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…
Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
351–360 of 665 posts
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#352Long-time Signal user here, with a number of technical and non-technical friends, colleagues and acquaintances who also use it. I don't know who was asking for this. And I think it really dilutes Signal's message. I believe that everyone has a fundamental right to secure, private communication. Some people may hold the same belief for the right to transfer funds. I don't agree and I suspect many others feel the same.…
Signal for iOS still doesn't support message backup like the Android version.
And Telegram introduced a feature to import old Whatsapp chats into new Telegram conversations, a form of "backup". This was great when I was migrating away from Whatsapp, and made the decision between Signal and Telegram easy for casual conversations where encryption wasn't a priority.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin rates worse than North Korea in terms of wealth distribution as measured by the Gini coefficient. [1] [1] https://blog.dshr.org/2018/10/gini-coefficients-of-cryptocur...
All calculations of this sort are fatally flawed because they assume all the coins in one address are owned by one person. That would be like calculating the US Gini coefficient assuming that all bank accounts are owned by the CEO of the bank.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#354There 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…
So far this scheme has worked out fine for the original creators of Ripple-- who've extracted hundreds of million selling their massive premine to an ignorant public, then abandoned the original and did it again. What we're seeing from signal now is just a third generation of the same scheme, preempting the ripple founders from doing it again (or maybe they're involved behind the scenes, who knows?).
So long as there seems to be no consequence except a massive windfall (SEC fines against ICO/premines have tended to be a fraction of 1% of the funds raised), it's unsurprising to see them continue.
The fact that it may kill one of the more useful secure messaging apps as a side effect? Welp. This is why we can't have nice things: Collectively, we're better at funding borderline scams than public goods.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#355Earlier 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'.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#356There 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.
> Bitcoin had no pre-mine and has been fairly distributed from the start. Except for that small initial 1 million that stayed with Adam
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#357Binding yet another cryptocurrency scam to your messenger is a sure way to get rid of me, at least.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#358Signal 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…
Particularly because the software is timebombed and stops working after a while (and also blocked on the server side if you bypass the client side timebomb).
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
All calculations of this sort are fatally flawed because they assume all the coins in one address are owned by one person. That would be like calculating the US Gini coefficient assuming that all bank accounts are owned by the CEO of the bank.
Who shares a bitcoin wallet or operates one like a bank? If anything the opposite is more likely, several bitcoin wallets belong to single individuals, probably in particular for some of the high net worth ones in an attempt to obfuscate ownership, which if anything, understates how concentrated it is .
Almost every bitcoin exchange.
It's typical to pool user funds into a relatively small number of addresses.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
A system which is 12 years old, of which many people have not heard about, don't understand, or may not even care to understand. In some countries its illegal to use. Most countries have unfriendly tax treatment (capital gains on your coffee purchase). Can't be paid in it. Can't yet pay your federal taxes in it. Uncertain if the government will one day ban it.
> Most countries have unfriendly tax treatment (capital gains on your coffee purchase). That's definitely unfriendly tax treatment. Is it different from the tax treatment that applies to national currencies?