Why Apple Is Afraid Of Bitcoin

When you finally grasp the magnitude of Apple’s play in the payments business, it becomes clear that potential competitors will be shunned from the platform. As Daniel Terdiman suggests in CNET, “New Apple features may leave fresh app roadkill in their wake as Apple is likely to undercut several existing third-party applications.” With the introduction of Passbook, Apple has launched mobile payments on iOS and competing virtual payment systems, including bitcoin, must be terminated.

Roadkill in payment apps has already occurred and they were never given the chance to be made irrelevant. The decentralized digital currency bitcoin has had two functioning payment applications on the Apple App Store — Blockchain Wallet and BitPak, both of which have since been unceremoniously evicted. Several other bitcoin-related apps currently appear in the store but they don’t seem to be restricted by Apple since they don’t enable send/receive transaction capability as the wallets do.

In April, I covered the extraordinary Blockchain Wallet product in Forbes only to see the app abruptly removed from the store in less than two weeks. The explanation given by Apple was that “apps must comply with all legal requirements in any location where they are made available to users.” Apple further stated, “it is the developer’s obligation to understand and conform to all local laws” and the developer was referred to the legal department for an exact explanation of which law it violates. Clearly, they will not be able to cite a law as no laws prohibiting bitcoin currently exist in any jurisdiction. Fortunately, the wallet app is still available here at the Cydia Repository for jailbroken iPhones. - Read more here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/06/13/why-apple-is-afraid-of-bitcoin