Signal is receiving criticism because of its partnership with MobileCoin. Eyebrows were raised over the 450 percent increment at the MOB price ahead of the official announcement. Controversy has surrounded Signal’s late announcement of its MobileCoin partnership with customers showing concerns over its ties between cryptocurrency and Signal’s founder. The opacity around the coin’s issuance, plus the suspicious benefits before the partnership’s announcement, has been a concern.
Signal Faces Heavy Criticism for Integrating with MobileCoin
Signal, launched in 2013, is an encrypted messaging app embraced by the security-conscious and privacy community since its establishment as an Open Whisper System. MobileCoin was launched in 2017 to issue about 15 percent of supply to several private investors when its whole supply is minted at the launch.
On Sunday, Signal announced it is launching payment performance via MobileCoin, with the messaging app founder, Moxie Marlinspike, asserting it selected MobileCoin because it needs small storage space and offering quick transactions without sacrificing privacy on devices.
The decision of Signal to partnered with MobileCoin seems to happen some time ago. Jonah Edward’s Internet Archive observed that the cryptocurrency integration source code was held private for about a year before publication to GitHub.
With the MOB of MobileCoin token estimating about 450 percent from 28th March until Saturday, plus Signal integration news pushing the prices to $66 by this Wednesday, many observers are already speculating that investors might have impacted the price following an earlier announcement warning.
Concerns Raised Over Marlinspike’s Relationship to MobileCoin
Some concerns are raising over Marlinspike’s liaison with MobileCoin, with the previous project’s white paper copies mentioning Marlinspike as a chief technology officer of MobileCoin. Joshua Goldbard, MobileCoin CEO, has assured the community that Marlinspike served only as of the project technical advisor and never served as the executive.
This shows that Goldbard has not been consistent in Marlinspike’s engagement with the project. Goldbard has dismissed Marlinspike characterization as a part of MobileCoin’s founders. Meanwhile, he equally described Marlinspike as a part of the three creators of Mobilecoin. What’s more, Goldbard seems to avoid any questions about the compensation of Marlinspike for his duty as the project’s technical advisor. He equally asserted that the group has been working with lawyers to ascertain the circulating MOB supply that can be publicly known.
On the aspect of circulating supply, He said that they are working with lawyers to know the next course of action. The total coins number is about 250M; they were minted on the first day. We work diligently to have the coins to the ecosystem immediately, he concluded.
Goldband has also noted on Reddit that over 50 percent of MobileCoin available could be bought via the site. However, the purchasing process is hazy since there is no reference cost offered and orders arranged through email correspondence. Buymobilecoin, a site that permits people to buy MobileCoin tokens straight from the project, has received controversy lately.
