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MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments

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Re: MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments

#21

Post by sebleon »

RIMR wrote: post #13
sebleon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it's incredibly limited in scope (...) I doubt it will succeed. What is the correct amount of scope to ensure success? I'm curious what's the logic behind your comment and negative predictions.

I would say that being legitimately innovative and not exactly like every other ICO with hollow promises would be where I draw the line.

> legitimately innovative > exactly like every other ICO > hollow promises

These are subjective opinions, doesn't seem like a rigorous line.

Re: MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments

#22

Post by sebleon »

RIMR wrote: post #13
sebleon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it's incredibly limited in scope (...) I doubt it will succeed. What is the correct amount of scope to ensure success? I'm curious what's the logic behind your comment and negative predictions.

I would say that being legitimately innovative and not exactly like every other ICO with hollow promises would be where I draw the line.

What are some ICOs you do support?

Re: MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments

#23

Post by desireco42 »

It makes a lot of sense for this coin to be on Stellar network. It is fast and cheap, and they can actually create their own coin whenever they like and treat current ones as tokens. I think this is smart move and much better then creating on Ethereum because of speed and price that goes along with it and often is not mentioned.

My 2c. Or 2 satoshis

Re: MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments

#24

Post by urda »

You're not going to beat out Venmo, Apple Pay, and other established platforms.

Can this blockchain currency nonsense end already? People need to stop trying to force a given tech to do something specific all the time. It's literally the definition of "trying too hard".

Re: MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments

#25

Post by rms »

deft wrote: post #7

Mobilecoin is a token powered by a stellar smart contract. I don't care if Moxie or god himself is the lead of the project, because it's incredibly limited in scope (actually stellar advertises that as a feature of their smart contract platform) I doubt it will succeed. And no, a fancy mobile UI is not worth $30mil. Before someone replies with a quote from the whitepaper about what it /will/ do, don't bother. Until i…

Your github led me to https://turtlecoin.lol/ which makes your point and undermines it at the same time. Turtlecoin launched with an incremental and a catchy name and no ICO and on the surface sounds like it achieves a lot of what Mobilecoin attempts to.

Ultimately though, Turtlecoin is a parameter tweak and relaunch of existing coins that doesn't solve the core problem of consumer payments. Mobilecoin is at least attempting that, and for $30M, they should at least get a fancy mobile UI, hopefully one that filters up to an improvement of the Signal UI also.

It's right to be skeptical. Blockchain applications aren't being delivered. Still, the promise of blockchain convergence requires us to believe in a future that we can't quite see at hand where applications start being delivered all at once and the ecosystem hits critical mass. I'm now in the business of skeptically predicting the future and I've basically started pre-rejecting all ICO pitches if it's not being delivered imminently.

MobileCoin still stands out as a clever, simple design where the economic value comes from one trusted crypto anarchist saying that we as a society can in fact use Intel SGX for critical applications -- like a simple implementation of consumer micropayments. I, like many others, didn't believe this until Moxie said it was ok, but I believe in this because Moxie is in fact the most trusted person in Silicon Valley.

I'm curious about your blockchain side projects beyond Turtlecoin hacking, feel free to email me if you have any interesting code running...

Also I recommend Moxie's English language writing to everyone; it's sublime. https://moxie.org/stories.html

Re: MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments

#26

Post by HaloZero »

armenarmen wrote: post #20
gataca wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, that makes a lot of sense for the unbanked. I personally don’t know many people who are unbanked but maybe that number will grow in the future? I’m just trying to think about explaining this to some friends and why they should do this. Totally anonymous/private transactions between parties not having to use a bank?

From what I understand, the unbanked are really more of a thing in the developing world. The same crowd that'd be receiving micro loans were they looking to start small business in say rural Myanmar

Actually, I believe about 7-8% of the US is also unbanked. But that might be a specific to US (compared to other Western nations).

Re: MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments

#27

Post by rms »

urda wrote: post #24

You're not going to beat out Venmo, Apple Pay, and other established platforms. Can this blockchain currency nonsense end already? People need to stop trying to force a given tech to do something specific all the time. It's literally the definition of "trying too hard".

Consumer micropayments is one of the most basic possible applications of this technology and that it hasn't been implemented yet is sad. I'm not a fan of the customer experience of Venmo and Paypal and Apple Pay that require me to have a bank account or a credit card. They work in the first world for transfers over a certain minimum but there is really clearly room to innovate still.

Do you see a future where blockchain technology exists but consumers don't use cryptocurrency? I do also. Who is to say that WhatsApps's implementation of Mobilecoin has to use their own proprietary cryptocurrency instead of letting users denominate transfers in local fiat currency?

Re: MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments

#28

Post by rms »

HaloZero wrote: post #26
armenarmen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, the unbanked are really more of a thing in the developing world. The same crowd that'd be receiving micro loans were they looking to start small business in say rural Myanmar

Actually, I believe about 7-8% of the US is also unbanked. But that might be a specific to US (compared to other Western nations).

I lost a bank account last year and was unbanked for a little while. I really hate my customer service interactions with banks and would be quite happy if I could unbank myself.

Life pro tip:

If your Charles Schwab broker emails and says that they're wondering why your retirement savings are nothing but medical marijuana penny stocks and if you'd like to come in to talk about healthy portfolio management strategies, you should go into the local office and not ignore that email.

Re: MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments

#29

Post by stale2002 »

ghayes wrote: post #16
deft wrote: post #7

Mobilecoin is a token powered by a stellar smart contract. I don't care if Moxie or god himself is the lead of the project, because it's incredibly limited in scope (actually stellar advertises that as a feature of their smart contract platform) I doubt it will succeed. And no, a fancy mobile UI is not worth $30mil. Before someone replies with a quote from the whitepaper about what it /will/ do, don't bother. Until i…

> I don't care if Moxie or god himself is the lead of the project > Until it's released I doubt any and all claims from the team. It's fine for you to have your opinion, but understand that you aren't meaningfully contributing to the conversation with statements like the ones above. Other people, obviously, will have different viewpoints, and it's best that we can talk on the merits of the arguments.

It is absolutely contributing to the discussion.

The merits to be discussed are "its not done yet, and anything that doesn't work NOW in crypto probably won't work ever".

If someone wants me to belive their claims they should build something, get it working, and THEN sell it. None of this pre sale IOU stuff.

Re: MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments

#30

Post by rms »

marknadal wrote: post #10

I was talking to Moxie's cofounder, Joshua Goldbard, the other month about this. They strongly depend upon secure enclaves to achieve it. It seems like a rather clever use of DMCA related technology, potentially backfiring in the DMCA's face if it is extended to other use cases. However, using secure enclaves seems like chasing a fading rainbow. The tech doesn't work without trusting the enclave, yet if we trust it,…

For what it's worth, we also trust the NSA to have written and verified our most important cryptographic hash functions, leading to the first rule of crypto -- never roll your own novel hash function.

I see this as the start of a community effort to verify Intel SGX. I imagine that the process of rolling out a consumer facing high stakes product on SGX involves external verification of SGX beyond what it's gone through before.

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