I’ve been using Signal messenger since Edward Snowden had endorsed it, prior to even knowing that Moxie Marlinspike (who I’m overall a fan of) was involved with the project. The messenger receives high marks from both the EFF Surveillance Self-Defense tools guides and from Privacy Tools.

Over the past few weeks, there has been some buzz about the integration of a new privacy-focused cryptocurrency. I’m a fan of cryptocurrencies, and I’d like to see people be more responsible for their own monies without the requirement of banks, if they do not want, or having to pay credit card processors money to do the trivial work of moving data from one institution to another.

Wired has a lengthy write up by Andy Greenberg that goes into detail about what MobileCoin will be, and to me it sounds promising. However, there is some negative press around it. Bruce Schneier’s complaints (notable critic of blockchain technologies) primarily on the basis of the addition of a stealth cryptocurrency to the messing platform will invite trouble. I do think that his, and others’, problem with feature bloat on an app that seems to do one thing well currently, is a good concern.

Having said all of that, I want MobileCoin to succeed, and I hope that tacking it onto Signal is what gets a privacy driven, high performing cryptocurrency to the masses.

In the event that Signal gets messy, or something terrible happens to it, I think that I’ll be checking out Element (formerly Riot), which has the added bonus of being decentralized. I’ve already checked it out as a replacement for Discord, which might be ruined following a likely acquisition by Microsoft.