Signal Is Left By Founder And CEO Moxie Marlinespike, Here's The Cause And Replacement!

Its chief executive officer (CEO) and founder, Moxie Marlinspike, has resigned from Signal. (photo: instagram)

JAKARTA - 2022 just started, Signal was left by its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and founder, Moxie Marlinspike. Reportedly, Marlinspike has said goodbye to the instant messaging application that rivals WhatsApp and Telegram.

Marlinspike has led Signal for almost a decade, the company is currently looking for a new CEO after he decided to step down.

"Every day, I'm struck by how big Signal's potential is, and I wanted to bring in someone with fresh energy and commitment to make the most of it. I now feel very comfortable (if anyone has) replacing myself as CEO based on the team we have, and also believe that this is an important step in expanding Signal's success," Marlinspike said in the company's official blog.

It's a new year! I've decided it's a good time to replace myself as the CEO of Signal: https://t.co/oX6yLebDhh

— Moxie Marlinspike (@moxie) January 10, 2022

While waiting for a new CEO, Signal co-founder and WhatsApp founder, Brian Acton, will be the interim CEO of the encrypted messaging app, replacing Marlinspike.

Acton himself founded WhatsApp in 2009 with Jan Koum. Later, the company was bought by Meta in 2014. He left WhatsApp in 2017 due to disagreements around the use of customer data and targeted advertising.

In February 2018, he and Marlinspike started the non-profit Signal Foundation, which currently oversees the application, providing an initial $50 million in funding. Since it was founded as a non-profit organization, the company is not supported by advertising or sales of apps, but instead relies on donations and newly launched support programs.

However, until now, the exact cause of Marinspike's resignation from his position is not known. However, TechCrucnh reports that MobileCoin has risen. It is a cryptocurrency startup that considers Marlinspike as its earliest technical advisor.

When Signal was eight years old, and had more than 40 million monthly users, the company began testing its integration with MobileCoin, focusing on privacy protection payments made through fast transactions via users' phones.

WIRED told last week that the wider experiment had been quietly underway since mid-November last year. It was then that Signal made the same features accessible to all of its users without fanfare, offering the ability to send digital payments far more privately than credit card transactions or Bitcoin transfers to millions of phones.

Most likely, Marlinspike will anchor on MobileCoin as its CEO. Even so, this news is still under confirmation. A source close to him said Marlinspike was not going to do that (becoming CEO of MobileCoin) and now he just wants to rest.