Group items tagged

"Signal recently launched a beta integration of MobileCoin (MOB) for payments. Its price has jumped from $7 to over $55 in the past month. Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike, whom MobileCoin previously described as a technical adviser, may have been more deeply involved in the cryptocurrency project. An earlier, nearly identical white paper found online, which MobileCoin CEO Joshua Goldbard called "erroneous," lists Marlinspike as the project's original CTO."

In the Spring of 2021, the encrypted communications app Signal added a payments feature in beta for its UK users, testing out integration with MobileCoin privacy-focused cryptocurrency. However, since mid-November, this feature has become accessible to all of its users, offering the ability to send MobileCoin to millions of phones. The MobileCoin wallet can be accessed within a message by tapping the "+" icon and then "payment" although users in some countries (e.g., the US) have no way of loading the cryptocurrency into the wallet yet.

What is worth underscoring is that Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of Signal and CEO of the nonprofit that runs it, was a paid advisor to MobileCoin. In fact, he was the original CTO of the company, according to an early MobileCoin white paper.

Messaging app Signal, which now has around 40 million users, is exploring the addition of payments into the app. Significant engineering resources have reportedly been devoted to integrating privacy-focused Stellar blockchain-based payment system MobileCoin into Signal. Adding credence to this story is that Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike serves as a technical adviser to MobileCoin, although he played it down, saying that the company had only done some "design explorations" around the idea.

Signal is rolling out the ability for U.K. users to send money to one another from within their iOS and Android app. To do so, it has integrated support for the crypto-asset MobileCoin, a form of digital cash designed to work efficiently on mobile devices while protecting users' privacy and anonymity. Unlike payment features integrated into other messaging apps like WhatsApp or iMessage, it doesn't link to a user's bank account.

"Signal just blew a huge hole in its credibility, when it announced on Sunday 4 April that the Signal app would be getting a payments interface - using a cryptocurrency. Specifically, its founder's own cryptocurrency."