Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

There 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.

The founding organization owns 85% of the total market cap of a coin? That should be raising red flags for everyone involved.

There is no valid reason for the vast majority of what is supposedly a currency to be owned by the company that created it. Imagine if PayPal launched but required everyone to transact in fractional shares of PayPal to get anything done. Oh and by the way, those shares are majority owned by the founders, but they’ll sell you some so you can send them to your friends.

This is ridiculous.

Of course, it's totally centralized. The 'cryptocurrency' marketing just exists as a regulatory dodge.

So far this scheme has worked out fine for the original creators of Ripple-- who've extracted hundreds of million selling their massive premine to an ignorant public, then abandoned the original and did it again. What we're seeing from signal now is just a third generation of the same scheme, preempting the ripple founders from doing it again (or maybe they're involved behind the scenes, who knows?).

So long as there seems to be no consequence except a massive windfall (SEC fines against ICO/premines have tended to be a fraction of 1% of the funds raised), it's unsurprising to see them continue.

The fact that it may kill one of the more useful secure messaging apps as a side effect? Welp. This is why we can't have nice things: Collectively, we're better at funding borderline scams than public goods.

At least it's better than Bitcoin, since in this case it's well known who the whales are.

If one wishes to subject their wealth to the whims of a massively centralized cartel of "rationally self interested" HOLDers, maybe it's better to deal with the devil(s) one knows.

Or better yet, don't use cryptocurrency at all. Then you can avoid all ethical dilemmas surrounding them.

Problem solved.

But then, you haven't solved the private electronic payment...

Most people don't want private electronic payments. In stable countries like the UK - where this is being launched - it's basically only useful for buying drugs and tax evasion.

One can argue than most people don't care about private messaging as well... I find it a bit scary that my bank has all my purchasing data : they basically know everything about me that way, what if they decide to sell this data ?

Use cash for every day payments - your bank will know nothing.