[sneak]

If you build a truly private e2ee communications system, it is a little bit silly not to include a payments feature, as it's just an e2ee messaging use case (like stickers, or reactions, or stories, etc).

There are lots of useful apps you can build atop e2ee messaging: location sharing, payments, group chats, secret sharing, etc.

[candiddevmike]

It is silly to include it, I have other apps to do that without using cryptocurrency. It was a MobileCoin grift.

[sneak]

This is just anti-cryptocurrency bias; other payment systems require identity by law, which renders them much less useful for many people (and unworkable for most service providers who must then be regulated and licensed as money transmitters).

This was the only method available of doing payments inside the app in a way that met their product requirements.

It's fine to not like cryptocurrency; it's intellectually dishonest to accuse every project of crime without evidence.

[idlewords]

Crime is the perfectly sensible default assumption for cryptocurrency apps in 2023. Accusing people of anti-cryptocurrency bias is like saying someone has anti-forest-fire bias; there are certainly scenarios where such a bias could be unfair, but the burden of proof is on you, not the other guy.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

Since I love playing Devil’s Advocate...

I can recall specifically two kinds of crime with cryptocurrency: “pump and dump” pyramid schemes and money laundering, which is hiding particularly nasty crimes like human trafficking. I won’t deny these are terribly victimizing things (that would be truly advocating for the devil).

On the other hand, there are people who don’t enjoy the banking infrastructure that Americans have; people in nations without nearly the wealth of America. Now they have these open-source networks they can implement on their own terms. The people doing this research and making these offerings might be serving such customers, whether by practice or intention.

Crime is not “the perfectly sensible default assumption for cryptocurrency apps in 2023” unless the one making the assumption is naive to these perspectives. This is an (unconscious) anti-cryptocurrency bias by definition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic.

[idlewords]

You're leaving off theft, fraud, tax evasion, and ransomware.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

All of those fall under "money laundering" and I wouldn't say any of those are worse than human trafficking, which I did mention (ransomware that doesn't care whether it's targeting hospitals and other critical infrastructure has a good case). Does it refute the argument that there are these other crimes which I didn't specify?