Jack Dorsey Says Signal Should Adopt Bitcoin. He’s Half Right.

Jack Dorsey just said out loud what a lot of privacy nerds have been muttering into their coffee: Signal, the gold-standard encrypted messenger trusted by journalists, dissidents, and tech bros needs real private payments. Not some speculative VC-backed coin.

It needs Bitcoin. And honestly? It should also be looking hard at Monero, the only cryptocurrency on earth that actually behaves like digital cash.

“Signal should use Bitcoin,” Dorsey posted, linking to Bitcoin for Signal, a grassroots campaign showing how Cashu ecash can bring truly private, peer-to-peer Bitcoin payments into Signal’s encrypted chats.

Right now, Signal supports MobileCoin, a crypto so irrelevant it might as well be vaporware. Launched in 2021 with backing from Alameda Research (yes, that Alameda), MobileCoin was supposed to be the answer to private payments. Instead, it became a textbook case of how not to build financial privacy.

The Bitcoin for Signal crew built a working proof-of-concept using Cashu, an open-source Chaumian ecash protocol that turns Bitcoin into something that actually feels like cash. Forked Signal for iOS and Android. Clean UI. Native experience. Payments that ride the same encrypted channel as your messages. No middlemen. No KYC. Just blind signatures and bearer tokens, David Chaum’s 1980s vision of digital cash, finally working on the internet’s native money.

And let’s not forget Monero. If Signal really cared about peer-to-peer privacy, not just optics, it would be talking to the Monero community too. Monero is the only cryptocurrency that guarantees untraceable, unlinkable transactions by default no optional privacy, no “opt-in” layers, no metadata leaks. It’s the closest thing we have to physical cash in digital form. Ignoring it because it’s “too radical” is cowardice disguised as caution.

The technical path is clear. Cashu mints ecash tokens backed 1:1 by Bitcoin. You send them like messages. The mint verifies validity without knowing who sent what, just like handing someone a $20 bill.

Signal’s MobileCoin play was always sus. Bruce Schneier, warned it would bloat the app and attract regulatory heat (it didn't because nobody cared). Then came the Alameda connection. The DARPA ties. The whole thing reeked of Silicon Valley “privacy” theater: privacy for messaging, surveillance for money.

Bitcoin via Cashu flips that script. No new token. No venture round. No speculative asset. Just Bitcoin, extended with privacy that works. This we can get behind and this is about consistency. If your messages deserve end-to-end encryption, your payments deserve end-to-end privacy. Signal can’t claim to protect users while outsourcing their financial data to a dead crypto with VC baggage.

So here’s the choice:
Keep pretending MobileCoin matters while users ignore it, or finally deliver on the promise of private communication + private money.

Dorsey sees it. The Bitcoin crowd sees it and Signal users see it (well some of them at least). Now Signal just needs the guts to admit it fucked up, and fix it.

Your messages are private so should your payments.