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Ah yes, mobilecoin. I haven't heard much about it since the Signal announcement. I hoped Signal reversed their decision but apparently not: https://support.sign

Ah yes, mobilecoin. I haven't heard much about it since the Signal announcement. I hoped Signal reversed their decision but apparently not: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In-app-Payments#payments_which_ones https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In...

dmix 4y ago
The FTX trade happened in April 2021 and it looks like it was because the value of mobilecoin spiked and someone in FTX bet on it at a high price before it dropped. https://imgur.com/a/dgeaIzK https://imgur.com/a/dgeaIzK I don’t think this was some FTX investment directly to mobilecoin itself (they were buying coins, not loans/investment that would expose them to FTXs recent drop). Despite the headline making it seem that way. In the year plus since the Apr 2021 price spike mobilecoin price is pretty stable. So I’m not sure why Signal should drop them other than because of the general volatility in crypto.
- skorpeon87 4y ago
  > So I’m not sure why Signal should drop them other than because of the general volatility in crypto. The affiliation to a cryptoscheme casts the entirety of Signal in a disreputable light. Not least because it gets Signal tangled up in stories like this one.
  - dmix 4y ago
    They should act to avoid guilt by association?
    - lxgr 4y ago
      "Association" hardly seems like the correct term for marketing a fringe cryptocurrency to unsophisticated users/retail investors.
      - dmix 4y ago
        Moxie was a technical advisor for mobilecoin, helping people send money privately sounds like a noble pursuit to me. At least it has a real world use case + legitimate real world userbase/implementation. Most crypto companies don't have that.
        benatkin 4y ago
        I don't think a messenger should provide a way to transfer money. It is one reason I hate Facebook Messenger. I liked Signal more before then because of its focus on messaging.
    - ummonk 4y ago
      No one said anything about legal guilt. It's generally good practice not to associate with fraudsters if you care about your reputation though.
      - dmix 4y ago
        “Guilt by association” doesn’t imply legal guilt? It’s a common euphemism and it fits exactly what you’re describing. Signal has often valued being technically correct over pandering to media narratives for marketing reasons.
        skorpeon87 4y ago
        Rage against it all you want, people are judged by the company they keep. Ideally not in court rooms, but in everyday life? Abso-fucking-lutely. You don't have to like it but that's how life works.
        stefan_ 4y ago
        Whats "technically correct"? You think making a money sending feature using a currency that has random 1000% swings from fraudsters is "technically correct"? It's fucking useless garbage is what it is. Good thing their users didn't buy into the fraud seeing how this scam has no volume (ironically enabling this scam).
Melting_Harps 4y ago
> Ah yes, mobilecoin. I haven't heard much about it since the Signal announcement. I hoped Signal reversed their decision but apparently not: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In... Yeah, I remember that; I highly respect Moxie too but his web3 analysis seemed to exclude using an alt with no proven history in Signal for payments [0]. His involvement was being an advisor and perhaps even its former CTO, whih would explain a lot. I wonder if Meredith will intervene considering they are openly talking about how Signal needs to be able to carry it's costs moving forward [1] and I'm guessing the mobilecoin deal came with some stake under Moxie in it's foundation? 0: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/04/09/signal-founder-may-have-been-more-than-a-tech-adviser-to-mobilecoin/ https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/04/09/signal-founder-may-... 1: https://fortune.com/2022/11/29/signal-president-meredith-whittaker-alternative-big-tech-surveillance/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE https://fortune.com/2022/11/29/signal-president-meredith-whi...
- benatkin 4y ago
  > his web3 analysis seemed to exclude using an alt with no proven history in Signal for payments I never suggested that nor do I think that. I just don't like the feature.
- nullc 4y ago
  Come on. Mobilecoin was just a straight up method of transferring value from the non-profit into the pockets of private parties. It couldn't be more clear short of them saying it outright. A purely premined purely centralized "cryptocurrency" with no selling point except that all signal users would be forced onto it which, once it was launched, made someone a billion dollars and then it was abandoned and forgotten. (The almost unusable demo grade integration in signal continues to exist, if you look really hard for it.)
  - Melting_Harps 4y ago
    > Come on. Mobilecoin was just a straight up method of transferring value from the non-profit into the pockets of private parties. It couldn't be more clear short of them saying it outright. Matt seems to have said the same thing: >"Signal sold out their user base by creating and marketing a cryptocurrency based solely on their ability to sell the future tokens to a captive audience,” said Bitcoin Core developer Matt Corallo, who also used to contribute to Signal’s open-source software. But here is the thing; we've both have enough time in BTC to have seen some variation of this already; I was and remain a big proponent of Mycelium and I couldn't have done what I did with my startup without them, but there was no way in hell I was going buy their token and instead donated directly to the team. Nor would I purchase any of the exchange coins, I'm looking at SBF and CZ; so a level of due diligence is required so with the aftermath of the ICO-mania back in 2017 firmly in mind I think this should be a precursor. I don't deny that Mobilecoin may have been in done in bad faith, but ultimately the consumer has to bear some responsibility; I was at hackathon at a major tech University, where the 1st-3rd prize was some small sum of cash and getting 1st round of interviews at some local tech companies and some recognition in media, but the rest were pointless things like Rokus or whatever. I wasn't selected as a mentor for that event, I just crashed the event in the last 5 hours as I got out of work early, but after encountering a team from Stanford that created a proof of concept used to solve a major issue and creating transparency in donations for charities and non-profits using a blockchain to track, monitor and distribute the funds with real time tagging (like how we used to embed messages on mainchain). Long story short is I managed to get them a pitch and demo with the guys from Tron and they won $10k worth of it, far exceeding the formal prizes, and I told them to split it 50/50 between them and to to keep most of it in BTC for obvious reasons. I hope they listened because Tron ended up being kind of a joke as were mos ERC tokens. I ope they listened but if they kept it in Tron they lost 66% since ATH and they only have themselves to blame.

dmix 4y ago

The FTX trade happened in April 2021 and it looks like it was because the value of mobilecoin spiked and someone in FTX bet on it at a high price before it dropped. https://imgur.com/a/dgeaIzK https://imgur.com/a/dgeaIzK I don’t think this was some FTX investment directly to mobilecoin itself (they were buying coins, not loans/investment that would expose them to FTXs recent drop). Despite the headline making it seem that way. In the year plus since the Apr 2021 price spike mobilecoin price is pretty stable. So I’m not sure why Signal should drop them other than because of the general volatility in crypto.

skorpeon87 4y ago
> So I’m not sure why Signal should drop them other than because of the general volatility in crypto. The affiliation to a cryptoscheme casts the entirety of Signal in a disreputable light. Not least because it gets Signal tangled up in stories like this one.
- dmix 4y ago
  They should act to avoid guilt by association?
  - lxgr 4y ago
    "Association" hardly seems like the correct term for marketing a fringe cryptocurrency to unsophisticated users/retail investors.
    - dmix 4y ago
      Moxie was a technical advisor for mobilecoin, helping people send money privately sounds like a noble pursuit to me. At least it has a real world use case + legitimate real world userbase/implementation. Most crypto companies don't have that.
      - benatkin 4y ago
        I don't think a messenger should provide a way to transfer money. It is one reason I hate Facebook Messenger. I liked Signal more before then because of its focus on messaging.
  - ummonk 4y ago
    No one said anything about legal guilt. It's generally good practice not to associate with fraudsters if you care about your reputation though.
    - dmix 4y ago
      “Guilt by association” doesn’t imply legal guilt? It’s a common euphemism and it fits exactly what you’re describing. Signal has often valued being technically correct over pandering to media narratives for marketing reasons.
      - skorpeon87 4y ago
        Rage against it all you want, people are judged by the company they keep. Ideally not in court rooms, but in everyday life? Abso-fucking-lutely. You don't have to like it but that's how life works.
      - stefan_ 4y ago
        Whats "technically correct"? You think making a money sending feature using a currency that has random 1000% swings from fraudsters is "technically correct"? It's fucking useless garbage is what it is. Good thing their users didn't buy into the fraud seeing how this scam has no volume (ironically enabling this scam).

Melting_Harps 4y ago

> Ah yes, mobilecoin. I haven't heard much about it since the Signal announcement. I hoped Signal reversed their decision but apparently not: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In... Yeah, I remember that; I highly respect Moxie too but his web3 analysis seemed to exclude using an alt with no proven history in Signal for payments [0]. His involvement was being an advisor and perhaps even its former CTO, whih would explain a lot. I wonder if Meredith will intervene considering they are openly talking about how Signal needs to be able to carry it's costs moving forward [1] and I'm guessing the mobilecoin deal came with some stake under Moxie in it's foundation? 0: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/04/09/signal-founder-may-have-been-more-than-a-tech-adviser-to-mobilecoin/ https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/04/09/signal-founder-may-... 1: https://fortune.com/2022/11/29/signal-president-meredith-whittaker-alternative-big-tech-surveillance/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE https://fortune.com/2022/11/29/signal-president-meredith-whi...

benatkin 4y ago
> his web3 analysis seemed to exclude using an alt with no proven history in Signal for payments I never suggested that nor do I think that. I just don't like the feature.
nullc 4y ago
Come on. Mobilecoin was just a straight up method of transferring value from the non-profit into the pockets of private parties. It couldn't be more clear short of them saying it outright. A purely premined purely centralized "cryptocurrency" with no selling point except that all signal users would be forced onto it which, once it was launched, made someone a billion dollars and then it was abandoned and forgotten. (The almost unusable demo grade integration in signal continues to exist, if you look really hard for it.)
- Melting_Harps 4y ago
  > Come on. Mobilecoin was just a straight up method of transferring value from the non-profit into the pockets of private parties. It couldn't be more clear short of them saying it outright. Matt seems to have said the same thing: >"Signal sold out their user base by creating and marketing a cryptocurrency based solely on their ability to sell the future tokens to a captive audience,” said Bitcoin Core developer Matt Corallo, who also used to contribute to Signal’s open-source software. But here is the thing; we've both have enough time in BTC to have seen some variation of this already; I was and remain a big proponent of Mycelium and I couldn't have done what I did with my startup without them, but there was no way in hell I was going buy their token and instead donated directly to the team. Nor would I purchase any of the exchange coins, I'm looking at SBF and CZ; so a level of due diligence is required so with the aftermath of the ICO-mania back in 2017 firmly in mind I think this should be a precursor. I don't deny that Mobilecoin may have been in done in bad faith, but ultimately the consumer has to bear some responsibility; I was at hackathon at a major tech University, where the 1st-3rd prize was some small sum of cash and getting 1st round of interviews at some local tech companies and some recognition in media, but the rest were pointless things like Rokus or whatever. I wasn't selected as a mentor for that event, I just crashed the event in the last 5 hours as I got out of work early, but after encountering a team from Stanford that created a proof of concept used to solve a major issue and creating transparency in donations for charities and non-profits using a blockchain to track, monitor and distribute the funds with real time tagging (like how we used to embed messages on mainchain). Long story short is I managed to get them a pitch and demo with the guys from Tron and they won $10k worth of it, far exceeding the formal prizes, and I told them to split it 50/50 between them and to to keep most of it in BTC for obvious reasons. I hope they listened because Tron ended up being kind of a joke as were mos ERC tokens. I ope they listened but if they kept it in Tron they lost 66% since ATH and they only have themselves to blame.