

Bitcoin app rejected by Apple - hfinney
http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=5550.msg107980#msg107980

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Groxx
Duh. It's a way of purchasing things outside of Apple's store. They can't get
their 30%, so they won't allow it.

Edit: seriously, that's an incredibly solid reason why they wouldn't accept
it. I considered making one briefly until I realized this. I'm not even
remotely surprised this happened.

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mkramlich
Data point #57 or whatever why I need to get more into Android and Android
dev. A bit less of a nanny state.

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natrius
Android isn't a panacea. Make sure you get a pure Google phone.

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mahmud
great on my 10.1 Galaxy tablet, which also makes phone calls ;-)

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hunterowens
Gavin Andresen of Bitcoin will be live on This Week in Startups this Tuesday
at 1:00pm PDT talking more about these challenges and benefits of Bitcoin if
anyone is interested.

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viraptor
Thanks for heads up. Time to buy some bitcoins before media pushes the value
up again...

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sirlancer
Trying to release a Bitcoin app on Apple's app store may preclude cautionary
tales of how not to get noticed. Bringing something like this into the
mainstream could otherwise be hazardous to a protocol and community that are
just beginning to bloom. Perhaps this mobile market isn't ready for such a
powerful application.

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wmf
Bitcoin was covered on CNN recently. The days of "don't talk about Bitcoin"
are already over.

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robryan
Keeps inflating the exchange rate at least.

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graupel
Why not just build this as a web app instead of a native iPhone app?

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kristofferR
Well, you could, but that would leave your wallet (containing all your
BitCoins) at a remote server, removing much of the point of Bitcoin. It would
be just another Paypal basically (although you would be able to send the money
between different "Bitcoin-PayPals" without a fee).

It would also make it much harder to send Bitcoins to other devices/people.
With a native app you could for example detect other Bitcoin clients in near
proximity via BT/same Wifi to make it much easier to transfer money, with the
web you're stuck typing a long cryptic address.

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cookiecaper
Check out MyBitcoin. Something like this is actually very useful. The wallet
on the remote server can (and should) just be a temporary transfer; send to
mybtc or a similar service on sale, transfer out to a private wallet once a
day, etc. Then, when you want to buy something, mail to your mybtc account,
and then to the vendor you want to buy from. Only one extra step and still
much more convenient than typing in a btc address.

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frsandstone
He uploaded the source: <https://github.com/udibr/bitcoinApp>

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rheide
Alright. Android it is then.

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sirlancer
Bitcoiner was just released on the Android market though I haven't had the
chance to dive into it yet. Can anyone comment on it's merits?

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njs12345
It looks like it could do with some polish but I've not tried it yet..

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thinkcomp
This really should not be a surprise to anyone. If Bitcoin is not already
illegal (and I have reason to believe it is due to most states' money
transmitter laws), it's almost guaranteed that it will be soon.

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weavejester
I doubt Bitcoin will be made illegal. By itself, the Bitcoin network is just a
mechanism for passing around signed messages and calculating hash values. It
would be difficult to outlaw that without running into constitutional free
speech issues.

Where Bitcoin might run into trouble is the trading of bitcoins for dollars or
commodities. Depending on how bitcoins are classified legally, there may be
additional regulations that sellers or buyers of bitcoins need to adhere to.
However, because bitcoins are so different to any existing currency or
commodity, I think we'll need to wait for a court to decide whether they fall
under any existing regulation, if at all.

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Joakal
It is likely to be illegal; banking without a licence, not revealing the
ownership, etc.

Look at E-Gold's fall: <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/e-gold/>

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webXL
Isn't the "bank" on your hard drive?

E-Gold was a commercial enterprise with only 20 employees and no legal team.
Very easy to take down. It will be hard for the feds to take down a P2P
network, although very easy for them to police e-commerce sites that accept
it.

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JoachimSchipper
Bitcoin transactions are public, right? It's not exactly hard to find out
who's using them...

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moreati
The transactions are pseudonymous - a public key of each participant is
recorded, and world readable. The public key doesn't have to be connected to a
real world identity. An attacker could analyse the transaction history to
infer the identity controlling a given key, depending on how it was
reused/managed.

~~~
cookiecaper
But this can actually be pretty difficult to manage correctly.

While "best practice" is to generate a new btc address for each transaction,
there are still ways to attempt to profile users even if they use that rule.
For instance, if someone knows you like an esoteric thing, and they know you
have a lot of bitcoin, they can look at people buying things from public
addresses (most shops or established bodies have permanent addresses for
receiving) that are associated with esoteric thing, and say it's likely that
you were purchasing at least some of that. They can do other filtration and
process-of-elimination things to find out who is using what, or where
something comes from.

Additionally, if the wallet of one who you've traded with in the past is
compromised, even if they were using single-transaction addresses, the
attacker may be able to fill in some missing links in the chain, especially if
the wallet's owner has recorded anywhere a translation from btc address to
useful memo/accounting data. Imagine if UBL used btc and the Feds got his
wallet; everyone downstream would be hunted with some serious prejudice.

I should clarify that in bitcoin, the entire transaction chain from the time
the block is generated until the last time it is used is recorded forever.
Once you send from an address to another address, that transaction is
ingrained in btc for the remainder of its existence, and every coin you
receive has a long history that shows all of that. While the names are long
hashes and not things like "TERRORIST KINGPIN -> INNOCENT BUT NOW SUSPECT
GUY", there are some ways to put something like that together, and they're not
all obvious.

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motters
The trouble with living inside of a walled garden is that new innovations can
be blocked rather easily.

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nextparadigms
This is why having just one app store sucks, and I'm not just referring to
Apple here. It could've been Google or Microsoft, too (MS intends to have one
in win8 too). But why should any of them be the moral police for everything?

I was thinking of Mondonet and mesh networks today. What if they could reject
such mesh network apps from their stores because the Government asked them
behind the scenes to do so? That wouln't be very good for us.

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jokermatt999
App stores are irrelevant if your phone allows you to install non-market apps.
As far as I'm concerned, Google can censor the hell out of their Market,
because I can just sideload whatever I want.

Frankly, I think that's actually the best way to do things. Have a
curated/censored app store for the normal folks/applications, and a method to
install arbitrary apps that Google may not want to advertise in the Market.
Now if AT&T would allow sideloading, it would be perfect, but every other
Android phone I've seen has had this level of freedom.

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sebkomianos
On the very same topic udibr states it's not clear whether it will be accepted
by Google for Android as they removed tethering apps quite recently.

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orangecat
Technically the tethering apps weren't "removed", they're just hidden for
phones on US wireless carriers. (They show up fine on my rooted Nook Color).
While this shows the appalling degree of control we've ceded to the carriers,
they shouldn't have any particular reason to block bitcoin apps.

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0x1337
Not surprising at all. Everyone knows that Apple.is the most evil company out
there.

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grimen
Apple pisses me off for real. Google should see this as an opportunity to once
again show iOS is a too limited platform. It's not like Bitcoin will die at
this stage, and Androids already passed iPhone - another reason to not get an
iPhone.

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bonch
Oh, "for real?" Well, then I'd better listen to what you have to say.

