Apple has taken down the most popular bitcoin wallet app from its App Store. In a move that has some questioning motive, the company has removed Blockchain from the store. Although you can still use the app on your iOS devices, you won’t be able to get updates. No reason was given for the takedown, according to Blockchain CEO Nicolas Cary. There may be no cause for alarm with the move, as Apple does periodically kick apps out of the store for a variety of legitimate reasons. Perhaps a recent update violated some small code in the Terms of Service, except you’d expect that to be made explicit to Blockchain so they could fix the issue.
Cary forwarded the email he received from Apple to Wired, in it the removal is blamed on an “unresolved issue.” What issue? I’m no expert, you should look into Andreas Antonopoulos as a knowledgeable spokesman for the benefits of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. No one really knows what’s going to come of this new form of money, if anything. Cryptocurrency isn’t a form of the current money system. The idea is that a group of people -- eventually the whole world -- agrees that a bitcoin is worth some sort of value, and when you exchange bitcoins for a good or service everyone is in agreement that money has changed hands. It’s quite an esoteric idea, but isn’t all that different from the current system. Except there’s no centralized banking system to control the wealth. Everyone on the network is the bank.
Apple may be looking to get into its own cryptocurrency plan, or perhaps utilize the current system digitally as the company is part of the old guard at this point. There’s no reason to suggest malicious intent with the maneuver, but we’re fully moving into a new age at an astonishing speed. Viable cryptocurrency is so new, and so untested for long term reliability, that its backers can’t claim superiority over the current system. Hating the banks, and all the shit they get away with, is not enough to change one of the fundamental aspects of society.
Blockchain has been up at the App Store since April 2012, and has been removed before. The percentage of people using bitcoins is minuscule, but there are some who deal only in the new currency. This move is a little like walking to your bank this morning and finding it shut down for good. And you just ask, ‘What about my money?” To which you get the response, “You got what you have. Just don’t come back again.” It’s one of the great weaknesses of cryptocurrency, this reliance on software to operate. I know it’s the one hurdle that keeps me from at least giving the system a try.
Android users are still able to use Blockchain and get updates.
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