Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by hmsimha » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

josh2600 wrote: post #28

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…

>>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 look…

Heads up, it would be useful on HN if you were to disclose your affiliations / interests when posting, especially about something like a cryptocurrency you helped design.

It gives readers a better sense of your ability to answer the questions accurately, in addition to letting people make assessments based on the potential conflict of interest.

Also, responding here and inviting discussion on a technical level is possibly the best thing you can do for perception of Mob, because this is a forum where those questions are likely to get asked.

Edit: I see you've done that in another post on this thread. Since we don't have anything like flair it would also help people who don't read the whole thread.

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

#192

Post by PragmaticPulp » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

josh2600 wrote: post #174

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, we’re well aware that you would love to sell us those coins you pre-mined.

That’s the problem.

If Signal was serious about this they would have launched their own fork instead of pitching a pre-mined coin to their users.

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

#193

Post by troquerre » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

airza wrote: post #13

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.

You don't need to KYC as it's just a mobile wallet — same with all the other crypto wallets out there. I'd be surprised if Signal integrated features in the future that require KYC.

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

#194

Post by qertoip » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

orph wrote: post #160

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.

Even UK-only release in Signal means more people with cryptocurrency wallets than all other cryptocurrencies combined.

MobileCoin is not a cryptocurrency.

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

#195

Post by meowfly » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

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.

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

#196

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #171

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

Creating a false trail is far more difficult than asking some scoundrel send 100 euro while vacationing in Italy or Spain. Also, for a FSB operative it is an opportunity to go to spain to 'supervise' the operation, lol.

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

#197

Post by timwaagh » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

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

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

#198

Post by otoburb » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

josh2600 wrote: post #174

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The slashdot effect triggered Cloudflare’s DDoS protection and is returning errors for that page.

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

#199

Post by codethief » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

hiq wrote: post #129

RL_Quine wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You missed the point. You're making a different point now though, you're saying that people will associate it with scams which will hurt adoption. You initially wrote that the UX would be so bad that you'd have to convince users to bear with it anyway. I don't know how they implemented it on the client side, but it's possible they kept it light, as they've been doing since the beginning. We'll see soon enough. In t…

> You initially wrote that the UX would be so bad that you'd have to convince users to bear with it anyway. I don't know how they implemented it on the client side, but it's possible they kept it light, as they've been doing since the beginning. We'll see soon enough.

I think you're confusing UI and UX. Yes, the UI could be kept light but the user experience can still be confusing because a payments feature is… surprising. Why would a messaging app come with a payments feature if not to make money and exploit the user?

Not saying that this is happening here but this is what people think, i.e. the emotional experience.

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

#200

Post by ac29 » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

lrvick wrote: post #84

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 any…

> 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.

There are less than 200 countries in total, unless you get very creative with states that are arent recognized more more than a handful of other countries, like Abkhazia or Transnistria.

You also dont need ID to buy SIM cards in the US, so I'm curious on how valid this assertion is.