Elon Musk-Endorsed Encrypted Messaging App Signal Integrates Crypto Payments

The latest beta of encrypted messaging mobile application Signal integrated privacy-centric cryptocurrency MobileCoin MOB/USD.

What Happened: The latest beta version of Signal — which prides itself on being recommended by famous whistleblower Edward Snowden and Tesla Inc TSLA’s Elon Musk — now allows United Kingdom users “to send and receive privacy-focused payments as easily as sending or receiving a message,” according to a recent announcement published.

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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021

The Signal team explained their choice of cryptocurrency, "The first payments protocol we’ve added support for is a privacy-focused payments network called MobileCoin, which has its own currency, MOB."

The newly released Signal beta allows linking the account to a MobileCoin wallet to keep track of the account’s balance, send funds to friends and family, and review transaction history. The way the system is designed means that Signal does not have access to the coins, the transaction history, or balance data.

The price of MobileCoin, the 2,378th crypto asset by market cap, decreased by nearly 40% over the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data. This suggests that the news was already priced in its rise from $7.5 per coin on March 28 to its current price of over $40, after peaking at $68.7 yesterday.

The idea of a major messaging application integrating cryptocurrency features is not entirely new. Signal competitor Telegram planned to launch its own blockchain and cryptocurrency to transfer its entire infrastructure on-chain.

Still, this move was met by intense opposition by regulators, and the project was ultimately open-sourced and abandoned by Telegram.