Signal Founder May Have Been More Than a Tech Adviser to MobileCoin | Hacker News Reader

Signal Founder May Have Been More Than a Tech Adviser to MobileCoin

coindesk.com

72 pointsiudqnolq23 comments

Meanwhile my sister that I convinced to use Signal is getting the fake Amazon scam messages and I don't know how to stop it. She has "Sealed sender: Allow from anyone" disabled but received it again anyway after she blocked the first one. Is it honestly not even possible to receive messages only from contacts?

Was her phone number leaked in the Facebook leaks?

That will leak back information about whether someone has your number in their contact list.

But a spam folder should work.

It could be done client side.

I've yet to see anyone with strong opinions about MobileCoin's connection to Signal point out the fact that the cryptocurrency project started at the same time that Moxie worked on using SGX in Signal:

https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/

This was also at the time of the 2017/2018 bull run. Most likely the idea came from that work, then the crypto market crashed, and soon after Brian Acton funded Signal, and so the project became less of a priority.

I really think Signal should (if at all mingle with crypto) become a Lightning Wallet - that would actually be useful and enable micro transactions - but rather my donation is spent on pitching some obscure coin with conflict of interest.

That would be amazing, the problem there is privacy... Grin with CoinJoin can take somewhat close but definitely not enough. We are far from scaling up to a point where a coin has low fees, fast tx's, privacy and decentralization

Why does this matter? If signal had integrated any normal payment firm, and moxie had an economic stake in it, that would be seen as no issue - and quite typical for business in all industries. But because it’s crypto it’s a scandal (?)

Paypal doesn't have a premine

But if I own two companies, and make one of them integrate with the other, and I own “coins” in both of them (shares), what’s the difference?

The difference is that paypal's shares (if you call it a premine) isn't necessary to use it. You just pay a fee relative to how much you transfer. If the company goes under, there's no harm to you.

But no one is making you use signal, and the app is free, and this feature is opt-in. Still not seeing much of a conflict of interest. This guy owns signal, he can do what he wants, or so I thought a free market worked (?)

And what? Users aren’t allowed to discuss and make decisions on what products they use in a free market?

That's fine - my commentary is that this is not a scandal, though many on HN feel scandalized.

The guy doesn't own Signal. Signal is funded and released by Signal Technology Foundation, non-profit; either directly or indirectly through it's subsidiary[1], Signal Messenger, LLC. (Both registered in Delaware.) That means there's much more likely a legally cognizable conflict of interest if Signal is being used as a vehicle for self-enrichment. And flouting rules against such self-dealing provides greater than normal reason to distrust the security of Signal.

But that's all predicated on the existence of self-dealing.

[1] The Wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation, claims Signal Messenger, LLC is a subsidiary. There's no source provided, AFAICT, nor can I find one, for that claim. But Android says Signal is published by "Signal Foundation", and Moxie seems to be the head of both, so for our purposes--trustworthiness--the distinction is mostly irrelevant.

Because MobileCoin is a scam and people want to know if this guy is naive or a scammer

Why is MobileCoin a scam? Please elaborate.

I’m assuming your content is specific to MobileCoin and not about all cryptos in general..

Privately sold 15% of their supply for 80 cents, they are currently selling the remaining supply for around ~$60 today on their site - was 85% of supply now is allegedly around 50%.

Moxie was the CTO for MobileCoin according to their first white paper, they deny it saying they didn’t write the paper or something.

Signal stopped releasing updates to their server to keep this integration secret, until it was ready to be released.

MobileCoin doesn’t allow purchasing or ownership in the US because they’d be considered a security and scrutinized for potential market manipulation.

No point in putting up with the above, regardless of the truth, when you have many more legitimate looking cryptocurrencies one can support.

This is a major blow to Moxie's credibility and Signal's reputation.

Agreed. Extremly disappointed.

Before donating money ever again to Signal, I want to see prioritize (maybe vote on some proposed features, etc...) to understand what's coming up and what I'm supporting

Not the first time Moxie does something "questionable", to put it lightly ...

go on

It’s because of lack of transparency and lack of answers to key questions. Most people would have no problems if questions about financial connections and actual underlying business were answered openly.

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