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Signal, the cross-platform encrypted messaging service is facing criticism this week, after the company Signal Messenger told the public it was integrating the cryptocurrency mobilecoin. Moreover, controversy surrounds the companyâs founder and CEO Matthew Rosenfeld, known as âMoxie Marlinspikeâ over his previous ties with the Mobilecoin project.
The Relationship Between Mobilecoin and Signal
During the last week, Signal Messenger has been under fire for integrating the privacy-centric cryptocurrency mobilecoin (MOB). The subject has been trending on social media and forums as a number of crypto advocates are not pleased with the choice.
According to the MOB projectâs website, the entire distributed ledger is âopaqueâ as âindividual transactions are cryptographically protected, and the network uses forward-secrecy.â Since Signalâs announcement MOB has gained over 450% since then and today itâs up 20% during the last 24 hours.
MOB is currently trading for $58 per unit and the trading platform FTX Exchange is the most active market trading it today. Controversy is tied to the relationship Marlinspike allegedly had with Mobilecoin prior to the integration. Word on the street is Marlinspike was simply a MOB advisor but documents indicate the Signal founder may have played a CTO role.
In addition to that controversy, the project has been accused of being centralized, a copy of monero (XMR), and 100% pre-mined as well. A pre-mine is when the networkâs entire supply of native tokens is created right away and developers and early investors have access to it all.
âMobilecoin is 100% premined,â the Reddit user and r/cryptocurrency forum moderator u/samsunggalaxyplayer said. â100% of the supply was created in 16 outputs that can be distributed however the initial founders like. There is extremely limited information about how they will be distributed, though itâs highly likely that the founders will keep some for themselves.â
âPrivate Keys Stored on a Secure Enclave,â Mobilecoin CEO Denies Marlinspike Was a CTO
The Redditor also said that Mobilecoin team members like to âdiscredit Monero wherever they can.â On Twitter, software developer Pokkst spoke out against the Mobilecoin project as well. A few more things about Mobilecoin,â the developer tweeted. âWhen Mobilecoin is run with Intel SGX, userâs private keys are transmitted to remote nodes and stored in their secure enclave. Lol. Basically Intelcoin. Itâs 100% premined, with a hardcoded 0.01 MOB fee per tx. Currently, thatâs $0.66 per [transaction]. All [transaction] fees currently go to Mobilecoin Foundation.â
Pokkst added:
The creator of Signal has a huge stake in Mobilecoin, so Moxie is pumping his bags by using Signal.
Following the Mobilecoin announcement, people who disliked Signalâs integration with MOB started to recommend the encrypted messaging service called Session. The Session project leverages a blockchain and is a Signal fork. Despite the documentation showing Moxie as the CTO, Mobilecoin CEO Joshua Goldbard recently said that âMoxie was never CTO.â
What do you think about the controversy over Signal and the Mobilecoin project? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
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