Signal embeds shady cryptocurrency in its service

Many technologists viscerally felt yesterday’s announcement as a punch to the gut when we heard that the Signal messaging app was bundling an embedded cryptocurrency. This news really cut to heart of what many technologists have felt before when we as loyal users have been exploited and betrayed by corporations, but this time it felt much deeper because it introduced a conflict of interest from our fellow technologists that we truly believed were advancing a cause many of us also believed in. So many of us have spent significant time and social capital moving our friends and family away from the exploitative data siphon platforms that Facebook et al offer, and on to Signal in the hopes of breaking the cycle of commercial exploitation of our online relationships. And some of us feel used.

Signal users are overwhelmingly tech savvy consumers and we’re not idiots. Do they think we don’t see through the thinly veiled pump and dump scheme that’s proposed? It’s an old scam with a new face.

Allegedly the controlling entity prints 250 million units of some artificially scarce trashcoin called MOB (coincidence?) of which the issuing organization controls 85% of the supply. This token then floats on a shady offshore cryptocurrency exchange hiding in the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas, where users can buy and exchange the token. The token is wash traded back and forth by insiders and the exchange itself to artificially pump up the price before it’s dumped on users in the UK to buy to allegedly use as “payments”. All of this while insiders are free to silently use information asymmetry to cash out on the influx of pumped hype-driven buys before the token crashes in value. Did I mention that the exchange that floats the token is the primary investor in the company itself, does anyone else see a major conflict of interest here?

And there goes Signal, down the drain, throwing away all the goodwill it has managed to build up. Apparently, the donations they received from users weren’t enough, and it has to resort to shady schemes like these to keep the service running. I wasn’t using Signal to begin with, but this ensures I’m not touch it with a ten foot pole.

As for cryptocurrency, a topic we effectively do not cover on OSAlert – I’m not saying cryptocurrency is by definition shady, but let’s just say I don’t read many stories about cryptocurrency that instill me with any confidence in its trustworthiness and stability in any way, shape, or form. The technology in and of itself is cool, but what people are doing with it is, well, not.

17 Comments

  1. 2021-04-07 9:46 pm
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