• Signal's Cryptocurrency Feature Has Gone Worldwide [telecom]

    From BILL Horne@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jan 9 23:21:54 2022
    A beta "payments" feature now lets users of the popular encrypted
    messaging app send MobileCoin around the globe.

    IN THE SPRING of 2021, the encrypted communications app Signal
    announced that it would add a payments feature in beta for its users
    in the UK, testing out an integration with a relatively new,
    privacy-focused cryptocurrency called MobileCoin. But a much broader
    phase of that experiment has quietly been underway since
    mid-November. That's when Signal made the same feature accessible to
    all of its users without fanfare, offering the ability to send digital
    payments far more private than a credit card transaction--or a Bitcoin transfer--to many millions of phones.

    https://www.wired.com/story/signal-mobilecoin-cryptocurrency-payments/

    Is-that-why-it's-so-evil department ...

    Cryptocurrency is being cried through every electronic village, as the
    epitome of evil and the certain destruction of the 'mericun way of life.

    Leaving aside the very real questions about Cryptocurrency's security
    and/or validity, and omitting the various real-world thefts and swindles
    which have occurred, there's a larger issue: the governments which
    have issued, and demadned we use, "fiat" currencies are peeing their
    collective pants about the possibility of Cryptocurrency challenging
    their own notes as a trusted medium of exchange.

    That fear contains three nightmares for the price of one:

    1. If the guviment's "official" money isn't the only choice we can use
    as a "standard of value," then the "value" of the official "standard"
    becomes questionable. After all, whenever some guv'mint worthy
    demands we be suspicious of Cryptocurrency, (s)he's really admitting
    that his/her employer is terrified that citizens might wonder just
    how "valuable" the pieces of paper being cranked out of privately-owned
    printing presses really are.

    2. Be-thankful-I-don't-take-it-all tax men are terrified that they won't
    be able to examine anyone's banking activity at will, without a
    search warrant.

    3. A second (or third, fourth, etc.) form of currency makes it impossible
    to achieve political ends by manipulating the "value" of the "official"
    money. Inflation? The "fed" will take care of it, at the same time the
    privately owned banks that form it will profit from their own monetary
    policy.

    I'll stop now: the black helicopters are approaching.

    Bill

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