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Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

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Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#341

Post by luma »

dan-robertson wrote: post #121
edent wrote: post #9

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…

This was my question too. I don’t really understand why the U.K. was chosen as the initial market. At least in the U.S. people are used to venmo and suchlike being services they might use. My guess is that either the cryptocurrency people are based in the U.K. or that whoever is in charge is viewing the country as something like America but easier to get started (anglophone but smaller market for testing or easier re…

America has AML and KYC and running an exchange that allows trades which dodge those requirements is a great path to men in black suits knocking on your door.

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#342

Post by gruez »

neolog wrote: post #339
gruez wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

large stash =/= premine

What's the difference in practice?

That moves the goalposts from "did satoshi premine?" a question with a well-defined criteria, to something more vague like "is bitcoin fairly distributed?", which opens a can of worms regarding what "fair" means.

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#343

Post by whimsicalism »

gruez wrote: post #340
whimsicalism wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know enough to comment on those things, I'm discussing the specific example of the ETH fork which was given.

The point is that in your initial comment, you were saying that with decentralized cryptocurrencies you'll be free from third party interference, but with ETH the DAO hacker was subject to the very interference you claimed crypto wasn't subject to. Therefore it weakens your claim from something like "with crypto, nobody can stop you!", to "with crypto, nobody can stop you! ...except if you do something we don't like…

That wasn't my comment. Also, people freely chose to start using the new version of ETH, they weren't required to.

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#344

Post by glsdfgkjsklfj »

reader_mode wrote: post #337
sequoia wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Early in Signal's development they would add privacy features. Lately they have been adding social features. This is intentional and relates to Signal's growth in the past few years. It's not "a hacker tool for nerds" it's "a friendly, easy to use chat app with stickers & voice messages (also strong encryption)." IRC does one thing and does it well, and barely anyone uses it. The "clean technical vision" story isn'…

> a friendly, easy to use chat app with stickers & voice messages (also strong encryption). Except it's not, strong encryption and privacy emphasis goes against easy to use. I recently got my family to switch to Telegram (because I like the interface) - my sister works in an environment where she has to have a separate work phone without a camera and everything synced up out of the box, history, etc. Brother lost his…

> goes against easy to use

or just respect reasonable limits?

Does it make sense to destroy one feature for the illusion of having both?

Elements.io and telegram (to a much lesser extent) are safes. You place something there and it is locked. Signal, whatsapp, et al promise to be safes, but as soon as you place something, a hidden camera scan all the documents and print copies in a hidden printer at your home safe.

Would you trust that safe? would you still even call them safes? Yet some product manager/marketer convinced you that these are essential features for a "easy of use safe".

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#345

Post by midmagico »

guidingtunnel wrote: post #297
Geee wrote: post #83

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.

> Bitcoin had no pre-mine and has been fairly distributed from the start. Except for that small initial 1 million that stayed with Adam

Pretty easy to risk someone else's safety with lies from behind that alias, isn't it

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#346

Post by JeremyNT »

cdogl wrote: post #302

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.…

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.

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#347

Post by ImprovedSilence »

hn8788 wrote: post #320
Klonoar wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Marlinspike's been an advisor to MobileCoin from like... the beginning. The article also notes that neither he nor Signal own any actual MobileCoins.

Signal may not own any MobileCoins, but the CEO of MobileCoin said: > 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.

In my view there are worse ways to make money from a chat app. Like selling all your users data. Ir worse yet just selling out to FB. At least a crypto scheme can maybe be the cash cow that helps them keep true to the privacy aspect....

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#348

Post by intricatedetail »

meowfly wrote: post #195

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…

Money can be a message worth 1000 times more than words...

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#350

Post by leppr »

gruez wrote: post #340
whimsicalism wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know enough to comment on those things, I'm discussing the specific example of the ETH fork which was given.

The point is that in your initial comment, you were saying that with decentralized cryptocurrencies you'll be free from third party interference, but with ETH the DAO hacker was subject to the very interference you claimed crypto wasn't subject to. Therefore it weakens your claim from something like "with crypto, nobody can stop you!", to "with crypto, nobody can stop you! ...except if you do something we don't like…

A hard fork in a decentralized cryptocurrency is democratic, users chose which of the 2 new chains assets' they want to keep. No binary winner is decided, the market currently values ETH as 122 times more valuable than ETC, but ETC is not censored.

The sentencing of criminals in republics is very removed from democratic action (see drug criminalization).

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