MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
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, we're re-centralized our trust in chip makers like Intel.
Or worse, if it works extraordinarily well, I'm afraid DMCA related gangs will figure out how to lawyer those use cases out of existence in the same way they lawyer-ed in the tech to begin with.
I'm glad Moxie & co. are trying though, somebody has to! I have been previously very skeptical about the claims made by Signal, though, but as long as the enclave works, then they seem to hold true.
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.
Optimistically, they solve consumer micropayments by allowing the unbanked to send and store money via WhatsApp.
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.
If cash were invented today, it would be illegal. For most small payments if not large transfers, in the USA consumers actually have the right to transact anonymously. Tracking micropayments publicly forever on a blockchain seems like a step backwards. Being able to track large transfers on a blockchain is one of the benefits of living in the world where the Byzantine General's Problem has been solved.
International transactions - Venmo is very limited in this regard.
The unbanked - As stated already, there are about two billion unbanked people worldwide.
Avoiding banking cartels. - We've fed these parasites enough, don't you think?
Ease of use - A payment over a social network would be relatively seamless, particularly if you believe that apps allowing for rapid transfer between cryptocurrencies will be feasible (they are to some degree already).
It should also make paying domestic staff and various contractors easier, and that’ll be nice.
Zcash is more provably secure as it doesn't require trusting Intel's SGX but it's untenable on mobile right now as it's too computationally intensive. Monero and Dash are effectively anonymous for small transfers but for very large movements of money, the deep state can crack their tumbler algorithms. They provide good enough rather than verifiable anonymity.
As CEO of the Signal Foundation, Moxie is in a unique position to encourage Signal protocol chat services to adopt something like MobileCoin. I would imagine that progression would go Signal -> WhatsApp, and that Signal would only reject MobileCoin if Moxie himself rejected MobileCoin. I think there isn't really a first use case other than an existing Signal protocol service adopting it.
If it's an ICO - how does that work, exactly? People buy some amount of the coin at a valuation, and then they'll be able to use it later once the actual application comes out?
My 2c. Or 2 satoshis
Status – Is an Ethereum-sending app, where you can send Ethereum and messages back and forth. Therefore, I would compare this more to PayPal, than Telcoin. Team is somewhat lackluster. In addition, this is about sending crypto between people (mainly Ethereum) and relates to Telcoin because it is on a mobile phone.
Phoneum - is a decentralized cryptocurrency that operates on mobile devices via app only, empowered by blockchain technology. The app also comes with a built in miner. I honestly could not find too much and it is not listed on CoinMarketCap. If I had to compare this to another crypto, it would be Electroneum, not Telcoin. They are literally doing the same thing and have a patent pending on the mobile miner. Telcoin – is a cryptocurrency designed to facilitate digital asset exchange with telecom channels provided by operators worldwide. They are trying to simplify it to where anyone, with any type of phone can send money, through a simple text.
These are all short examples and don’t give them full justice but the only thing they all have in common is that they are all cryptocurrencies and that they can be used with a phone. Telcoin is the only one that has shown great progress by partnering with big names like Wipro and GSMA. This shows that they are in the same realm with Telecom providers and are willing to comply with all the standards and regulations. I personally believe that this is a sleeper project and whenever it takes off, it is going to fly. Look at the team/advisors and tell me they are not bound for some success within the telecom industry.
Before someone replies with a quote from the whitepaper about what it /will/ do, don't bother. Until it's released I doubt any and all claims from the team. Because it's no different from any other high profile raise for a cryptocurrency and every single one so far has failed to deliver.
I hear you on the delivering bit though.
What is the correct amount of scope to ensure success? I'm curious what's the logic behind your comment and negative predictions.
These are subjective opinions, doesn't seem like a rigorous line.
> 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.
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.
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
When I first heard about mobilecoin I thought it was different too. The problem I have is why are they raising money right now? Show me a working MVP (not a sketch UI) first. It's crazy that people are raising this amount of money with absolutely nothing to demo. I have more faith in mobilecoin launching something worthwhile compared to other coins but I'm still very skeptical... name recognition and private raises don't change much.
As for now I've just been messing around with TurtleCoin. The project (along with the low price) has managed to create a community that's interested in building things with it. I like being able to hack on something, and no other crypto project has offered that environment.
By this attitude, you would have failed to correctly value the potential of early Amazon (because "an online bookstore is not worth $X.")
One of the core principles of YC is that the value of an early-stage company mostly depends on the founders, not the initial idea (as it can change.)
Except this is not "early Amazon".
This is someone promising to build a mini-Amazon on AWS.
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".
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?
If those things don't exist in America it is because the market for them in America doesn't exist.
Those are established platforms where you are. Anecdotally, no-one here (NL) uses Venmo or apple pay, recently there's been an increase in popularity of 'tikkie' (https://tikkie.me/) which allows people to send payment requests through whatsapp (used by 90%< of people here). so if something like this is ingrained in whatsapp directly apps like that would lose popularity, i think