When the encrypted Launched almost seven years ago, the Signal communication app has brought the promise of the strongest available coding to a dead-simple interface for calls and text messages. Signal now contains what it describes as a way to bring the same ease of use and security to a third, fundamentally distinctive feature: payments.
Signal plans today to announce that it has the ability for some of its users to send money to each other within the fast-growing encrypted communications network. To do so, it has integrated support for the cryptocurrency MobileCoin, a form of digital cash designed to work efficiently on mobile devices while protecting the privacy of users and even their anonymity. The payment feature is currently only available to users in the UK, and only on iOS and Android, not on the desktop. But the new feature nonetheless represents an experiment to give millions of users a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency, which Signal hopes to eventually expand across the globe.
Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of Signal and CEO of the nonprofit that runs it, describes the new payment feature as an attempt to extend Signal’s privacy protection to payments with the same seamless experience that Signal offered for encrypted conversations. “There’s a noticeable difference in the sense of what it’s like to communicate via Signal, knowing that you’re not being watched or listened to, compared to other communication platforms,” Marlinspike said in an interview with WIRED. “I would like to get into a world where you can not only feel it when you talk to your therapist about Signal, but also when your therapist pays for the session on Signal.”
Unlike payment features integrated into other messaging applications like WhatsApp or iMessage, which usually link the user’s bank account, Signal wants to provide a way to send money that no one other than the sender and recipient can detect or detect. Financial institutions regularly sell their users’ private transaction data to marketing firms and advertisers or pass it on to law enforcement. Bitcoin would not do the trick either. As with many cryptocurrencies, their protection against fraud and counterfeiting is based on a public, distributed ledger – a blockchain – which in many cases can reveal who sent money to whom.
Signal therefore looked at privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies, or ‘privacy coins’, which bypass both banks and are specially designed to protect users’ identities and the details of their payments on a blockchain. While more established privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies like Zcash and Monero are more widely used and likely to be better tested, Marlinspike says that Signal chose to integrate MobileCoin because it has the most seamless user experience on mobile devices, requiring little storage space on the phone and only seconds to confirm transactions. Zcash or Monero payments, on the other hand, take minutes to complete transactions. “You use a crypto-currency with modern encryption, but from your perspective it feels like Venmo,” says Josh Goldbard, founder of MobileCoin.
Signal’s choice of MobileCoin comes as no surprise to anyone who has been watching the development of the cryptocurrency since it was launched at the end of 2017. Marlinspike has served as a paid technical advisor for the project since its inception, and he is working with Goldbard to design MobileCoin’s mechanics with a possible future integration in applications such as Signal in mind. (However, Marlinspike notes that neither he nor Signal own any MobileCoins.)
MobileCoin only started trading as a real currency with real value in December last year – until then it has become a worthless ‘test net’ – and its 250 million coins, at about $ 69 each, are currently a total of $ 17 billion dollars. . Currently, it is offered for sale on only one cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, which does not allow traders by US users, although Goldbard says there is no reason why US wallets cannot list the currency for trading. Signal has chosen to extend its MobileCoin integration in the UK in part because the cryptocurrency cannot yet be purchased by users in the US, says Marlinspike, but also because it represents a smaller English-speaking user base to test the new payments . function, which he hopes will make the diagnosis of problems easier.
Payments are a difficult dilemma for Signal: to keep track of the features of other messaging applications, users need to send money. However, it is a unique challenge to do so without sacrificing its excellent privacy assurance. Despite the intentions of Marlinspike and MobileCoin, the use of any cryptocurrency today remains much more complex than Signal’s other features. Even if users can send MobileCoin back and forth, they will probably still have to pay it out in traditional currencies to spend it, as MobileCoin is not widely accepted for real goods and services. And apart from the need for exchanges and the lack of availability in the US, MobileCoin also remains even more volatile than older cryptocurrencies, with constant price fluctuations that will significantly increase the balances in the user’s Signal wallet during the days or even hours changes – hardly the kind of problem Venmo users are dealing with. (Since March 27, MobileCoin’s value has soared nearly 600 percent, possibly due to rumors of the impending signal integration or possibly due to a ‘short press’.)