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Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

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Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#131

Post by c-cube »

nindalf wrote: post #42
sneak wrote: post #2

> It’s that adding a cryptocurrency to an end-to-end encrypted app muddies the morality of the product, and invites all sorts of government investigative and regulatory meddling: by the IRS, the SEC, FinCEN, and probably the FBI. We need to fight against the idea that private payments are any less moral than private conversations. We also need to actively reject the status quo in the USA of a complete and total lack…

> We need to fight against the idea that private payments are any less moral than private conversations ... Cryptocurrencies at their core are speech, not property That's an interesting take. Assuming you're American, maybe you could challenge this in court? Maybe Congress will have an epiphany - all this time they've been regulating inter-state commerce, but it's been inter-state speech the whole time. To resolve th…

That's a very American idea. Nowhere else would people think that money is speech, especially in the sense of free speech. I guess it joins "corporations are people" in that category of ideas.

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#132

Post by sneak »

saurik wrote: post #121
sneak wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that tool shipped as part of iOS, were on by default, and silently sent the full message history plaintext to Apple (such as if Apple iCloud Backup stopped respecting the storage class of apps and just backed up EVERY FILE), I think it would be fair to call that a backdoor (in iOS). What if iCloud Backup started including in the backup a snapshot of device RAM? I think we are splitting hairs here. The desire of us…

Call a spade a spade: if iCloud Backup is insecure (and it is), then say iCloud Backup is insecure, not iMessage. Your stance on this is FUD because you don't respect the semantic boundaries of the systems you are discussing, and so anyone who decides to truly listen to you and internalize the things you say leaves with a broken mental model rather than an educated stance :/. Every single person who reads what you sa…

I think that iMessage is simply a feature of iOS, same as iCloud Backup. They can't be installed or used separately, they are a single atom. A single atom with message plaintext escrow enabled by default: a backdoor.

By your reasoning, would "iOS is insecure" be an accurate statement?

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#133

Post by jaywalk »

Hamuko wrote: post #118
agd wrote: post #35

I think there are 3 attitudes towards Signal: 1. Anger from purists who care about the fact it's not decentralised, and that Moxie runs the show, and that it uses phone numbers etc etc... 2. Indifference from those who have never heard of it 3. Joy from those who are extremely happy a decent, private, alternative to Facebook/Whatsapp exists My worry is that group 1) try and ruin it for the rest of us. Signal is liter…

> But Signal needs to keep core feature parity to remain competitive with WhatsApp, Telegram etc. And that includes a payment mechanism. A payment mechanism just isn't a core chat application feature.

This is like saying "a phone should just make phone calls!"

It was true in the past, but is no longer true today.

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#134

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sneak wrote: post #2

> It’s that adding a cryptocurrency to an end-to-end encrypted app muddies the morality of the product, and invites all sorts of government investigative and regulatory meddling: by the IRS, the SEC, FinCEN, and probably the FBI. We need to fight against the idea that private payments are any less moral than private conversations. We also need to actively reject the status quo in the USA of a complete and total lack…

> We need to fight against the idea that private payments are any less moral than private conversations

Disagree, but upvoting because clearly articulated.

If money is private and money is speech, then taxes aren’t tenable. Would you agree?

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#136

Post by saurik »

grafporno wrote: post #128
firebaze wrote: post #36

I convinced quite a lot of my friends to switch to Threema. No phone number required, and really open source ( https://threema.ch/en/faq/source_code )

> really open source Yeah, except that pesky server, right.

To be fair, Signal hadn't released source code for their server for over a year before today ;P.

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#137

Post by growse »

ddevault wrote: post #88
henearkr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fight it? How?

Moxie has a history of being an asshole to anyone trying to make a third-party client. They're prohibited from using the OWS servers, which do not federate (so they couldn't talk to Signal users), and Moxie has attacked third-party software over trademark issues, too. Any Signal fork is likely to be DoA, thanks to Moxie's deliberate actions.

Not everyone agrees that protecting a brand and controlling who connects to and uses a service you run and pay for is "being an asshole".

Lots of people pretty readily made the choice to move from WhatsApp to Signal when the benefits became clear. There's nothing stopping anyone from forking the client/server and running their own network - if there are meaningful benefits to end users of the fork, there should be no problem picking up traction.

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#138

Post by Hamuko »

jaywalk wrote: post #133
Hamuko wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Signal needs to keep core feature parity to remain competitive with WhatsApp, Telegram etc. And that includes a payment mechanism. A payment mechanism just isn't a core chat application feature.

This is like saying "a phone should just make phone calls!" It was true in the past, but is no longer true today.

It's not. First of all, a phone is physical hardware, Signal is an application.

Does Signal also need a music streaming integration? Restaurant listings? A torrent client?

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#139

Post by zucker42 »

agd wrote: post #35

I think there are 3 attitudes towards Signal: 1. Anger from purists who care about the fact it's not decentralised, and that Moxie runs the show, and that it uses phone numbers etc etc... 2. Indifference from those who have never heard of it 3. Joy from those who are extremely happy a decent, private, alternative to Facebook/Whatsapp exists My worry is that group 1) try and ruin it for the rest of us. Signal is liter…

Why does the payment mechanism have to be a dodgy cryptocurrency?

Re: Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

#140

Post by 45ure »

agd wrote: post #35

I think there are 3 attitudes towards Signal: 1. Anger from purists who care about the fact it's not decentralised, and that Moxie runs the show, and that it uses phone numbers etc etc... 2. Indifference from those who have never heard of it 3. Joy from those who are extremely happy a decent, private, alternative to Facebook/Whatsapp exists My worry is that group 1) try and ruin it for the rest of us. Signal is liter…

>But Signal needs to keep core feature parity to remain competitive with WhatsApp, Telegram etc. And that includes a payment mechanism.

If anybody tried to onboard me on the basis of a 'payment mechanism' feature -- the answer will be a flat out no, as most of the payment flow in my professional and personal life does not involve a messaging platform, in order to achieve that objective.

I have Coinbase/Binance for crypto. Revolut/Transferwise to cover micropayments, foreign transactions, currency exchange etc., same with PayPal albeit a higher threshold. Monzo for cloudnative/FinTech banking. I have personal accounts with two out of four traditional banks, and a business account with another. I use Google Pay and Apple Pay, interchangeably.

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