MobileCoin has completed a $66 million Series B funding round and has integrated with two major messaging apps, Signal and Mixin Messenger
This round of financing has brought MobileCoin's valuation to $1.066 billion, making it the latest unicorn in the cryptocurrency market.Author: Richard Lee
On August 18, the mobile privacy payment project MobileCoin announced the completion of a $66 million Series B funding round at a valuation of $1.066 billion, aimed at developing a stablecoin, a new crypto chatbot business payment system, and promoting the MobileCoin application.
This round of financing was participated in by Alameda Research, founded by FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder SBF, and Coinbase Ventures, with other participants including Berggruen Holdings, General Catalyst, Marc Benioff's TIME Ventures, and Vy Capital among several traditional investment institutions.
According to official information, the company was founded in 2017, with Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of the encrypted chat application Signal, serving as its advisor. Its main product, MobileCoin, is a cryptocurrency specifically designed for mobile electronic cash payments, focusing on privacy. Apart from the sender and receiver, no third party can view the user's balance, complete transaction history, or funds.
MobileCoin aims to be used for daily transactions on mobile devices and is currently integrated with two major messaging apps, Signal and Mixin Messenger. In April of this year, MobileCoin tested its payment functionality for Signal users in the UK. Additionally, MobileCoin founder Joshua Goldbard revealed to Coindesk that over 1 million MobileCoin transactions have been generated on Mixin Messenger. Mixin Messenger is an open-source private chat application developed based on the Signal protocol in China.
Image source: Signal official website
It is reported that MobileCoin uses a "joint Byzantine agreement" consensus mechanism—where different validators decide which other validators they trust, and consensus can only be reached when a sufficient number of trusted validator circles overlap. Goldbard stated that it consumes less manpower and energy while ensuring transaction speed and privacy.
Unlike other cryptocurrencies, MobileCoin also aims to ensure that digital wallets can be easily recovered rather than permanently lost. Even if a merchant or user loses their phone, they can recover their account balance and transaction history by loading their account onto a new phone.
In addition to basic communication transfer functions, the MobileCoin blog also shows that it is developing a cryptocurrency chatbot system called "MOBot," which provides e-commerce payment services for merchants wishing to sell goods within the Signal application. This system automatically manages lightweight transactions directly in the chat. MOBot was open-sourced on July 30 of this year.
Furthermore, MobileCoin is also developing a stablecoin project to reduce the risk of price fluctuations in transactions.
In April 2018, MobileCoin completed a $30 million financing round led by Binance Labs, with other investors including INB, ZhenFund, and Danhua Capital. The team currently has 40 employees and is still expanding.
For a long time, the crypto mobile payment sector has faced continuous setbacks. Facebook's stablecoin project Libra and Telegram's TON project both encountered scrutiny from U.S. regulators. The recent large financing for MobileCoin has been viewed by some media as the "last best hope" for the mobile local payment sector in the recent bull market.
Stimulated by this financing news, the MobileCoin token MOB surged by 32% to $21.7 billion, and has since fallen back to $18.4, with a total market capitalization reaching $4.6 billion.
