Anybody have any experience with mobilecoin? What is the use case for it? Seems kind of pointless and a lot more tedious than just a bank transfer. Why does signal include crypto nonsense in their app (I like crypto, but just can’t see any reason why it should be integrated in the app). I’m sad that signal does not have support for 3rd party open source clients that could remove such features. Why not add support for monero instead?
MOB is monero in rust with proof of stake. It’s a centralized coin, antithetical to federation… Just like signal.
Right now it’s trading at 0.50$, but I’m sure the signal foundation made a bunch of money with the hype and sell off.
I do believe someone honestly thought it was a good idea, central control, revokable, a crypto governments will like… But coming from the signal foundation it shows what their mental model really is.
I’m skeptical of all cryptocurrency, but in regards to this:
What is wrong with centralization when a core principle of Signal is privacy? Federation often complicates and confounds efforts to make things more private - look no further than Matrix’s Olm implementation. MegOlm also encrypts far less metadata, by design and probably out of necessity.
centralization invites central control and observation…
imagine if talking to the people around you required you calling a central phone depot first before being connected to the person next to you… its not necessarily less secure, but there are more opportunities and the risk surface is greater.
Meanwhile, our Lemmy conversation is just like that, except instead of one central telephone provider, there are at least two (yours and mine). The risk surface has doubled!