The popular messaging app Signal is introducing MobileCoin, its very own cryptocurrency, to deepen the brand’s ties to being a privacy-focused platform. Covered: Signal Crypto News How MobileCoin Works Roadblocks Ahead RECOMMENDED: PRIVACY IS SCARCE, BUT WILL IT PAY? Signal Cryptocurrency News In the spring of 2021, Signal announced that it would be rolling out […] The post Signal Messager App To Unveil Its Very Own Cryptocurrency appeared first on CryptosRus.

Signal Messager App To Unveil Its Very Own Cryptocurrency

The popular messaging app Signal is introducing MobileCoin, its very own cryptocurrency, to deepen the brand’s ties to being a privacy-focused platform.

Covered:

  • Signal Crypto News
  • How MobileCoin Works
  • Roadblocks Ahead

RECOMMENDED: PRIVACY IS SCARCE, BUT WILL IT PAY?

Signal Cryptocurrency News

In the spring of 2021, Signal announced that it would be rolling out a beta test for UK users for a payments feature being developed on the app. The company was testing payments in collaboration with a new, privacy-focused cryptocurrency called MobileCoin.

As reported by Wired Magazine, since November, Signal made the beta test available to all of its 40+ million users. Reportedly, it’s being used to complete digital transactions faster, cheaper, and more private than credit cards or even Bitcoin.

Today, Signal made major strides in shifting the company towards the direction of Web3 and blockchain innovation. the company’s beta test of its cryptocurrency payment feature is reportedly now being rolled out worldwide.

According to Josh Goldbard, founder of MobileCoin, “there are over a hundred million devices on planet Earth right now that have the ability to turn on MobileCoin and send an end-to-end encrypted payment in five seconds or less.” At the time of writing, MobileCoin is reportedly seeing thousands of daily transactions instead of just dozens before the global beta release.

So How Does MobileCoin Even Work, Then?

MobileCoin is a privacy-based crypto that seeks to achieve similar properties to OG crypto privacy coins like Monero (XMR) or Zcash (ZEC). It utilizes CryptoNote and Ring Confidential Transaction, two technologies used by XMR and ZEC that mixes up the transaction records on the blockchain ledger, making tracking much more difficult. MobileCoin also uses Bulletproofs; a mathematical proof that verifies transactions without being able to view the amounts.

Last April, Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike told Wired that he envisions a seamless, privacy-based future for communications and payments.

“I would like to get to a world where not only can you feel [a sense of privacy] when you talk to your therapist over Signal, but also when you pay your therapist for the session over Signal.” 

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Signal Crypto: Roadblocks Ahead

However, the only roadblock in achieving more widespread adoption of Signal’s cryptocurrency is the fact that MobileCoin is currently only offered on two exchanges — Bitfinex and FTX — and neither exchange offers the coin to US users.

In addition to this setback, Matt Green, one of the creators being Zcash and a cryptographer at John Hopkins University, says that “I’m very nervous they’re going to get themselves into a problematic situation by flirting with this kind of payment infrastructure when there’s so much legislation and regulation around it.”

Despite this, however, Goldbard assures that MobileCoin will be getting easier to buy in the US. Signal made deals in late 2021 with both the crypto payment processor Zero Hash and the crypto trading platform SFOX to enable Americans to buy and sell MobileCoin within the first three months of 2022.

As we’ve already seen in Congress, US officials are not too fond of the current crypto landscape, and they want to bring massive regulatory overhaul to “clean up” the space. How this potential regulation could affect the overall privacy coin market in the US is anyone’s guess, but based on the stringent KYC requirements that most US citizens already have to comply with, I would not be surprised if MobileCoin is a tough sell in the US.

The post Signal Messager App To Unveil Its Very Own Cryptocurrency appeared first on CryptosRus.