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Revealed: Top 4 user complaints about Signal’s new crypto payments beta

April 14, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Signal has published user feedback from its beta integration with Mobilecoin, which saw users complain about the volatility and transaction fees related to MOB.

Privacy-focused messenger app Signal has posted early user feedback from the UK-based beta launch of its payments integration with Mobilecoin’s MOB token.

A blog post by Signal head of growth and communication Jun Harada revealed the top four user complaints about its new cryptocurrency integration so far — with a major complaint from many users about the entire concept itself because “cryptocurrency is the worst”. He reassured such users it was an optional feature.

Signal announced on April 6 that is aiming to extend its privacy protection features to payments in an attempt to replicate the success of Paypal-owned Venmo — a fast and relatively cheap peer-to-peer payment service that is popular in the U.S.

The top MOB-related complaint from users was that the “fees are too high”, with MobileCoin transaction fees currently sitting at around 50p or $0.60. Haranda acknowledged that the amount was “kind of a lot in order to pay your friend for a slice of pizza” and said Signal was working on bringing transaction fees down.

Another complaint surrounded the difficulty of getting funds in and out. Currently, UK-based users have to wire transfer money to exchanges that support MobileCoin, which subsequently incurs extra funding, transaction, and withdrawal fees that compound on top of Signlal’s fees.

Lastly, the firm reported that the price volatility of MOB was a big concern for users. The token currently holds an obscure position in the crypto marketplace. MOB went live in December 2020, with 250 million coins minted at genesis, and mainly trades on FTX with a daily volume of around $20 million. The token has its price, but no market cap listed on CoinGecko.

Haranda said the company had considered alternatives such as Zcash or Lightning. In the case of Zcash, while it was very private, it wasn't fast or mobile-orientated enough. Lightning meanwhile does not have "very strong privacy guarantees." However he added:

These projects are all constantly improving, and we hope are focused on getting closer to being integratable by an app like Signal so that it would be possible in the future.

Signal’s integration with MOB doesn’t appear to have gone as smoothly as first hoped, with some members in the community labeling the token as “shitcoin” and questioning Signal's relationship to Mobilecoin with Signal Founder Moxie Marlinspike, after he reportedly appeared on an early draft of MobileCoin’s white paper as its Chief Technology Officer.

In a Reddit thread on April 8, MobileCoin CEO Joshua Goldbard assured the community that Marlinspike only served as “technical advisor” and never served as an exec on the project.

Translation, Signal isn’t integrating just any random shitcoin, it is integrating Moxie Marlinspike’s random shitcoin. Gee, what a coinkidink. I wonder how much he’s unloaded on suckers already as a result of this pump & dump? https://t.co/bbEpzidw68
— Nicholas Weaver (@ncweaver) April 7, 2021

Others have drawn attention to a suspicious rise in the price of the coin. CoinGecko shows the price surged from $7 on March 28 to around $65 on April 6, before Signal announced its integration with MobileCoin. MOB hit its all-time high of $69 on April 7, which was followed by a crash to $40 the next day. As of today, MOB is sitting at $53.

Signal Mentions Zcash, Lightning As Possible Options

April 13, 2021 The Crypto Briefing

Signal announced last week that it plans to introduce cryptocurrency payments. Now, it has published further details on those plans.

More Than Just MobileCoin?

Last week, Signal announced support for MobileCoin (MOBI) payments. That cryptocurrency was chosen for its privacy and speed, and because of Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike’s involvement in it.

Today’s post makes it clear that Signal intends to support more than just MobileCoin. Jun Harada, Head of Growth and Communcation, noted that the Signal development team can “include linked support for existing separately built and maintained cryptocurrency wallets.”

Harada first drew attention to the privacy coin Zcash, nothing that though it “initially seem[s] like a great fit,” the blockchain is not fast enough to handle Signal’s high traffic load in its current state.

He also drew attention to the Lightning Network, a second layer network designed to handle Bitcoin payments with greater speed. Unfortunately, Harada says that setup costs and weak privacy guarantees mean that Lightning is an impractical choice for Signal.

Despite those complaints, Signal remains open to new developments. “These projects are all constantly improving, and we hope [they] are focused on getting closer to being integratable,” Harada concluded.

MobileCoin Faces Criticism

Though Signal’s decision to introduce cryptocurrency support was well received, its choice of MobileCoin has been met with criticism.

Harada outlined some of those criticisms in today’s post. He noted that users have complained about high fees ($0.60 per transaction), a lack of simple on- and off-ramps, and MobileCoin’s price volatility. He did not address complaints concerning centralization and alleged code-borrowing that were raised last week.

Regardless of those controversies, it appears that Signal will integrate MobileCoin and address its issues before it moves on to integrating other popular coins with its app.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing this author held less than $75 of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins.

Encrypted Messenger Company Signal Faces Scrutiny Over Mobilecoin Integration

April 11, 2021 Bitcoin.com

Signal under fire over MobileCoin partnership

April 9, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Signal is facing criticism over its integration with MobileCoin, with eyebrows raised over a 450% increase in the price of MOB ahead of the announcement.

Controversy surrounds Signal’s recently announced MobileCoin integration, with users expressing concerns over ties between Signal’s founder and the cryptocurrency, opacity surrounding the coin’s issuance, and suspicious gains leading up to the partnership’s announcement.

Signal is an encrypted messaging application that has been embraced by the privacy and security-conscious community since launching as Open Whisper Systems in 2013 and rebranding two years later.

MobileCoin was founded in 2017, issuing roughly 15% of its supply to private investors after its entire supply was minted at launch.

The messaging app announced it had launched payment functionality through MobileCoin on April 4, with Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike stating it chose MobileCoin due to it requiring little storage space and providing fast transactions without sacrificing privacy on mobile devices.

Signal’s decision to integrate MobileCoin appears to have been made some time ago, with Internet Archive’s Jonah Edwards noting the source code for the cryptocurrency integration was kept private for nearly 12 months before being published to GitHub.

With MobileCoin’s MOB token rallying roughly 450% from March 28 until April 3, and news of the Signal integration pushing prices up to $66 as of April 7, some observers are speculating the price may have been affected by investors with advance warning of the announcement.

Concerns have been raised regarding Moxie’s relationship to MobileCoin, with early copies of the project’s whitepaper appearing to list Marlinspike as MobileCoin’s CTO.

While MobileCoin’s CEO, Joshua Goldbard, has sought to assure the community that Marlinspike only served as a “technical advisor” to the project and has never served as an executive, Goldbard appears to have been inconsistent in his characterization of Marlinspike’s involvement with the project.

In the Reddit thread, Goldbard dismisses the characterization of Marlinspike as one of MobileCoin’s founders. However, Goldbard also describes Marlinspike as one of the three individuals who “created Mobilecoin.”

Goldbard also appears to avoid questions regarding Marlinspike's compensation for his role as technical advisor to the project. MobileCoin’s CEO also stated the team is working with its lawyers to determine what information regarding the MOB’s circulating supply can be made public:

“Regarding circulating supply, we are still working with our lawyers to determine what we can and can't say here. The total number of coins is 250M, all of which were minted on day 1. We have been working diligently to get the coins into the ecosystem as quickly as possible.”

Buymobilecoin, a website that allows individuals to purchase MobileCoin tokens directly from the project, has also attracted controversy.

On Reddit, Goldband notes that more than 50% of available MobileCoin can be purchased through the website. However, the buying process is opaque, with no reference price provided, and orders organized via email correspondence.

Individuals are limited to purchases of up to 1,000 Euros daily and 5,000 Euros annually, but businesses that can demonstrate “the need for consumptive paper-to-peer use” of MobileCOin can buy up to 100,000 Euros worth of the token every 12 months. The site makes it clear that MobileCoins are not allowed to be sold or traded with U.S citizens, either through the site, or peer to peer within Signal.

MobileCoin also withholds information regarding how many coins are sold through the platform, with Goldbard stating: “With respect to how many coins were sold at buymobilecoin.com, we do not release this information out of respect for the privacy of our users.”

Cointelegraph reached out to MobileCoin for comment, but did not receive a response before publication. This article will be updated accordingly.

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MobileCoin Faces Criticism

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