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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

#171

Post by Jtsummers »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #155
leetcrew wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you stop harassers sending unwanted money? idk, but this sounds like a great problem to have.

Not really. Someone steals money, sends them to you, your are having lots of trouble proving you are not an accomplice. If you are a government official, you can be framed as receiving a bribe. In russia government can send your organisation money from abroad via an agent and then shut you down as a 'foreign agent'.

> In russia government can send your organisation money from abroad via an agent and then shut you down as a 'foreign agent'.

They could do this with traditional banking systems as well. Presumably the Russian government has a high degree of surveillance with regard to their domestic banks like every other nation in the world has. Creating a false financial trail is made slightly easier with crypto currencies, but for a nation state it's not hard to do with traditional banking systems.

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

#172

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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.

The founding organization owns 85% of the total market cap of a coin? That should be raising red flags for everyone involved.

There is no valid reason for the vast majority of what is supposedly a currency to be owned by the company that created it. Imagine if PayPal launched but required everyone to transact in fractional shares of PayPal to get anything done. Oh and by the way, those shares are majority owned by the founders, but they’ll sell you some so you can send them to your friends.

This is ridiculous.

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

#173

Post by codethief »

bilal4hmed wrote: post #103

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.

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...

[1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20200201112751/https://signal.org...

[2]: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/07/10/a-few-th...

[3]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server

[4]: https://www.golem.de/news/crypto-messenger-signal-server-nic...

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

#174

Post by josh2600 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #172
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.

The founding organization owns 85% of the total market cap of a coin? That should be raising red flags for everyone involved. There is no valid reason for the vast majority of what is supposedly a currency to be owned by the company that created it. Imagine if PayPal launched but required everyone to transact in fractional shares of PayPal to get anything done. Oh and by the way, those shares are majority owned by th…

The majority of the MobileCoins are available for purchase for non-us persons at https://www.buymobilecoin.com right now.

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

#175

Post by olah_1 »

CynicusRex wrote: post #166
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.

No “pre-mine” doesn't mean fairly distributed. Bitcoin is a multi-level marketing pyramid scheme as well. Early adopters mine or buy large proportions at negligible prices while late adopters mine or buy negligible proportions at large prices.

The gold and oil rushes weren't "fair" either. Fortune favors the bold, I guess. I was salty for a long time about bitcoin early buyers being filthy rich now. My saltiness clouded my vision of the real value there. Granted, I think there are better solutions than bitcoin now, but I respect it.

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

#176

Post by [deleted] »

rvz wrote: post #97

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 cryptocurrenci…

[deleted]

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

#177

Post by josh2600 »

marcinzm wrote: post #159
rOOb85 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you post your source for these claims?

Their own white paper (no longer hosted on their site it seems) says they created 250 million tokens and pre-sold 37.5 million. https://mixin.one/assets/MobileCoin-Whitepaper-EN_FINAL.pdf

This whitepaper is not the whitepaper I wrote back in 2017. We took that down because it was ultimately not the design we implemented. The full system design can be found here: https://github.com/UkoeHB/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin/blob/maste....

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

#178

Post by anonporridge »

CynicusRex wrote: post #166
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.

No “pre-mine” doesn't mean fairly distributed. Bitcoin is a multi-level marketing pyramid scheme as well. Early adopters mine or buy large proportions at negligible prices while late adopters mine or buy negligible proportions at large prices.

By this definition, every company stock is a multi-level marketing pyramid scheme.

In fact, company stock is WAY worse, because the majority of people are legally prohibited from investing in private companies unless they're an accredited investor (already rich). So, only rich people (other than founders and early employees) are allowed to buy in at super low prices before handing off the bag to the public.

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

#179

Post by hiq »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #66

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.

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.

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

#180

Post by Arathorn »

ncmncm wrote: post #80
RL_Quine wrote: post #12

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.

Agree. It would be OK to make Signal able to integrate payment systems and make this thing compatible with that or with any other comm that implements the interface. Tying them together is pernicious. Anyway Signal is itself pernicious by being tied to a phone number and to Google Play services, and by being very choosy about who gets ports. I had high hopes for Matrix, once they got E2EE, but they have flubbed that…

speaking as CEO of Element, our business model is really not tied to Synapse being heavyweight at all - just the opposite. We provide Synapse hosting starting at $2/user/month, and so it's critical that running a server (including sysadmin) costs us as little as possible in order to be above water. We're not competing against self-hosters, but catering to folks who aren't sysadmins and so want us to host for them.

And as others have said, Synapse really isn't that heavyweight these days (thanks in part to the performance improvements driven by Element!)

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