welcoming diverse new investors: Vy Capital, Coinbase, BlockTower Capital, Alameda Research, and the investment arms of Bernard Arnault, Marc Benioff, Nicolas Berggruen and Drake.
VentureBeat today: “MobileCoin has raised $66 million for its cryptocurrency payments platform that aims to democratize privacy for all. MobileCoin uses peer-to-peer networking for payments, so that transactions can be more easily kept private even while taking advantage of the blockchain, the transparent and secure digital ledger. The company bills its system as fast, safe, and easy-to-use, giving everyone the ability to transact digitally from nearly anywhere in the world. A cell phone transaction takes just seconds, in contrast to most cryptocurrency transactions that can take minutes to resolve.
When it comes to cryptocurrency transactions, MobileCoin is pretty unique. “People are really excited about what we’ve built because it’s really fast,” CEO Joshua Goldbard said. “It’s carbon negative, and it works on the cell phone. “It’s just something that really doesn’t exist in crypto.” The technology was built for mobility and convenience, with payments occurring right on your phone.
The San Francisco company has an opaque ledger and cryptographically protected transactions. The network uses forward secrecy to keep data from being compromised, ensuring that private information remains private.
“On the customer side, we think we can deliver the lowest total cost to merchants and individuals for moving money around the world,” Goldbard said. “When you use a bank, it can take 30 to 45 days to get your money as a merchant. If you use Stripe or Venmo, it’s three to five days before it hits your bank account. With MobileCoin, you have possession of the funds in a second.”
Unlike other cryptocurrencies, MobileCoin was built to ensure that digital wallets can be easily recovered — and not lost forever. Even if merchants or users lose their phones, they can recover their account balance and transaction history by simply loading their account onto a new phone.
Overseas, MobileCoin has issued its own cryptocurrency, and the coins on the network are valued at more than $4 billion now. It has shown that it can be used for merchandise transactions on messenger platforms such as Mixi in Japan.
MobileCoin provides anti-fraud services and other services for merchants. MobileCoin charges just 0.004% transaction fees, and that goes to its foundation for improving the cryptocurrency.
“If we didn’t build MobileCoin, we would end up with things like Alipay, Facebook Libra, and others that would track every single transaction that people do,” Goldbard said. “And they’re not doing that necessarily to be helpful.”
And TechCrunch: “The newest round values the outfit at $1.066 billion. Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike told Wired that because MobileCoin is a so-called privacy coin designed to protect users’ identities and the details of their payments on a blockchain, that it’s an ideal fit for Signal. ‘There’s a palpable difference in the feeling of what it’s like to communicate over Signal, knowing you’re not being watched or listened to, versus other communication platforms. I would like to get to a world where not only can you feel that when you talk to your therapist over Signal, but also when you pay your therapist for the session over Signal.’”
FD: Future Ventures is the second largest outside shareholder in MobileCoin.
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