
MobileCoin has raised $30M for private mobile payments - rms
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/24/mobilecoin-moxie-marlinspike-binance-labs/
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marknadal
I was talking to Moxie's cofounder, Joshua Goldbard, the other month about
this. They strongly depend upon secure enclaves to achieve it.

It seems like a rather clever use of DMCA related technology, potentially
backfiring in the DMCA's face if it is extended to other use cases.

However, using secure enclaves seems like chasing a fading rainbow. The tech
doesn't work without trusting the enclave, yet if we trust it, we're re-
centralized our trust in chip makers like Intel.

Or worse, if it works extraordinarily well, I'm afraid DMCA related gangs will
figure out how to lawyer those use cases out of existence in the same way they
lawyer-ed in the tech to begin with.

I'm glad Moxie & co. are trying though, somebody has to! I have been
previously very skeptical about the claims made by Signal, though, but as long
as the enclave works, then they seem to hold true.

~~~
rms
For what it's worth, we also trust the NSA to have written and verified our
most important cryptographic hash functions, leading to the first rule of
crypto -- never roll your own novel hash function.

I see this as the start of a community effort to verify Intel SGX. I imagine
that the process of rolling out a consumer facing high stakes product on SGX
involves external verification of SGX beyond what it's gone through before.

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gataca
Can someone explain why the average user would prefer this over using venmo?

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rms
Pessimistically, they won't.

Optimistically, they solve consumer micropayments by allowing the unbanked to
send and store money via WhatsApp.

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gataca
Ok, that makes a lot of sense for the unbanked. I personally don’t know many
people who are unbanked but maybe that number will grow in the future? I’m
just trying to think about explaining this to some friends and why they should
do this. Totally anonymous/private transactions between parties not having to
use a bank?

~~~
armenarmen
From what I understand, the unbanked are really more of a thing in the
developing world. The same crowd that'd be receiving micro loans were they
looking to start small business in say rural Myanmar

~~~
HaloZero
Actually, I believe about 7-8% of the US is also unbanked. But that might be a
specific to US (compared to other Western nations).

~~~
rms
I lost a bank account last year and was unbanked for a little while. I really
hate my customer service interactions with banks and would be quite happy if I
could unbank myself.

Life pro tip:

If your Charles Schwab broker emails and says that they're wondering why your
retirement savings are nothing but medical marijuana penny stocks and if you'd
like to come in to talk about healthy portfolio management strategies, you
should go into the local office and not ignore that email.

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localhost3000
Read about this one on Wired awhile back. Nice to see it making progress.
Would love to see a succinct description of how this compares to / is better
than the slew of other privacy coins...? Also, is there a first real use case
in mind that doesn't involve a big established messaging app adopting it for
payments? (that seems hard/complicated/requires a different skillset than
building the software). In any event, congrats to the team. Smells like one of
the better projects out there!

~~~
rms
The main difference is that MobileCoin trusts Intel's SGX to create a platform
that should be able to scale quickly on mobile. It also has a solution to
allow for private key recovery in case you lose your phone.

Zcash is more provably secure as it doesn't require trusting Intel's SGX but
it's untenable on mobile right now as it's too computationally intensive.
Monero and Dash are effectively anonymous for small transfers but for very
large movements of money, the deep state can crack their tumbler algorithms.
They provide good enough rather than verifiable anonymity.

As CEO of the Signal Foundation, Moxie is in a unique position to encourage
Signal protocol chat services to adopt something like MobileCoin. I would
imagine that progression would go Signal -> WhatsApp, and that Signal would
only reject MobileCoin if Moxie himself rejected MobileCoin. I think there
isn't really a first use case other than an existing Signal protocol service
adopting it.

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losvedir
I don't understand - was this a traditional fund raise, or an ICO? I had
thought ICO at first, since it's a crypto currency, but the article doesn't
come right out and say it.

If it's an ICO - how does that work, exactly? People buy some amount of the
coin at a valuation, and then they'll be able to use it later once the actual
application comes out?

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desireco42
It makes a lot of sense for this coin to be on Stellar network. It is fast and
cheap, and they can actually create their own coin whenever they like and
treat current ones as tokens. I think this is smart move and much better then
creating on Ethereum because of speed and price that goes along with it and
often is not mentioned.

My 2c. Or 2 satoshis

~~~
rms
The white paper says it uses the Stellar consensus protocol but doesn't
specify that the coin is on the Stellar network.

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0xFFC
The idea seems exactly like Electroneum.

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moe
Or Aeon. Or Phoneum. Or Telcoin. Or Status.im. Or a dozen other coins with
near identical goals.

~~~
Dystoxin
Aeon – Is pretty much like any cryptocurrency in general. They are trying to
act like Monero but fast payments and multiple transactions like Litecoin. So
the only I thing I see similar about Aeon and Telcoin is that they are on a
mobile friendly. (Pretty much has to be for major adoption)

Status – Is an Ethereum-sending app, where you can send Ethereum and messages
back and forth. Therefore, I would compare this more to PayPal, than Telcoin.
Team is somewhat lackluster. In addition, this is about sending crypto between
people (mainly Ethereum) and relates to Telcoin because it is on a mobile
phone.

Phoneum - is a decentralized cryptocurrency that operates on mobile devices
via app only, empowered by blockchain technology. The app also comes with a
built in miner. I honestly could not find too much and it is not listed on
CoinMarketCap. If I had to compare this to another crypto, it would be
Electroneum, not Telcoin. They are literally doing the same thing and have a
patent pending on the mobile miner. Telcoin – is a cryptocurrency designed to
facilitate digital asset exchange with telecom channels provided by operators
worldwide. They are trying to simplify it to where anyone, with any type of
phone can send money, through a simple text.

These are all short examples and don’t give them full justice but the only
thing they all have in common is that they are all cryptocurrencies and that
they can be used with a phone. Telcoin is the only one that has shown great
progress by partnering with big names like Wipro and GSMA. This shows that
they are in the same realm with Telecom providers and are willing to comply
with all the standards and regulations. I personally believe that this is a
sleeper project and whenever it takes off, it is going to fly. Look at the
team/advisors and tell me they are not bound for some success within the
telecom industry.

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deft
Mobilecoin is a token powered by a stellar smart contract. I don't care if
Moxie or god himself is the lead of the project, because it's incredibly
limited in scope (actually stellar advertises that as a feature of their smart
contract platform) I doubt it will succeed. And no, a fancy mobile UI is not
worth $30mil.

Before someone replies with a quote from the whitepaper about what it /will/
do, don't bother. Until it's released I doubt any and all claims from the
team. Because it's no different from any other high profile raise for a
cryptocurrency and every single one so far has failed to deliver.

~~~
ghayes
> I don't care if Moxie or god himself is the lead of the project

> Until it's released I doubt any and all claims from the team.

It's fine for you to have your opinion, but understand that you aren't
meaningfully contributing to the conversation with statements like the ones
above. Other people, obviously, will have different viewpoints, and it's best
that we can talk on the merits of the arguments.

~~~
stale2002
It is absolutely contributing to the discussion.

The merits to be discussed are "its not done yet, and anything that doesn't
work NOW in crypto probably won't work ever".

If someone wants me to belive their claims they should build something, get it
working, and THEN sell it. None of this pre sale IOU stuff.

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urda
You're not going to beat out Venmo, Apple Pay, and other established
platforms.

Can this blockchain currency nonsense end already? People need to stop trying
to force a given tech to do something specific all the time. It's literally
the definition of "trying too hard".

~~~
rms
Consumer micropayments is one of the most basic possible applications of this
technology and that it hasn't been implemented yet is sad. I'm not a fan of
the customer experience of Venmo and Paypal and Apple Pay that require me to
have a bank account or a credit card. They work in the first world for
transfers over a certain minimum but there is really clearly room to innovate
still.

Do you see a future where blockchain technology exists but consumers don't use
cryptocurrency? I do also. Who is to say that WhatsApps's implementation of
Mobilecoin has to use their own proprietary cryptocurrency instead of letting
users denominate transfers in local fiat currency?

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freddie_mercury
There are plenty of alternatives in developing countries. (I live in one such
country and no one here uses any of the things you listed.) None of them are
based on the block chain. They don't require bank accounts or credit cards.
They don't work just for "certain amounts".

If those things don't exist in America it is because the market for them in
America doesn't exist.

