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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

#231

Post by remirk »

RL_Quine wrote: post #88
ncmncm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mastodon, Matrix and others suffer that issue greatly. You can't really run single-user instances without running a gigantic installation, when a minimal implementation of their protocols should have no footprint to speak of.

That was the case a few years ago. Matrix' server software has improved a lot since then. It doesn't use much resources anymore. Though there still is a large CPU spike when I join a really large room (500+ users) for the first time.

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

#232

Post by pmlnr »

dunefox wrote: post #72
brodo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effectively not anymore. Here is a very recent german article about it: https://www.golem.de/news/crypto-messenger-signal-server-nic... No updates in the repo for over a year and no answers from the team. The whole crypto currency thing is also a red flag for me. Matrix seems to be the better option by now...

If anything, Threema is the best alternative.

No, it really is not. Matrix or XMPP.

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

#233

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#234

Post by PragmaticPulp »

doggosphere wrote: post #229
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. Stock represents actual ownership of a scarce resource (a company). That company would have value whether or not it was explicitly sold as a stock. The value doesn’t come from the stock. Cryptocurrency removes the underlying asset and simply sells shares of artificial scarcity. It’s only as valuable as what people decide to trade it at, because it doesn’t represent ownership of anything other than…

Stock represents actual ownership of a scarce resource (a company). Is there a limit to how many shares a company can issue? No, a board can technically issue shares unto infinity. There is no guarantee of scarcity, no guarantee they will not raise more money. That company would have value whether or not it was explicitly sold as a stock. The value doesn’t come from the stock. So when a company has no profit but a hi…

> Is there a limit to how many shares a company can issue? No, a board can technically issue shares unto infinity. There is no guarantee of scarcity, no guarantee they will not raise more money.

The scarce asset is the company, not the shares. Yes, they can issue more shares, but those shares still represent the same company plus the new investment money raised by raising the shares. They're not creating more company out of thin air when they issue more shares.

EDIT: To clarify some misconceptions in the comments below: When a company sells more shares into the market they are not simply diluting away existing shareholders. The keyword is that they are selling shares, meaning they take money in exchange for shares. The company's value increases by the amount of money they take in exchange for the sale.

Example: If a company is worth $1,000,000 and has 1,000,000 shares outstanding, each share is worth $1. If the company decides to sell another 100,000 shares and the market buys them at $1/each, there are now 1,100,000 shares outstanding and the company is now worth $1,100,000 because they took in $100,000 of cash via share sales. Existing shareholders have not lost any money or value.

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

#235

Post by Jommi »

wjntzf wrote: post #186
mikeiz404 wrote: post #55

For those wondering about volatility... > MobileCoin also remains even more volatile than older cryptocurrencies, with constant price swings that will significantly change the balances in a user's Signal wallet over the course of days or even hours—hardly the sort of issue that Venmo users have to deal with. (Since March 27, MobileCoin's value has shot up nearly 600 percent, possibly due to rumors of the impending Si…

The project is brand-new, what do you expect? In any case, the end-game is to use MOB for the transaction and instantly convert to fiat, so volatility would not be of concern to the end-user

" the end game is to make the user buy a house, sell the house to the other user, and make that user sell the house into fiat, it's that simple!"

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

#237

Post by guerrilla »

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…

Yeah I agree. I wouldn't mind so much if this were a second app but this is kind of scary.

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

#239

Post by remirk »

alexnewman wrote: post #76
hlieberman wrote: post #73

Why not use GNU Taler, if you insist on integrating a irrelevant payment mechanism?

What’s that?

Their website is pretty good and answers your question better than I could: https://taler.net/en/principles.html

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

#240

Post by guerrilla »

takenpilot wrote: post #218
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…

In a lot of ways, the transfer of cryptocurrency is the same as the transfer of generic messages. It's only when you're transferring them back to dollars/yuan/yen/etc. that it's suddenly currency from a government.

I'll tell you one way it's not, is as soon as someone commits a crime who happens to use Signal and the media gets ahold of this. It'll be a circus with terms like "dark webv and wha not thrown arohnd. GPs point #3 is kind of important for their reputation and if we want to onboard more people into crypto messaging.
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