Apple's Tumultuous Relationship With Bitcoin Apps

[CSpackler]

The ONLY reason Bitcoin has any value at all is because it can be transferred into currencies. That's it. Why? Because Few/no companies will accept payment in Bitcoins.

Want a new monitor, sure the seller will take Bitcoins. But they need to transfer them into local currency to pay their supplier. Or the supplier needs to transfer to currency to pay the manufacturer, etc.

Once the banks/govt's start restricting the conversion of Bitcoins to currency the value will go close to $0.

Use bitcoins to buy Amazon gift cards. It's easy.

Payment processors such as Bitpay absorb the risk of the fluctuating exchange rate and instantly exchange into the local currency of the retailer. Multiple countries have already embraced Bitcoin and released positive statements regarding its use. Did you miss the US Senate hearings on digital currencies? Overwhelmingly positive.

You guys are seriously behind the times. Time to research cryptocurrencies because they're going to be like the email of money.

 

[sbrhwkp3]

This is the only thing that has ever had me pondering a switch to Android. Never, ever considered it, until now that I've gotten into bitcoin and don't have access to a mobile wallet thanks to Apple.

It's frustrating.

 

[fourthtunz]

I can't wait until bitcoin becomes a mainstream currency and destroys the rigged fiat currency that the Fed prints, steals, taxes, wastes, gives to the megarich and the prideless beggars and siphons off from everyone else. The influence of political machines on Americans' lives depends on monopolizing their currency and once bitcoin and other competing digital currencies make the dollar irrelevant it will bring this corrupt crony capitalist colossus to its knees. I'm not going to name drop because it realy doesn't matter between Democrats and Republicans, they pretend to be sworn enemies but in reality they're just colluding with each other to hoard as much political power and influence as they can between them. The proof is that they do everything possible to shut out every other candidate from the debates and even the ballot so they can protect and manipulate their political cartel in perpetuity.

Wow! You wrote all the things I wanted to write!
I have to admit I am too lazy to have written all that, being that I know most people don't care or haven't got a clue that our game is rigged and our country controlled by foreign bankers.
I don't think the bankers will ever allow bitcoin or any competing currency to become popular.

----------

You're a real nutter, aren't you?

Actually he's right on the money!
Check out this book and educate yourself before you call someone a nutter.
"The Creature from Jekyll Island : A Second Look at the Federal Reserve"

 

[VoR]

As developer of the first native Mac Bitcoin mining application MacMiner http://fabulouspanda.co.uk/macminer/ I wonder whether they'd let a mining app on the store…

Mining bitcoins on PCs is (and has been for a fair while now) completely pointless?
Mining bitcoins/altcoins on (all but one range of) macs is smoke-inducingly pointless?
Talking GPU processing obviously, control of custom external asics doesn't count 🙂

I see your code on github though and compatibility with the recognisable backends - so you get my 'random internet person' massive thumbsup!

In the past I briefly compared osx with windows/linux with a single radeon card hashing scrypt and found massive bottlenecks - How do your experiences compare?
Obviously macs are starved for physical pci-e slots and completely the wrong devices for this sort of number crunching, but I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts as to why the OS seems so severely impaired doing a like for like comparison.

 

[fourthtunz]

Not much different from stock trading in that respect. But I'm not sure why you label all of these people as "stupid". But yeah how stupid can you be, running a computer that generates money 🙂

Most of the uses for it? It's not different from cash in the legality aspect.

This app doesn't keep a bitcoin wallet on your iPhone though- which wouldn't be a good idea. And I definitely wouldn't trust one on an Android phone. But in any case, I don't think Apple would accept liability if the Bank of America app had a security hole that allowed someone to access your account and steal your $USD either.

I'm not sure bitcoin is there yet but at least it's a step in the right direction.
Most people in our country have no idea of how corrupt our whole system is and who controls our country.
Any interest rate over 3% is usurious if you ask me but our government allows rates up to what? 30%? All because our government is owned by foreign bankers.

 

[sransari]

Yeah, no. If you agree with what he said as both plausible and desirable, I urge you to seek psychiatric help. The collapse of the Federal reserve, and thus the dollar, and thus our ability to collect taxes and pay for things like roads, firefighters, schools, and hospitals? Those things we kinda need to have a functioning society? It's nothing more than a nut job libertarian fever dream.

Oh please...libertarians aren't saying that the collapse of the dollar (which is inevitable) will prevent the ability to collect taxes. there is no relationship to fiat currency and the ability to collect direct taxes. The same tax collection methods could still be in play if our dollar was sound, which it is not. However, fiat currency helps the government collect hidden taxes, in the form of inflation. Are you therefore saying that we need these hidden taxes to pay for essential services?? Fiat currency exists only to hide taxes in the form of inflation, and to allow governments to spend endlessly, without constraint. I'm not saying bitcoin is the future, but if you don't understand the difference between the advantage of sound money (which bitcoin offers) over fiat currency, and if you truly think that fiat currency is essential to tax collection and paying for essential services, then you, my friend, are the delusional one.

Fiat currency exists to tax the people to give to the friends of the politicians. That's why unregulated and sound money scares big governments. If unregulated currency took off, income taxes and sales taxes would STILL be able to be collected, but inflation would be wiped out. It is obvious that the government relies on hidden taxes through inflation to fund their nonsense.

It's also pretty common liberal logic to think that government is the only entity that is capable of providing things like schools, roads, and hospitals, and that forced taxation under the threat of violence is the only and best way to fund such efforts. Typical liberal assumption that if someone opposes government involvement in schools or hospitals, for example, then that person is opposed to quality schools or hospitals. Also, typical liberal ignorance to think that the government does good with your tax dollars, when really, they spend almost all of the money bombing children in other countries and bailing out the super wealthy. So get off of your high-horse, and if you really care, go out and do something for your community instead of blindly voting for more government and more taxes under the premise that you're doing something noble for the country...you're not.

 

[fourthtunz]

Those of you who think that bitcoins will one day replace traditional currency are naive. Bitcoins value will forever be tied to the U.S. dollar, like every other commodity. The U.S. dollar is every investor's end game.

Silver and gold are where it's at!

 

[sbrhwkp3]

Those of you who think that bitcoins will one day replace traditional currency are naive. Bitcoins value will forever be tied to the U.S. dollar, like every other commodity. The U.S. dollar is every investor's end game.

Bitcoin, and every other commodity, will only be tied to the value of the US dollar so long as the US dollar remains the dominant currency choice around the world.

That's changing. As we continue to print money to pay our debts, individuals and countries alike are choosing to hold their wealth in areas outside the US dollar.

No fiat currency has held its World Reserve status for very long. And demand for bitcoin will continue to increase over the next 5 years as people look for ways to avoid losing the purchasing power of their savings due to our government's inflationary monetary policy.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013...rve-currency-status-what-will-replace-it.html

 

[morespce54]

It's funny because I have been working with computers for many (many) years and if experience has taught me anything, it's to not trust computers!








(at least, as long as there is a human around it 😉)

 

[glitch44]

but if you don't understand the difference between the advantage of sound money (which bitcoin offers)

Sound money? Ha, right! Any currency that could be crashed by the Winklevoss twins hitting return on a sell order is not a sound currency. Let's be honest: Bitcoin is a commodity that's popular right now because people saw how much money early adopters made and wanted their easy money too. Just like all bubbles based upon the Greater Fool Theory, when their huge profits don't come and the mortgage is due, they'll cash out and Bitcoin will plummet back to sane levels. It will remain a niche product for exchanging illicit goods on the internet, but at the end of the day it will be limited by its inherent deflationary nature, lack of stability and trustworthiness of exchanges, exchange fees that deter transferring wealth into and out of BTC, and the general lack of user friendliness that prevents a large portion of less tech savvy people from buying and keeping their BTC safe. Most people can't figure out self-checkout at the supermarket and you think they can figure out public and private bitcoin addresses, paper wallets, and so on?

As to the rest of your comments about what liberals think or don't think, you're just being silly. No, I know you're not opposed to quality schools and hospitals. Well, for you anyway. But the rest of us can screw. I mean, that's the libertarian way, right? "I got mine so fsck everyone else!" The rich get the ultra expensive private firefighters, the poor get ******** and their houses burn to the ground. Serves them right for being born poor! The myth of the rugged American individualist. Yes, yes, you're a self-made man who did it all on your own. Blah blah blah Ron Paul, etc etc. It's all very cliched and delusional and tiresome.

So get off of your high-horse, and if you really care, go out and do something for your community instead of blindly voting for more government and more taxes under the premise that you're doing something noble for the country...you're not.

Actually, I volunteer at the VA Hospital near me.

 

[MentalFabric]

Mining bitcoins on PCs is (and has been for a fair while now) completely pointless?
Mining bitcoins/altcoins on (all but one range of) macs is smoke-inducingly pointless?
Talking GPU processing obviously, control of custom external asics doesn't count 🙂

I see your code on github though and compatibility with the recognisable backends - so you get my 'random internet person' massive thumbsup!

In the past I briefly compared osx with windows/linux with a single radeon card hashing scrypt and found massive bottlenecks - How do your experiences compare?
Obviously macs are starved for physical pci-e slots and completely the wrong devices for this sort of number crunching, but I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts as to why the OS seems so severely impaired doing a like for like comparison.

It's all down to Apple's OpenCL implementation - on other OS's the GPU manufacturer writes the driver, but on Ma OS Apple does it.
MacMiner is of course mostly moving towards ASIC devices these days, though there are still a lot of people mining Litecoins on CPU/GPUs!

 

[VoR]

It's all down to Apple's OpenCL implementation - on other OS's the GPU manufacturer writes the driver, but on Ma OS Apple does it.
MacMiner is of course mostly moving towards ASIC devices these days, though there are still a lot of people mining Litecoins on CPU/GPUs!

Nvidia's drivers are pretty much platform neutral, intel is oss on linux and proprietary on windows, while amd are just rubbish on all (but definitely the most interesting since liberating datasheets!) - Yeah apple 'are the driver vendor' and kings of closed software, but obviously they work very closely with their engineers! I've never understood why the ggpu performance is so poor when logically a closed system like apples should provide benefits!
Same hardware, same sdk, different OS and wham... speed.

You've given me a thought though.. Although it's a bit pointless, I've never actually compared CPU only between osx and windows/linux (which seem equal) - a new mission 🙂

Keep up the good work!

 

[Dontazemebro]

Bitcoin is just the beginning of Illuminati - one currency to rule them all.

 

[itguy06]

Use bitcoins to buy Amazon gift cards. It's easy.

Payment processors such as Bitpay absorb the risk of the fluctuating exchange rate and instantly exchange into the local currency of the retailer. Multiple countries have already embraced Bitcoin and released positive statements regarding its use. Did you miss the US Senate hearings on digital currencies? Overwhelmingly positive.

You guys are seriously behind the times. Time to research cryptocurrencies because they're going to be like the email of money.

Buying Amazon gift cards still converts it to USD (or whatever currency that is). The only reason they have value is because they can be converted into currency. Remove that and watch Bitcoin's value plumet.