[godelski]

> they don’t want anything to do with bitcoins

Honestly, this is a bad argument. You can use Signal and never send a gif or stickers. You don't have to do anything with ~~stickers~~crypto when using Signal. It is an opt-in feature that is probably going to not be used my 90% of people. This is just a bad argument surrounding the whole ordeal.

Now the arguments about: regulations, Moxie's involvement (stated he has no coins but there's other potential issues), and how the final system will actually look like (e.g. should it be a second app), those are valid arguments that we should be discussing. But the above one just isn't great and I'm tired of seeing it.

[nimih]

If you're trying to convince your friends and family to use some obscure tech nerd messaging app instead of what they're used to (and all of their friends probably use), it doesn't really matter whether their arguments are "good" or "bad" from a factual standpoint, because most people (or, at least, the OP as we can see here) don't really want to get into a debate defending the bad PR signal has created for itself. Getting folks to change the software they're used to for something new is a fundamentally hard thing to do even when you're providing a _clear upgrade_ (just look at how touchy people get at needing to change text editors/ides, or how vocally people complain about literally every web UI redesign), and every extra hurdle added to that process is going to make it exponentially harder.

[aloknnikhil]

It maybe a bad argument but it's a practical view. Governments around the world (see: India, China) have strict laws around crypto. By law of association, any service that remotely mentions this is severely scrutinized. I can hardly blame my friends if they want no part of this.

[Sunspark]

Crypto is so strange. You claim ownership over a string of 1s and 0s. Exclusive rights.

[Hydraulix989]

That's not how it works. It's more like there's this shared network of participants that has strong incentives to consistently agree that you own a numeric measurement of "value" and that you have the agreed-upon ability to elect to transfer portions of this value to other participants in the network (because you _know_ a specific private key and can irrefutably demonstrate that you know it even without disclosing it).

[gfxgirl]

Most of my finances are just strings of 1s and 0s. My company pays me. They don't send pieces of paper to my bank. It happens via 1s and 0s. From there, 80-90% of my expenses get paid automatically (rent, most taxes, electricity, internet, gas, water, trash collection) all via 1s and 0s. And cash is slowly disappearing into 1s and 0s as well via phone payment systems.

[ludamad]

You don't, though. That's more like IP law, where people really do claim rights over the usage of strings. Crypto is more like allocating a string on some servers with a decentralized process

[saganus]

I don't think cryptocoins are about "claiming" ones and zeroes, but instead having the ability to "use" those ones and zeroes, unlike anybody else.

Although ultimately the effect is similar to "claiming" them by virtue of being the only one (as long as you don't share the private key of course) that can operate on those one and zeroes (i.e transfering them to some other address).

Unlike, say, copyright, where even if you claim ownership, someone else can also operate on it (e.g. piracy), illegally of course, but still can.

[webinvest]

Not too different from the 1s and 0s in your bank account. I bet you use cash for less than 1% of your transactions. Everything else is 1s and 0s.

[johnhenry]

Applies to intellectual property in general.

[tremon]

Banking is so strange. The bank grants you ownership over some pieces of paper that may not even really exist.

[godelski]

They are whitelisting the feature. So this is pretty easy to deal with. Government bans? Take off the whitelist. No more issues. Major services like Google Play will have to deal with this too. Most apps don't work the same way in every single country, they adopt to those countries' policies or get banned.

[eganist]

> They are whitelisting the feature. So this is pretty easy to deal with. Government bans? Take off the whitelist. No more issues. Major services like Google Play will have to deal with this too. Most apps don't work the same way in every single country, they adopt to those countries' policies or get banned.

Contrived strawman rebuttal: Government sees app "ThingX" now deals with crypto. ThingX indicates that different variants of the app can interact with crypto depending on the region. Government doesn't care because they're not tech savvy, bans ThingX because crypto.

[hudon]

Well, their opinion could be that Bitcoin is extremely wasteful and damaging to our environment for very little value, and so they do not want to support any organization that supports Bitcoin. A boycott, if you will.

I’m not arguing that position but I’m just saying that if that is the case, then their boycott is more reasonable than say a “stickers” boycott.

[vmception]

Mobilecoin is a proof of stake system and there is no Bitcoin involved. Proof of Stake systems are not damaging to the environment like Proof of Work systems (like Bitcoin’s) are or can potentially be.

Yeah there is a big education gap that just gets wider with stigma.

[godelski]

Aren't premined coins much less harmful to the environment? I'm not saying this is an argument for using it, but this is definitely true.

[trident5000]

Working so the government can piss away my savings is extremely wasteful to my body and time.

[throw4738]

Electric cars have zero emissions, bitcoin has zero emissions ;)

Seriously, most mining farms are using geothermal or water dams generators.

[blep-arsh]

And others are running on stolen electricity in residential areas, sonetimes causing fires.

[anoncake]

Electricity is fungible.

[Geee]

They should educate themselves on why bitcoin is useful and why it's not wasteful, rather than ignore it based on false assumptions.

This series of short articles is very good for those who want to learn the fundamentals: https://tomerstrolight.medium.com/why-bitcoin-the-series-660...

[erispoe]

The argument in your link boils down to: it will bring the economy down to a deflationary halt, so it's friendly to the environment. Great.

[Geee]

There are 19 articles and the argument doesn't boil to anything. Just one minor argument is that deflationary money system reduces overconsumption. That's not a 'deflationary halt'.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> Honestly, this is a bad argument.

It is a protective heuristic for the non-tech people.

Basically, the more something mentions crypto coins, the higher the likelihood that it is a scam of some type.

It is not always true, but it is true enough for the average person and , in general, functions pretty well as a heuristic.

Thus, they hear about this new, previously unknown, chat service, and see an association with crypto coins, their scam detector immediately goes off, and they don’t want anything to do with it.

[romanovcode]

> Honestly, this is a bad argument.

No, it is a very good argument. Those who are using computers since pre-mobile era (which is everyone but zoomers) remember very well how simple programs slowly became more bloated and then basically became adware. This is what it is associated to.

[salawat]

If you implement any type of cryptocurrency possibility, KYC is around the corner in the United States.

Yes, it may take a while, but the glacier does in fact move.

[theamk]

I think it’s a valid argument. Once this is deployed everywhere, people will see the statements “Signal supports MOB” and “Signal has 20 million users” and make a conclusion, “20 million people can use MOB”. The only way to avoid being part of this statistic is to avoid the app.

In general, boycotting the product is the time-tested way to send messages to big corp. if you don’t like your clothes being made by child labor, don’t buy the brand. If you don’t like WhatsApp privacy policy, don’t install it. If you don’t like P&G spying on people in China, don’t buy their products. And if you don’t like cryptocurrencies, don’t use stuff from companies which support them.