Who wants this? Who asked for it? Why?

Executives who want a way to monetise the platform?

Ah of course, thinking with their wallets rather than doing what actually makes sense.

It can be tough to "do what makes sense" when your choice is "Monetise the platform or the platform fails" (not that I know at all what the situation was for signal before this). (Note, I am entirely horrified by *any* 'blockchain currency')

It’s an odd choice to do something that will lose the trust of (I’m assuming, based on typical Signal users) a large proportion of users, though. I can think of better ways of monetising, such as a simple subscription model where I’d happily pay.