[2014-04-05] CoinDesk - Unofficial Apple iOS Store to Allow Bitcoin Wallet Apps

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=558856

http://www.coindesk.com/unofficial-apple-ios-store-to-allow-bitcoin-wallet-apps/

This is really interesting because according to the developers:
1) This does not require a jailbreak
2) They have legal advice to the effect that Apple cannot censor their store. The latter needs to be seen as Apple is not likely to give up their lucrative business model based upon censorship and oppression easily.

Their site https://www.avalonic.com/ is definitely worth a visit.

If this works, and it is a big if, breaking the Apple censorship model could turn out to be a killer application for Bitcoin.

In the United States the greatest threat to freedom does not come from the US Government 3 letter agencies, it comes from the private sector. The MPAA is a much greater threat to freedom than the NSA, the NFL is a much greater threat to freedom than the CIA, The RIAA is a much greater threat to freedom than the FBI, etc. Once Americans figure this out, they will no longer tolerate these kind of laws and try to impose them on the rest of the world. Libertarians get this dead wrong!

Ever heard of the saying "The pen is mightier than the sword". This saying is from the 19th century that is very applicable today; however the pen today has been replaced by the computer, the smart phone, the tablet etc, while the sword has been replaced by the gun, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons etc.

So why is for example the MPAA such a threat. In their obsession with attempting to prevent "copyright infringement" they are actively taking away control of the pen away from citizens with DRM. patent monopolies, anti-circumvention laws etc. The DMCA was a perfect example. The failed attempt at SOPA was another. In addition the United States is actively exporting this kind of repression via trade agreements around the world at the behest of the MPAA and its tyrannical allies. One of the reasons for using trade agreements is to get around the checks and balances in the US Congress. That is for example how the DMCA got passed in the first place.

If Americans really want to use their guns to preserve freedom they need to take all their DRM infected devices to the firing range and use them for target practice. There is no law in the United States against shooting a locked cell phone to smithereens in the firing range and buying an unlocked one instead.

This has to be one of the best application of firearms in the preservation of freedom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuQZTAJ2KLk

Is this not just connecting to the Internet over DSL and using the land line to make a phone call at the same time?  One can run a Bitcoin app on a computer or other device using the Internet connection?

Edit: There is nothing new here. DSL technology has been around for close to 20 years.

Over the years I have learned to really appreciate these polar bears, since they have assisted me greatly in building up my BTC portfolio. I mean back in 2012 it was rally good to pay say 4.78 USD rather than say 5.02 USD per BTC. It actually worked all through the summer. These uniquely Canadian bears rarely went into hibernation.

I expect in later years others will also learn to appreciate their activity this summer also. 

I am arguing that a huge market for using Bitcoin in retail transactions is those who cannot get or use a credit card. This is in many cases an entirely different group of people from those who choose to invest or speculate in Bitcoin.

Yes. Very interesting.

This has happened a lot over the last two years. CAVirtex has been overrun more often than not by polar bears. My theory is that cold winters combined with relatively low electricity prices makes Canada a much better than average place to mine BTC. The result is that Canada is a net exporter of BTC leading to lower prices.  A similar argument can be made for LTC.

My point is that in some cases the cost the the "credit card holder" can be upwards of 50% or even not be able to make the transaction in the first place. The case of an individual having to purchase a prepaid "credit card" in order to make an online purchase and spending more on "fees" then the amount of the purchase is a real case situation. I have said this over two years ago and will say it again. The low hanging fruit for Bitcoin has a FICO score of 350 or thereabouts or lives in a country that is blocked, or is under age 18,  or wishes to purchase goods or services from an "high risk" merchant across an international boundary etc etc.

The cost to the merchant can be very relevant particularly if the transaction fall into the "high risk category". Ever wonder why so many retailers refuse international credit card transactions for example? Not every transaction involves a consumer with an 800+ FICO score purchasing goods or services in person from a large retailer.

I do not get this. Are there exchange controls that prevent how much money one can bring into China? Otherwise someone holding BTC in China after the "ban" goes into effect can sell the BTC abroad and then repatriate the funds.

Most countries that have exchange controls aim to prevent funds in the form of local currency from leaving the country not the other way around.

This China banning Bitcoin issue has been going on for 4 months already. It may very well turn out to be: Sell the rumour and buy the news.

I do not see a large merchant adoption making the trendline any less accurate, it is simply an indication of the growth of Bitcoin. Furthermore I the find idea that large scale adoption by merchants is bearish for Bitcoin rather bizarre and more an indicator, that we are currently very close to a significant low in the BTC/USD price. Maybe the bears are starting to get a bit on the piggish side here?

As for the trendline it does have some significant limitations:
1) The exponential model makes sense when applied to the market capitalization not the price. The impact of this approximation is to underestimate the price. When applied to 2009 this approximation completely breaks down
2) The data before July 2010 is highly questionable. It also does not include the data from January - June 2010 from http://newlibertystandard.wikifoundry.com/page/Exchange+Rate. This data, unlike the data from 2009 from the same source, is actual trading data in terms of gold (1 gram XAU via Pecunix) from BitcoinMarket and NewLibertyStandard. I do agree with the premise that for a large part of 2009 the USD/BTC rate could have been constant. This is due to the growth in the Bitcoin money supply being approximately equal to the growth in the use of Bitcoin during 2009.

My thoughts on this is that because of the above the trendline errs  on the side of being overly bearish. It for this reason that I was aggressively buying in August / September and into October 2013 (where I was proven right) and held rather than sell in December 2013 - March 2014 (where I was proven for the most part wrong). As for the current situation I see a hold and / or long term buy.

The costs of a credit card transaction can vary widely, from under 1% to even over 50%. It all depends on the circumstances of the consumer and the merchant. At one extreme on has a consumer with a 1% cash back credit card that has a low merchant fee of say 1.64% rate that a large merchant can get for a domestic card present transaction and one has an effective cost well under 1%. I have such a credit card. At the other extreme one has a person with poor credit spending $50 to purchase a prepaid credit card in order to make a $20 purchase online. Add to this the merchant fees for the much riskier card not present transaction and the cost is well over 50%. I have also witnessed this. Bitcoin will have a hard time competing in the first case but will completely blow the second case right out of the water. Bitcoin does not need to become a replacement for fiat or eliminate all fiat transactions, or cause the demise of the USD or EUR to be successful. In fact this is very unlikely. No all Bitcoin needs to do to be successful beyond most of our wildest dreams is pick off those transactions that are currently horribly inefficient, and least profitable, in the fiat system.

Think of lionesses going after a herd of zebra or wolves going after a herd of bison. They pick off the weakest zebra or bison and eat it, they do not need to take down the entire herd.

The weak hands need to be shaken out in order to set the stage for the next upward move.

I feel there is a very good chance that 1 BTC will buy 1 share of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK-A) before Warren Buffett dies.

There are other Phone OS options, other than Android, based on FLOSS such as Ubuntu phone that are perfectly suitable to run a Bitcoin client.

They would be crazy to do this because of charge-backs.

First I must say that I am fairly neutral on the subject of the Bitcoin Foundation. There is a place for a corporate side of Bitcoin to complement the activist side. The best analogy is Open Source (corporate) complementing Free Software (activist).

This however is a terrible idea on the part of the Bitcoin Foundation. The most likely result is that Apple will close the loophole by pulling the license, making the Bitcoin Foundation look like fools and furthermore undermining the work that the Bitcoin Foundation can do on the corporate side. The best approach on how to deal with Apple is a combination of the following:

1) Call for a boycott of Apple products. One must keep in mind that Bticoin is only one of multitude of ideas and thoughts that Apple has censored. (activist side).
2) Develop IOS Bitcoin applications only for jailbroken devices and encourage jailbreaking of Apple devices (activist side).
3) Follow the very successful model of the SAMBA project and FSFE against Microsoft and launch an anti-trust action in a jurisdiction with a high chance of success. The EU is a good candidate. The idea is to force Apple to open up its closed IOS devices to non Apple store applications and cause Apple to bleed a few billion euros in the process. This worked very well with Microsoft! (corporate side).
4) If you are a whale and in the proper market conditions consider shorting Apple stock. (corporate side). In a few years given the past history of the Bitcoin price this could hurt Apple big time.
5) Other ideas along these lines.

It is Apple who has chosen to start a war with the Bitcoin community, and it is time that we strike back hard.

It depends on the kind of debt. If the debt is to purchase an asset with a high chance of appreciation in terms of the borrowed money or to start a profitable business then it can lead to freedom, provided of course that it is done responsibly. As for student debt I would say that unless the debt is for an education with a very high earning potential it is in most cases a bad idea. Virtually all consumer debt with the exception of home mortgages is a very bad idea and yes is a form of slavery.

As for borrowing bitcoin, unless one has a masochistic desire for a brutal bankruptcy, is an absolutely terrible idea.

AOL first gave out floppies and then towards the end CDs. I still remember taking a flight in the 90's in the US where the airline gave out AOL floppies to the passengers with their drinks. Some of the passengers actually thought they were some kind of weird airline food and one older lady literally was about to take a bite out of one. I explained to her what it was and that it was not edible. She said she had no use for it and gave it to me. Well I ended up collecting the AOL floppies from all the passengers around me. When I got home I formatted them all, to use them as blank floppy disks. Today I still have them and they are perfectly fine and usable after 20 years.

This brings me to my next point. I just completed a test of a floppy that was used as part of my Bitcoin backup strategy. The wallet.dat dated from November 2012 and the floppy in question had been sitting in a bank safety deposit box for the last 9 months. The wallet.dat from the floppy was copied onto the an existing Bitcoin-qt installation on Ubuntu and there was all of my Bitcoin savings wallet perfectly recovered.  

As for floppy failure the most common reason is that people pull them out when data transfer is still in progress. This will lead to data and disk corruption and will also in many cases damage the drive. When properly taken care of they can last for years. I have read data from floppies that were well over 20 years old.