> of which the issuing organization controls 85% of the supply.
> [citation needed]
This is based on the original whitepaper which says they pre-sold 15% of the tokens (to investors) and still own the rest. They claim to have not followed that whitepaper but the new one only says they start with 100% ownership and will not answer questions of how much they still own. So all we can go on is their original plan which was to hold onto 85% of the supply as long as possible.
Thanks to you and the others who responded with information. Looks like some of the claims I highlighted above cannot be sourced at all, and others can only be sourced to a whitepaper that the developers are distancing themselves from.
So... Yeah, being downvoted and flagged really showed me, I guess.
When massive amounts of money are involved than a cynical take is the right take. The burden on proof is on the company to show that they are working in good faith not for everyone to assume they are working in good faith. Hiding things, denying association with things and avoiding questions should not be taken as a good faith effort but rather as proof of bad faith. I think we've had enough crypto scams by now to no longer be naively optimistic about them.
edit: You can see in this very thread the CEO use every weasel words way of avoiding directly answering how many coins they currently hold. A very simple question which is always answered in a way which doesn't answer it.
I didn't mean to suggest that everything is fine with MobileCoin! Quite the contrary, it appears to be a complete shitshow. But in ways that are different from what the featured article claimed.
I'm very much opposed to Stephen Diehl's default approach of "everything to do with cryptocurrency is a scam, because I say so". Many things (probably including MobileCoin) are scams, but proper sources are still needed, and it's good to keep factual criticism separate from vague allusions to unnamed exchanges in some Caribbean country or another.
The issue is that by the time you have found enough proper sources, especially with the scammers actively making it harder, the scam will have been done with and paid out to the scammers. So the only logical approach I feel is to assume it's a scam unless those involved put the effort into proving otherwise.
The author has obviously "found enough proper sources" because they were able to quote the figure about the issuers controlling 85% of the supply etc. It's really not too much to ask to link to the place where they read this.
The protocol isn't based on mining, and they have a finite supply of 250m coins which they won't disclose the distribution of other than to try to assure everyone to not be concerned:
They fact they can't even disclose coin distribution but Signal is already integrating it is both shocking and extremely concerning for the future of Signal. I seriously question what Moxie was thinking unless this is just a money grab for him.
>> of which the issuing organization controls 85% of the supply.
There's this interesting comment chain from yesterday's thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26717253), where a commenter says the source is the coin's whitepaper, which states there will be 250 million tokens and they pre-sold 37.5 million. However, the creator (josh2600) says the whitepaper is out of date, but stops short of saying the 250/37.5 million token figure is incorrect.
I agree that if it's true it's incredibly damning and probably warrants some hard evidence.
That being said it's still a strange move by Signal, given that it's still a rather niche messenger that's now integrating with an even more niche payment system. The only ones that really stand to benefit from this are people holding this cryptocurrency.
It's just a super strange move by Signal, regardless of your stance on cryptocurrencies. Did anybody really think "you know what's missing from Signal compared to the competition? First party cryptocurrency payment support".
