But in their current state most of them a more for speculation and doing state of the art computer science. Therefore I think this totally useless in the signal app.
• alexnewman 6y ago
  I mined my first btc on a laptop when that was thing. It was so hi tech when it was launched. It seems like it’s features are mostly gradual and around the edges. Mobilecoin feels hi tech
• morsch 6y ago
  Help Us Encourage Matrix Adoption
• Geee 6y ago
  There are 250 million units of mobilecoin, and majority of them are owned by the founders. Only 37.5 million have been distributed. With current price ($65), they're worth $14B already. This makes the project a scam and impossible for it to work as a reliable money that holds value. Bitcoin had no pre-mine and has been fairly distributed from the start.
  • orph 6y ago
    Even UK-only release in Signal means more people with cryptocurrency wallets than all other cryptocurrencies combined.
    • admax88q 6y ago
      Is the number of empty wallets of a cryptocurrency a useful metric in any way?
      • mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
        I would say yes, at least to the extent that owners are aware that they exist and potentially become more likely to use.
    • megameter 6y ago
      It's roughly similar to Brave's userbase, though Brave is opt-in. Figures from 2020 put both in the low tens of millions.
    • qertoip 6y ago
      MobileCoin is not a cryptocurrency.
      • otoburb 6y ago
        The Wired article that the CEO of Mobilecoin is implicitly endorsing in this thread specifically categorizes Mobilecoin as a cryptocurrency. At least, it doesn’t seem to be a distinction worth splitting hairs about (yet).
• lrvick 6y ago
  Signal is still centrally controlled and compiled by a single entity and distributed only in an unsigned insecure form or in a signed/verified manner only if you give up your privacy to install with Google Play or the Apple store. Those that only run open source software like myself have no secure way to run Signal short of compiling every release by hand which is impractical. Moxie has stated he will not support anyone but his team compiling or distributing Signal binaries so third party signed builds via privacy focused app stores like F-Droid are out. All builds must also use Signal centralized servers even though that centralizes TCP/IP metadata, etc. Not to mention you need to show government ID to get a SIM to use the Signal wallet for said private currency/messenger in 200 countries. Secondly having a decentralized currency whose servers can only run on Intel machines with Intel SGX is a very centralized supply chain as well. A single supply chain attack on Intel microcode or related SGX updates could run malicious code and game over for the currency globally? A government that sees MobileCoin as a threat could make Intel do this. With a SPOF on the supply chain of the only client people are expected to use and another SPOF on the only hardware enclave people are supposed to use for servers... decentralized is technically true but not used in the same way as most other projects that use that word. I will keep an eye on this experiment though, because there are some unique ideas here which could have value should your trust anchors expand beyond Intel and Signal.
  • hiq 6y ago
    > distributed only in an unsigned insecure form or in a signed/verified manner only if you give up your privacy to install with Google Play or the Apple store. > Those that only run open source software like myself have no secure way to run Signal short of compiling every release by hand which is impractical. Nope: https://signal.org/android/apk/ https://signal.org/android/apk/
    • stonesweep 6y ago
      You may be missing the subtle point - the APK provided is the same one from Google Play, which includes the Google SDK encumbered libraries (links? hooks? features?). If you run a libre device without the Google Play store (non-Google android build) then the software cannot function. The code for the client is open source, but the act of compiling it against the required Play store libraries encumbers the final binary. F-Droid requires that all code compile without the Google SDKs in order to be hosted (IIRC).
• rvz 6y ago
  So when Keybase added Stellar support for payments, this was met with lots of hostility and disappointment, such as 'cryptocoin bullshit' [0] or 'Yeah, I am not going to use any product associated with anything cryptocurrency. Just smells bad. [1] Now the same thing has happened on Signal; HN's favourite messaging app. So why is this met with warm welcoming arms especially when they are also going into cryptocurrencies? Maybe the HN sentiment back then was filled with those who missed the crypto bull-run of late 2017 and the same ones have missed it again last year. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16545092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16545092 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16546963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16546963
  • ornornor 6y ago
    Maybe because people trust the signal project more than keybase (which sold out to zoom, of all companies)
    • 627467 6y ago
      Would only make sense if keybase incorporating stellar occured after acquisition and not before (as it actually happened)
    • brigandish 6y ago
      If Keybase is as secure as they claim it to be then it doesn't matter who they sold out to.
  • leppr 6y ago
    I think it's 2 factors. First, indeed the sentiment changed radically between now and then. For some reason, this subject has always attracted irrationality on HN. Back then any comment vaguely positive about cryptocurrencies would accumulate downvotes, now threads are full of clearly invested shills (you can see it in this very thread). Secondly and more specifically, Stellar, being a simple Ripple fork with an equally dubious token distribution, was a weird fit for Keybase. MobileCoin, while having some of the same downsides (federated, centralized token holders distribution) has a more interesting design, and is closer to the actual cryptocurrency/cypherpunk spirit thanks to its fully private transactions and balances.
• bilal4hmed 6y ago
  With Signal not releasing their server code and now this, I regret using and asking a good chunk of my base to move to Signal.
  • codethief 6y ago
    I haven't made up my mind regarding the payments feature yet but yeah, what's up with the server code? Why hasn't it been updated in over a year?[0] Also, why do the Signal developers trust SGX so much and have stayed completely silent about SGX vulnerabilities – even when the cryptographers whose quotes they used to put on the signal.org home page[1] are increasingly critical?[2] Finally, why is there no open communication about major events like the Signal PIN UI fuckup last year or the server issues earlier this year? Foundation or not, if no communication is happening and they're not demonstrating that they're capable of openly admitting mistakes and learning, they're not gaining the trust of anyone. Don't get me wrong, I've been a die-hard fan of Signal since the early TextSecure days and have convinced > 100 people to switch but I'm starting to have a bad aftertaste and some of my friends (equally big Signal fans) are, too. EDIT: Looks like the Signal server repo[3] was updated today, as this article[4] (in German) attests to. I had last checked the repo this past weekend. I suppose the repo hadn't been updated to keep the MobileCoin thing secret but I do wonder: Why not simply create a private branch instead of risking one's reputation for openness? [0]: http://web.archive.org/web/20210311053716/https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server http://web.archive.org/web/20210311053716/https://github.com... [1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20200201112751/https://signal.org/ http://web.archive.org/web/20200201112751/https://signal.org... [2]: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/07/10/a-few-thoughts-about-signals-secure-value-recovery/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/07/10/a-few-th... [3]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server [4]: https://www.golem.de/news/crypto-messenger-signal-server-nicht-mehr-open-source-2104-155376.html https://www.golem.de/news/crypto-messenger-signal-server-nic...
    • nullc 6y ago
      > why do the Signal developers trust SGX so much and have stayed completely silent about SGX vulnerabilities Maybe because the marketing of their sketchy token scheme depends exclusively on the illusion of SGX security.
• abstractbarista 6y ago
  The proper choice would have been Monero.
• tradertef 6y ago
  This is really really sad. It removed all my trust in Signal.
• drummer 6y ago
  This is huge. Huuuuuuuuge. I haven't checked MobileCoin yet but hope it is as good with privacy as Signal but also decentralized.
• drummer 6y ago
  I hope Signal opens up to worldwide payments soon. If anyone knows, some kind of roadmap would be nice to have.
• raspyberr 6y ago
  Super sad that they didn't choose Monero.
  • olah_1 6y ago
    It is. Monero community seems to have made so many choices that prove it is dedicated to the "digital cash" use case (dynamic block sizes, constant tail emission, etc).
  • matheusmoreira 6y ago
    That was my first thought as well. Why didn't they pick Monero? I don't see how any other coin could be better.
    • justupvoting 6y ago
      Only thing I can think of off the top of my head is optics (most of the installed userbase for signal has probably only ever heard of monero in a negative light).
    • wjntzf 6y ago
      No near-instant confirmation, maybe. At first glance not a big problem for users, but can run you into a lot of problems
      • qqii 6y ago
        That's not a problem if you accept transactions in the mempool.
    • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
      Using an established cryptocurrency doesn’t provide a good way for them to profit. MobileCoin is pre-mined and the majority of coins are held by founders and the MobileCoin organization. They want to sell you coins, so partnering with Signal to force you to buy their coins to transact on the app gives them a revenue stream. If they simply added Monero, they wouldn’t be able to sell you coins.
  • 6y ago
• yosito 6y ago
  If even Signal is compromised, I'm debating just going back to WhatsApp for convenience and assuming that every message I send and every contact I have is fully public information that can be used by advertisers and governments to profile me.
  • BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Hmm, any reservations about Matrix ?
    • nerdponx 6y ago
      Questionable UX in the flagship/reference Element client, and it's laggy/slow no matter where your homeserver is hosted. After so many years, it's still a curiosity and for-hackers-only experience that's pretty much just like IRC but with lots of lag. I'm about ready to to give up on it. I still love the idea of it and I hope it actually gets good/usable one day. Until then, I can recommend it only if you want to be an early adopter, but not if you want a good experience.
      • BlueTemplar 6y ago
        > pretty much just like IRC The media capabilities are nothing like IRC. In fact I moved to Element because Conversations had trouble with media.
        • nerdponx 6y ago
          That's fair. I guess maybe it's different when you have a group of people who actively use it. It's certainly not the IRC/Discord/Slack replacement that I was hoping it'd be, where lots of "randoms" can join and a community develops. The UX is still going to be unacceptable for most non-technical people, so I definitely can't convince my friends to switch from Discord, even for our private group.
          • BlueTemplar 6y ago
• nickthemagicman 6y ago
  1. MobileCoin premines 250m coins 2. Moxie gets paid for being on their advisory board 3. Moxie directs his non-profit to integrate MobileCoin in secret 4. MobileCoin offers 1/5 of their premine for sale. 5. Signal announcement spikes price to $60 How accurate is this? via: https://twitter.com/lrvick/status/1379536536459431937 https://twitter.com/lrvick/status/1379536536459431937
  • codethief 6y ago
    > 3. Moxie directs his non-profit to integrate MobileCoin in secret The fact that Moxie is collaborating with MobileCoin has been known for years. EDIT: See links in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26718488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26718488
    • hn8788 6y ago
      But not the fact that it's going to be directly integrated into Signal. The CEO of MobileCoin is in here saying that he started it as a way to fund Signal, which from what I can tell, wasn't public knowledge until today. So he gets to monopolize a currency that was mostly worthless, knowing that it would be directly integrated into a popular application, greatly increasing its value. If that's not a scam, I don't know what is.
      • nullc 6y ago
        They also strongly de-emphasized any connection, saying he was only an advisor. Now it's paid CTO and that funding signal with it was the plan all along... Super dishonest and untrustworthy.
        • nullc 6y ago
          (... and also kept the server closed source for a year to conceal the integration, it appears)
      • codethief 6y ago
        > But not the fact that it's going to be directly integrated into Signal To be honest, that was exactly the impression that I got back then. So to me, yesterday's announcement was no surprise at all. Whether I like it, is a different matter.
• meowfly 6y ago
  The comment from the article echos my own sentiments: > Speaking solely as a person who is really into encrypted messaging, it terrifies me that they're going to take this really clean story of an encrypted messenger and mix it up with the nightmare of laws and regulations and vulnerability that is cryptocurrency. Moreover, there are three other points I'd add: 1. I don't like "do everything" apps like WeChat or Line. One of Signals strengths was UX that focused on it's core competency. Early in Signal's development they would add privacy features. Lately they have been adding social features. This, however, feels especially out of left field and likely to hurt the UX. 2. This smells like dev resources will be spent building and maintaining something not related to messaging. 3. I've always had a "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" rationalization that gives Signal autonomy to grow a privacy centric messaging app despite the deficits (e.g lack of federation). In contrast, I personally associate "crypto" with "scam". There have been so many shady ICOs and pump-dump schemes around crypto. This will taint the product for those of us who don't think of crypto currency as being anything more than pump-and-dump schemes and a way to buy dab rigs online.
  • rapnie 6y ago
    Amen to all your points. I find this really disappointing. The "yeah, but they are a non-profit so you can be assured they are good custodians of the product" no longer goes for me.
    • jdroe1211 6y ago
      Respectfully disagree, Sir.
  • takenpilot 6y ago
    In a lot of ways, the transfer of cryptocurrency is the same as the transfer of generic messages. It's only when you're transferring them back to dollars/yuan/yen/etc. that it's suddenly currency from a government.
    • amelius 6y ago
      You mean in the sense that it can be traced back to the originator, just like messages?
• timwaagh 6y ago
  I was concerned about how signal was monetising. They barely receive any scrutiny and people take them at their word too much because they are supposedly non commercial. This basically confirms my suspicions
• EGreg 6y ago
  https://community.intercoin.org/t/signal-another-centralized-social-network-adds-a-payment-network https://community.intercoin.org/t/signal-another-centralized...
• adamsvystun 6y ago
  I think you can argue that payment privacy is not as paramount as message privacy and can be implemented with regular financial mechanisms. Or at least such option should be given if you are using your own cryptocurrency.
• femiagbabiaka 6y ago
  Random fact I found interesting: The Long Now Foundation is one of the featured funders behind MobileCoin.
• qqii 6y ago
  Not a very surprising choice given Signals current use of SGX and reliance on their centralised server. It's a bit of a shame as MobileCoin doesn't offer as strong guarentees as other privacy coins but I'm interested to see how they maintain privacy whilst peg the transacted value - I can't imagine how they wouldn't have to rely on an exchange for liquidity. SCRT network is a similar project that uses SGX but supports smart contacts so they could have a Maker like pegged token.
• EMM_386 6y ago
  Mobilecoin was flat for long time at around $7 and then on March 28th started a dramatic rise to $66 today. There were rumors in late January that Signal was looking into Mobilecoin but that seems unrelated, and I'm not sure I buy a short-squeeze scenario as mentioned on Twitter. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/mobilecoin/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/mobilecoin/ https://twitter.com/classicmacro/status/1375868871509442562 https://twitter.com/classicmacro/status/1375868871509442562
  • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    Almost a 10X return in a couple of weeks. Having inside information on this announcement was highly profitable.
    • qqii 6y ago
      Moxie and Signal's intention to use MobileCoin are well documented, the only question was when.
      • freeAgent 6y ago
        And yet, someone did guess “when.”
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
• LockAndLol 6y ago
  I thought Session(1), a signal fork, was ridiculous for adding a crypto currency, but now Signal is doing it too? I don't want this stuff in my messenger. It's supposed to send messages, not money. This is just going to accelerate my departure from Signal - or at least the official client. 1: https://getsession.org/ https://getsession.org/
• ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago
  Again, Signal shows there's some undercurrents going on constantly in the organization and bringing private and ethical messaging solution to the public is not the sole goal. Another affirmation for those who kept on recommending Matrix/GNU Jami/XMPP instead. At this point, if you really need this broad functionality Signal are aiming to provide, why not Status.im? At least their tech is cool.
  • nullc 6y ago
    Careful, "ethical messaging" may not mean what you think it means.
    • ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago
      Ah, the quirks of English language. I hope it's clear messaging here is a noun modifier (is it an "attributive noun"?). This noun and two prepositive adjectives modify the same noun "solution".
• bluefox 6y ago
  So Signal is now a payments app? Really? Installed Element and will be phasing Signal out of my life.
  • ranguna 6y ago
    Good luck getting everyone to use matrix after spending so much time convincing them to move from WhatsApp to signal..
• cdogl 6y ago
  Long-time Signal user here, with a number of technical and non-technical friends, colleagues and acquaintances who also use it. I don't know who was asking for this. And I think it really dilutes Signal's message. I believe that everyone has a fundamental right to secure, private communication. Some people may hold the same belief for the right to transfer funds. I don't agree and I suspect many others feel the same. That tension alone makes this look like a bad decision to me.
  • flyinglizard 6y ago
    Communication platforms like Signal live or die by network effects. If payment is incorporated as a first class citizen into other platforms, Signal would need it as well to maintain its network - just like it would need the capability to transfer photos or other non-textual items.
  • Proven 6y ago
    > I believe that everyone has a fundamental right to secure, private communication. Some people may hold the same belief for the right to transfer funds. No one has the right of secure comms (why do you use Signal and encrypt messages if you have that right?). Anyone has the right to privacy on their own property (on your land, at home, etc.) but not outside. The totally premined coin is very scammy.
  • JeremyNT 6y ago
    This kind of anti-feature is not what I signed up for. I just wanted a secure messenger normal users could understand! It seems like a simple enough problem that Signal solved well (apart from the phone number requirement). Sadly, now it feels like Signal was just a long game trojan for Marlinspike to onboard users to a cryptocurrency pyramid scheme. This has nothing to do with its core functionality and it makes me question the developers' motives. I've wasted my influence with my non-technical friends convincing them to adopt Signal, and I don't forsee convincing them to switch yet again to something different. The state of secure messaging is really bleak. I wish Matrix had an IM-style client that was decent enough for non-technical users to adopt.
    • 6y ago
• xwx 6y ago
  The announcement on Signal's blog: https://signal.org/blog/help-us-test-payments-in-signal/ https://signal.org/blog/help-us-test-payments-in-signal/
• golergka 6y ago
  Isn't that exactly what Telegram was going to do with TON?
• djanogo 6y ago
  Feels like a gut punch, I feel horrible asking people to switch to signal after buying into signl marketing, all of that now seems to be a ruse for their ecoin business.
  • djanogo 6y ago
    After reading a little about founder, who is described as "investor", "cryptocurrency hedge fund manager", and inventor of "protocol". I am done with signal. What a f*kin ruse. Deleted the app. Also left a note in status so others can see the msg and delete the app also.
• eximius 6y ago
  Welp, I would normally suggest people use Signal. Now, I guess I need to find a good Matrix ecosystem to join.
• 908087 6y ago
  "Moxie" seems hell-bent on chasing away the very user base who pushed people to adopt Signal (or even TextSecure, for that matter) from the start. Binding yet another cryptocurrency scam to your messenger is a sure way to get rid of me, at least.
• Krisando 6y ago
  Personally, I like Telegram's cryptocurrency idea more, which was disclosed some years ago. It's a shame it blocked by the government though.
• evilos 6y ago
  When I tried to get my friend to switch to signal, they told me: "Signal is for drug dealers". This isn't helping.
• CryptoPunk 6y ago
  My question to Signal is: there are a lot of cryptocurrencies that already have significant traction - why not integrate with them rather than a brand new one that has to start from scratch building an infrastructure? MobileCoin uses a fork of the Stellar Consensus Protocol, which is a consensus protocol that by design, relies on a small set of trusted third parties to establish consensus. This does not give it highly credible censorship resistance, yet MobileCoin was chosen as the sole cryptocurrency that Signal is integrated with. Why?
• thinkmassive 6y ago
  Interesting that the terms "keybase" "steller" "lumens" haven't showed up once on this page yet, considering how similar this seems to what Keybase did by integrating Stellar Lumens, and going downhill from there. Hopefully Matrix/Element continues on their current path and doesn't ruin their chat protocol/client by pushing some altcoin onto their userbase.
• robjan 6y ago
  This reminds me of when Keybase integrated Stellar Lumens. It was never the same again. If they really must integrate crypto with the main app I'd rather they used a stablecoin since a highly volatile cryptoasset isn't very useful. Also, I can't be bothered with the tax implications.
• Gustomaximus 6y ago
  Is this encouraging governments to insist on access to Signal, adding risk to their core product? Assuming govt haven't already, or that number is limited, adding hidden transactions seems a great was for increased government attention. Side point, I think one of the greatest and less discussed risks of crypto is government. Its hard to see them allowing loss of currency control. Currency is so economically important for control & profitable e.g. There much talk the support on the attacks on Libya/Gadhafi was in part due to his desire for an independent currency. So unless crypto spreads so widely pre-regulation its politically unviable to move against, I wonder if we will see governments step in against crypto, at least as a day-to-day transaction option at some point.
• shp0ngle 6y ago
  Why was Telegram stopped from doing TON by SEC, but this is OK? Seems to me like the same thing
• dylanfw 6y ago
  I think we might be due for an update to Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment: "Every program attempts to expand until it can process _payments_. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
• jakecopp 6y ago
  This is one of the primary benefits of a messaging client that uses Matrix [1], if one app becomes undesirable there are dozens of compatible apps! [2] I highly recommend giving Element [3] a try - it's polished and easy for non technical people to use, end-to-end encrypted and OSS. [1]: https://matrix.org/ https://matrix.org/ [2]: https://matrix.org/clients/ https://matrix.org/clients/ [3]: https://element.io https://element.io
  • the_duke 6y ago
    I like and use Element, but the crypto workflow is way too complicated for non technical users and the UX is nowhere near what's app or Telegram. I have more hope for other clients like Fluffychat.
• Thorentis 6y ago
  This is a terrible decision. Feature bloat is one of the worst things for a security conscious product. The more features, the more attack vectors. Nobody asked for payments in Signal. Where did this idea come from? It was never put forward prior to this, it was never on the road map. That only makes me even more suspicious of this decision, which leads to my second point... MobileCoin has all the appearances of a scam. 85% of the coin is owned by the creators. The price rapidly shot up at the end of March. The social media of the developers was posting rubbish for a long period of time. There was no mention of this collaboration beforehand. This has all the hallmarks of a pump and dump. Have the Signal devs been duped? Or are they wanting to cash in on Signal's rising popularity? Anybody at all with an interest in Signal needs to let the foundation know that this Beta needs to be scrapped, and that payments should never be added.
  • codethief 6y ago
    > There was no mention of this collaboration beforehand. There was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26718488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26718488
• Ansil849 6y ago
  Ugh. Someone please tell me this is a belated April Fools' joke.
• ajkdhcb2 6y ago
  Putting people's privacy in danger with fake privacy coins is a devastating error. Mobilecoin is a scam. The only private cryptocurrency that works is Monero. I now can only believe Signal has sick motives or is a honeypot. Extremely sad since I even convinced my family to use it but now I will turn away.
  • dspearson 6y ago
    Not quite true; zcash is best-of-breed and works well. Dead on for this being a devastating error though. I regret advocating Signal, and this destroys Moxie's credibility in my eyes. A shame, because the Signal team did good work to bring strong encrypted communications to the masses. Instead of focusing on fixing usability, stability, and group messaging that scales, they push this in (which nobody asked for) just to make a few people rich through network effects. Mobilecoin is a pre-mined Monero rip-off (that Moxie has clear links to) with centralised Ripple-esque consensus, and puts UK Signal users into uncharted regulatory waters. Downright sleazy.
    • ajkdhcb2 6y ago
      It seems MobileCoin went up over 500% days -before- the announcement... No doubt what is happening here
• Ansil849 6y ago
  Moxie seems to have been advising MobileCoin since 2017: https://www.wired.com/story/mobilecoin-cryptocurrency/ https://www.wired.com/story/mobilecoin-cryptocurrency/
• mro_name 6y ago
  OMG. Signal is leaving me.
• i5heu 6y ago
  Signal has a lot of red flags. 1. The system is not distributed 2. The server is not open source and there was no notice that open sourcing the server will stop. 3. there is no public roadmap nor a away to make feature requests And that’s not all by far. My go to messenger is matrix.
• ranguna 6y ago
  This feels like signal is getting a cut of the money somewhere along the line does this mean I should stop donating? (and maybe stop using the app)
• runeks 6y ago
  > MobileCoin only began trading as an actual currency with real value in December of last year—until then, it was running as a valueless "testnet"—and its 250 million coins, at around $69 each, are currently worth almost $17 billion dollars in total. No. This is simply not true. You don't arrive at the value of a set of "things" by multiplying the best price for a single "thing" by the number of "things" you want to sell. That's not how the world works. If I sell you a printout of a drawing for $1, printing out a trillion copies of this drawing does not make me a trillionaire. > For now it's listed for sale on just one cryptocurrency exchange, FTX [...] Great. So let's see what the actual value of this token is, by looking at the order books of the markets on the FTX exchange where this token is traded. There are two markets: 1. MOB/USD: https://ftx.com/trade/MOB/USD https://ftx.com/trade/MOB/USD 2. MOB/USDT: https://ftx.com/trade/MOB/USDT https://ftx.com/trade/MOB/USDT The most liquid market appears to be the MOB/USD market, so I will focus on this. The MOB/USD order book tells us that, if you wanted to sell as much MOB you could while pushing up the sell price by at most 10% (from 61.15 to 67.27), you would end up earning $2.5MM USD. If you consumed all sell orders (that are displayed on the site) the sell price would be pushed up to 73 USD per MOB (a 20% increase) and you would earn a total of 3.75MM USD. Now, compare this figure to the alleged value of this token (17 billion USD). The actual value -- let's be generous and say 10MM USD -- turns out to be just ~0.06% of the claimed value of $17 billion USD.
  • robjan 6y ago
    That's the same with any stock, currency or crypto though. If you want to sell the whole market cap then it's worthless.
    • runeks 6y ago
      No, it’s not the same with stocks. With stocks, as a majority holder, you can make the minority an offer that everyone is forced to accept if a majority of the minority accepts it. This is why market cap is relevant to the stock market, but not e.g. the forex or commodity market.
      • robjan 6y ago
• aex 6y ago
  If you’re concerned about this, writing to Signal directly is a good option: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/requests/new https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/requests/new
• jillesvangurp 6y ago
  I think it's interesting that they do this in the UK. The UK has a bit of a history when it comes to financial innovations. E.g. the first national bank was created there, it's still a major financial center, and it's a country that is very dependent on international trade and literally built the foundations of the modern financial system in the seventeenth century at the same time they took over management of their huge empire. It's no coincidence that those two things happened at the same time. Their new financial system funneled huge amounts of trade through London, which in turn allowed it to go out and conquer the world. Basically they scaled trade by de-risking it. Before banks, you had to move gold around which was slow and exposed you to robbers. After banks happened, you had messengers transferring bills to each other. The Spanish were still shipping (and occasionally losing) tons of silver across the Atlantic at the time and that was their whole premise for their empire. The UK recently removed themselves from the EU so they are once more in a position where they can play host to new financial instruments and potentially benefit from that. Crypto currencies have the potential to be very disruptive to the modern financial system. Not the worst move for them to allow some experiments to happen in their jurisdiction. If something like this takes off, it has the potential to capture quite a bit of value. If it doesn't work out, it's easy enough to get rid of it. It's also interesting that particular block chain is based in San Francisco. The SEC is allowing this to happen, apparently (probably for the same opportunistic reasons the British allow this). These MobileCoin guys are well funded apparently and not by means of an ICO but by good old VC cash. VCs are smelling money, that's why this stuff is happening and why the SEC is being a bit hands off here. There are quite a few block chain companies operating in the US actually. There already is quite a bit of VC money locked up in that. It's also an interesting counter move to Facebook's Libra as well and kind of embarrassing for them that particularly Signal is doing this given that it is backed by one of their former Whatsapp founders. Libra in turn was a counter move to Telegram's plans (yet to materialize) and inspired by China's WeChat.
• mike-cardwell 6y ago
  Anyone wants to try this out, install the Beta version of Signal and send some mobilecoin to me at iHXtgfsScSiaqKFMev8mC5Yogz8uZhTJSUVBM1vkECKPaVVxp9woYvbZJPso4SNx5oCkiU5XrAGZj6XwZMrYGzQztntDUKRka2RHnc6d9NPYaorT7E21jEWobERA77Uzny4VoeChDA9m2MihDLTB47BoJ3S2Lhuhp8U Kbo6jyRpo2zcr5ZucssuBVENGUS4fTK7qZZY8qMXHd9B1MNbA2MgBBzb5fBjberr6v4NKBVo3oFNCS1J3ryX13ZszByxjEU The UI seems fairly unobtrusive, but I don't know if that's just because I have no contacts that can receive it so I'm not being shown some of it. I also have no idea how to actually get Mobilecoin to play with. There's no built in way to buy it. They just give you an address you can send to from an exchange.
• drakonka 6y ago
  This is raising red flags for me, not only due to the stake some within Signal have within this obscure coin but due to them trying to turn a messaging platform into a payment platform. If they feel like they want to contribute a payment solution, they should do so in a separate product offering.
• fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  That's very unfortunate. When I installed Signal, I didn't mean to open another account in which taxable assets can be traded. In the Wired article, they argue why this doesn't put a target on Signal's back as they are not becoming an exchange. Good for them, but what about Signal users' backs? With this feature, the range of reasons why the authorities might justifiably want to have a look at the contents of my Signal app has just widened dramatically. If you're using this feature in the UK, you are well advised to read the HMRC guidance on the taxation of cryptocurrency: https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/cryptoassets-manual/crypto22000 https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/cryptoassets-manual...
• verytrivial 6y ago
  And I'd just managed to convince a quorum of my friends to move from WhatsApp to Signal. At this rate I'm going to be using Mixmaster remailers and talking to no-one again before the year is out. Remember Keybase ICO? I try not to. There is a near zero-chance my friends and family would have done this without buy-in from their nerd contact. I sold it hard. And this same nerd has been talking about cryptocurrencies too, almost exclusively that they are at best tulip-craze scams, at worst just a way to bait drug dealers and law enforcement onto your device. Not to mention the hideous environmental impact (and you are about to talk about proof-of-stake, just ... don't.) I can not stress enough how much I want this experiment to fail.
• Aeolun 6y ago
  This coin is only traded on a single exchange, and cannot be bought with USD unless you do some really dodgy shit. Every time I think crypto might get interesting I try again and find it to be so shifty I immediately bounce again.
• jdroe1211 6y ago
  Nice, but. You got signal 101 here, so good luck.
• flal_ 6y ago
  HN crowd is too "first-world" centric : to me this is an attempt at taking over digital micropayment that ubiquitous now in third world economies where the informal economy is strong, and not everyone has access to banks, payment cards/terminal for your "side of the road" business, but now (cheap) smartphones are everywhere. At least that's how I would market the stuff if I were signal
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Dim4ksan 6y ago
  Everyone says investing is hard. How wrong they are, in fact, you just follow the news and analyze the market. Especially there are many brokers https://goodcrypto.app/coinigy-alternative/ https://goodcrypto.app/coinigy-alternative/ which make the job as easy as possible. Which connect to many exchanges and update data in real time, have an internal calculator.
• xtat 6y ago
  That's cool but... mobilecoin?