MobileCoin, the startup known for building Signal’s cryptocurrency payments feature, has appointed a new CEO as it expands its cryptocurrency money transfer service to global users who need a more modern remittance solution. Sarah Dreckley takes over as the new CEO of MobileCoin. Henry Holtzman, former chief innovation officer at MIT Media Lab, replaces her previous position as chief technology officer at the company.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Drakeley commented on the key role Bob Lee played in shaping the development of MobileCoin. Lee, who was killed in a fatal stabbing in April, was CTO at Square and creator of Cash App before joining MobileCoin as chief product officer because he saw the potential for cryptocurrencies to enable peer-to-peer transactions on a global scale.
“Cash App only exists in the U.S., and what we’re building is global,” Drakeley said. “The other thing [Lee] Admittedly, with the traditional financial system, it’s very complicated. He would say: “You know, you think blockchain technology is complicated. Look at the traditional financial system. There are all these intermediaries. You think things settle down instantly, but in reality, it’s just a queue, and these big machines will eventually settle down for the night.”
“With blockchain, you just have one transaction between two parties. It’s way simpler,” Drakley added.
MobileCoin, which has It raised more than $100 million From investors including Binance Labs, it plans to eventually monetize through transaction fees and value-added services, such as lending. “Once you have an underlying economy and money moving through the system, there are a lot of ways to monetize it,” Drakeley said.
Privacy and regulation
In 2021, Signal, the all-in-one messaging service popular among privacy-conscious users, launched the beta version of its MobileCoin-enabled payments solution. The feature has officially come out of the testing phase, allowing any user around the world to instantly send their native MobileCoin Mob token to other Signal users for a minimal network fee – all without leaving any recognizable trails behind.
The combination of encrypted messages and anonymous transactions raised quite a few eyebrows. some He worries Criminal organizations can leverage technology to communicate, make payments, and ultimately evade investigations. So far, Moby, MobileCoin’s standalone payment app, has partnered with Paybis, which implements standard “know your customer” and “anti-money laundering” procedures in transferring between cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies.
As for regulating on-chain activity, Drakeley said she feels “promising” about some technological developments that ensure people’s rights to “safety and security” while allowing them to “adhere to compliance and regulations.”
“On-chain identity is a really hot topic right now, and a lot of people are interested and invested in how this will evolve, with identity being part of how AML and KYC will eventually be solved. I think It is very important for regulators to have a comprehensive identity verification solution.
“There are other pieces of metadata that you can attach to a transaction that can help build trust. That can help define that risk profile. These are things that you can attach even in a way that still protects people’s data,” the CEO added.
Crypto push wave
Drakeley, who worked at SpaceX and Disney Animation Studios before joining web3, takes on her new role at a time when cryptocurrency payments are generating a lot of interest from investors and developers.
Nigerian startup Kotani, for example, recently raised $2 million to help African migrant workers send money home via stablecoins. Eco backed by a16z is a San Francisco player promoting a cryptocurrency-based “universal Venmo.”
What sets MobileCoin apart, according to Drakeley, is that it supports “private” transactions, in contrast to other blockchain-based financial movements whose details are publicly available on-chain. “Can you imagine if you went to a café, paid for your coffee, and at that moment, with that one payment, the waiter knew your salary?” Drakeley said, adding that unlike some Ethereum scaling solutions, the MobileCoin network is fast and cheap enough to support microtransactions.
“We as an industry have built so many technologies that don’t have privacy that it’s very difficult to add that privacy back,” she said. “You can see how much effort has gone into trying to add the second layer of privacy to Ethereum.” “Even with all of these efforts, it’s still a problem,” she said. “It doesn’t really solve the problem, because you also get the high fees and the amount of time it takes to settle the transaction.”
To make cryptocurrency payments practical for everyday scenarios, MobileCoin has spent the past five years working on its privacy-preserving protocol, originally based on the Stellar blockchain, to power blockchain transactions that can run even on low-bandwidth mobile devices. The focus on low energy consumption, in particular, has helped Mobi attract attention to developing countries with a large inflow of remittances, such as Mexico, Nigeria and the Philippines, according to Drakeley.