Thread by @sethisimmons

1/ In the latest twist to this odd situation MobileCoin bailed on their own AMA and instead put out a coordinated blog post with Signal:

signal.org/blog/update-on…

https://twitter.com/mobilecoin/status/1382012768904114185?s=21

https://twitter.com/sethisimmons/status/1379791201558278144

2/ The blog post essentially says that now they are open to integrating existing currencies once they reach characteristics only available to centralized currencies ATM, but will integrate MobileCoin in the meantime.

Requirements:

3/ It also intentionally mentions Zcash as a future possibility (with speed improvements) without mentioning Monero, who MobileCoin have to thank for their entire privacy protocol.

Full quote:

4/ They also, interestingly, call out Lightning (properly, IMO) for being unsuitable due to it’s reliance on onion routing for privacy which breaks down when a single entity is the routing node for all channel liquidity (as they would be in this case):

5/ For some reason they still completely ignore the use of 0-conf for small payments, but the rest of the requirements are certainly understandable if naive.

There is simply no way with current technology payments can be done as specified without centralization.

6/ Honestly, if MobileCoin hadn’t gone 100% pre-mine the tradeoffs would actually be understandable, but with the pre-mine and their suspicious refusal to acknowledge Monero or put out any proper response to these issues, I just can’t get behind it on any level.

7/ oh and never forget:

"I started MobileCoin to fund Signal. That’s it."

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=267262…

8/ The only way that works is if they *dump the pre-mined tokens on retail*.

Aka you fund Signal by making the MobileCoin founders rich. If they actually decide to use those funds to fund signal.

Sigh.

9/ Well said on the topic:

https://twitter.com/hundehausen/status/1382051104356196352