Ugh. Someone please tell me this is a belated April Fools' joke.
Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
451–460 of 665 posts
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#452Earlier 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.
> All calculations of this sort are fatally flawed because they assume all the coins in one address are owned by one person. But don’t the calculations equally assume coins spread out across multiple addresses aren’t owned by one person, when in fact they often are?
Sure but that doesn't offset the first problem, it's just an additional problem. In fact I believe it could move the fake Gini coefficient in either direction depending on how each person splits their money.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#453The 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…
Crypto integration was one of the things that arguably killed Keybase for a lot of users, and damaged trust. Given that trust is the selling point for these type of services, I really hope Signal don't lose it.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#454There 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 $14B already. This makes the project a scam and impossible for it to work as a reliable money that holds value. Bitcoin had no pre-mine and has been fairly distributed from the start.
look at the chart: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/mobilecoin/
the integration with signal made the valuation of mobilecoint jump from around zero to 65$. I hope the signal team got some mobilecoins in return for the favor.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they have rug-pulled people with a hard fork. "People" here being criminals that exploited a flaw in the DAO, yeah?
At the time of that fork, the Ethereum website literally said "the code is the contract". Then, when someone found a perfectly legitimate use of that code that the creators failed to anticipate, they forcibly altered the contract. There are criminals here, but they're not the ones you think.
> they forcibly altered the contract.
What was forcibly altered? Perhaps the meaning of "force" is different for you than it is for me.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#456The 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…
I agree with all of your points. The counter argument would be seeing the success of WeChat in China and wanting to reproduce that success AND expecting that if they don't do it someone else will do it and take their market. Whether that's true or not I don't know but if I believed it was true then your arguments wouldn't matter since I'd believe not doing it is an existential risk.
If that is their thinking, then they are quite naive. Comparing WeChat's success in tackling payments with a crypto-based attempt is laughable. WeChat is using real money, and it has explicit official endorsement by the state - an extremely powerful state at that in terms of internal control.
In contrast, any crypto-currency based solution will be inherently distrusted, and few if any states will endorse it. It is more likely to be actively discouraged by many states, and the crypto support may well end up as a pretext to ban Signal on economic rather than censorship grounds.
It is overall a disaster of an idea.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a friendly, easy to use chat app with stickers & voice messages (also strong encryption). Except it's not, strong encryption and privacy emphasis goes against easy to use. I recently got my family to switch to Telegram (because I like the interface) - my sister works in an environment where she has to have a separate work phone without a camera and everything synced up out of the box, history, etc. Brother lost his…
Yeah, the history sync issue is a huge problem, signal doesn't even support Android BackupAgent based client side encrypted backups or device to device transfers at all which should not be difficult to add, see: https://community.signalusers.org/t/support-native-android-b... Signal should in theory also be able to just sync/backup everything to the desktop client, this would largely solve the inability to transfer be…
They're orthogonal to good security. Missing data is always better than encrypted data. I wish it had a global keep messages for X time feature like iNessage instead of tge per yser configurable dissappearing messages.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> the transfer of cryptocurrency is the same as the transfer of generic messages Technically, yes. Legally and sociopolitically, no. And if you intentionally muddle the data streams, that brings the full force of anti-money laundering, tax evasion and terrorist financing law against you. It gives almost any government a free pass to do what it wants. Freedom to speak privately is, in most democracies, popularly recog…
Legally, yes. FinCEN distinguishes custodial exchanges with noncustodial wallets. It looks like signal is doing the latter.
Bitcoin Core (the software) is not registered as a money transmitter anywhere in the world, its developers are fine and never got into any trouble.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the transfer of cryptocurrency is the same as the transfer of generic messages Technically, yes. Legally and sociopolitically, no. And if you intentionally muddle the data streams, that brings the full force of anti-money laundering, tax evasion and terrorist financing law against you. It gives almost any government a free pass to do what it wants. Freedom to speak privately is, in most democracies, popularly recog…
Legally, yes. FinCEN distinguishes custodial exchanges with noncustodial wallets. It looks like signal is doing the latter. Bitcoin Core (the software) is not registered as a money transmitter anywhere in the world, its developers are fine and never got into any trouble.
> FinCEN distinguishes custodial exchanges with noncustodial wallets. It looks like signal is doing the latter.
We agree. There is a legal difference between a custodial exchange and noncustodial wallet. Just as there is a difference between a non-money messaging system and a noncustodial wallet. The comment you are responding to concerned itself with the latter.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#460Long-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.…
This kind of anti-feature is not what I signed up for. I just wanted a secure messenger normal users could understand! It seems like a simple enough problem that Signal solved well (apart from the phone number requirement). Sadly, now it feels like Signal was just a long game trojan for Marlinspike to onboard users to a cryptocurrency pyramid scheme. This has nothing to do with its core functionality and it makes me…
> This kind of anti-feature is not what I signed up for.
At the risk of sounding like a Signal simp: don’t use this feature if you’d don’t like it? I have no idea whether this is a good or bad idea, I figure the proof of the pudding is in the tasting and I haven’t had a chance to try the signal payments feature, but I’m willing to extend the benefit of the doubt here at least as far as “I’ll withhold judgement til I can try it for myself.”
I really don’t get the ire on this. I think it’s good that whisper systems is forward looking and trying to be innovative and dynamic and go where users are rather than just sit around waiting to become irrelevant. Not all experiments or risks will pay off but that doesn’t mean risks and bets are bad.