“The bitcoin community isn’t too happy about Apple banning the last available bitcoin wallet from its App Store,” Robert McMillan reports for Wired. “Many of those who truly believe in the digital currency are now smashing their iPhones in protest of Apple’s policy — and in the hopes of winning a free Android phone.”
“These rather amusing protests show just how much bitcoin means to the true believers, but it also highlights the tension between these zealots and the everyday world,” McMillan reports. “Apple’s ban may be a response to uncertainty over how government regulators will treat the digital currency.”
“Apple banned the popular Blockchain wallet yesterday, and the protest started very early this morning when, on the popular discussion site reddit, someone named ’round-peg’ promised to hand out Nexus 5 phones to people who posted videos of themselves smashing working iPhones — one phone for every 100 up-votes on the site,” McMillan reports. “The post was quickly up-voted to the front of reddit, and then removed, apparently for violating reddit’s policy, which prohibits reddit vote manipulation.”
McMillan reports, [Jeremy] “smashed his iPhone with a steel bar, whispering as he did it because it was the middle of the night, and he didn’t want to wake up his wife and kids. ‘Go bitcoin. Down with Apple,’ he says after obliterating the device.”
McMillan reports, “Though he’s suffering from a cold, the offer was enough to get Ryan, a computer network engineer, to drive out to a Dallas range and shoot up his iPhone with a rifle.”
Read more and see more videos in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Uhhh… okaaay. That’ll show mean old Apple, you extremely sane, highly rational, and rather well-attired Bitcoin proponents!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jaribbs” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Apple pulls ‘Blockchain’ Bitcoin app from iTunes App Store – February 6, 2014
It’s stunts like this that give Bitcoin a bad name.
Dumb people. I’m sure there are plenty of bitcoin apps available if you jailbreak your phone. And if you’re that into bitcoins, you probably have no qualms about jailbreaking your iPhone.
Removing it from legit sources takes away the legitimacy of BitCoin. There’s big money in trading BitCoin.
Governments have the most to lose if it gains acceptance.
Apple has the most to lose of they’re debuting a mobile payment solution soon. Surprised more people aren’t making the connection.
BOO EFFING HOOOOO!!!!
Even with a scope, the douche nozzle in the cammies (keyframe 2nd video) couldn’t hit the iPhone center mast!
Fail.
It’s “center mass” ya landlubber.
Aye, aye Captain!
There are real problems in the world. Buy a clue
News Flash: Bitcoins contaminated with Li-Ion residue.
BitCoin is a dangerous currency. If you want to loose your money, go ahead and convert to BitCoin.. When the music stops, those holding it will loose everything they invested in it.
Actually although not technically legal, barter is better than BitCoin.
The same could be said of Federal Reserve Notes.
Don’t be foolish with your comments. The Federal Reserve is a whole different beast than bitcoin. At the least if you have damaged currency you can get it replaced. With bitcoin nothing could help you. But that’s not what I am talking about. Bitcoin is a ride that one must get off at some point before it runs off a cliff. It requires technology for it to work. Where as, once manufactured, physical currency is as good as what’s in your hand. Again a different issue. My statement originally about bitcoin, is that it is an unproven currency, as a matter of faith. The value of a single bitcoin is a measure of its instability. In so much that it’s limited distribution, means that it’s a gamble, pyramid structure, not much different than the stock market, and could all come crashing down. Early investors make millions if they cash out, and the last holders at the time of the crash will have lost fortunes. Vaporized. You can say the same thing about any national currency, as it has happened before. But I see BC as a far more risky and foolish.
Federal Reserve Notes are a fiat currency, nothing but air backing them up.
Um what about the value of our entire $100 trillion nation? Doesn’t that back the value of the dollar, better than gold?
what a green bean you are.
to better understand the Federal Reserve System, I’d suggest you download and read “The Creature From Jekyll Island” on iBooks. It may be free, not positive.
Will do.
sorry, $9.99 it’s showing..but it’s a valuable reference to have on hand.
Gold bars. Nothing like em. Don’t need anything to back them.
Yet, the $ is overestimated by far too. Too many uncovered peaces of paper have been printed already, and the “too big to fall” thing won’t help the FR forever.
I will read the book, but I just want to mention… How do you evaluate the worth of a nation?
There is not a nation on this planet with the vastness and (“and” is important) detail of housing and infrastructure as the United States. This is not a belief, because it can be quantifiable, a factual measure in both mass and quality.
I am born a US citizen, but I have relatives from around the world. An uncle of mine paid a visit from Moscow. He toured the Pacific coast, from Vancouver to San Fransico, from city to forest. He was shocked and awed by the thoroughness of development.
You see many nations, including Russia, develop just the minimum. Major cities are world class, but once you leave that, you might as well jump back 200 years.
What I am saying, is this vastness is worth something. Decent homes, roads, cities and towns. Then start counting the people, skills and knowledge. Count industry, the Information Age.
Do you believe the Federal Reserve has printed enough cash, that we have written up enough debt, and you could buy our whole country, lock, stock and barrel? What’s our true dept? And who is it owed to? How much currency is in circulation?
So, I don’t know these numbers. But I would fathom, if you could scrape the earth clean and start over to completely rebuild our nation from scratch, it could cost more than you could possibly imagine.
There is value in the dollar, based on what exists, no matter if you believe it or not. It may not be 1:1 with the Canadian dollar, or 1.5:1 with the British Pound. But it certainly is not 30:1 of it’s current value. If there is an adjustment in order, I could see 2:1 or 3:1 at the most, of it’s current value and that would just about meet up with inflation, that has been pretty flat over the past 10 or 8 years, I think.
I thought you were describing Apple stock there for a second.
You know, I am. 🙂
No money is “sure” (especially when trillions of debts are involved), yet, this BitCoin is very likely to disappear as it appeared: poof! Gone, blown away by the virtual wind…
Barter is 100% legal in almost all countries. If you’re referring to the U.S., barter is 100% legal.
However…
If you’re net value increases (the items you get in the barter have a value higher than the value of the items you handed over to the other person in the barter) then the taxing authorities claim you must pay taxes on that increase in value. They count that increase in value as income.
Virtually no one reports or pays taxes on this net increase in value. Thus the authorities disliking bartering, and if you do report it they require explicit justification and documentation of the values of the items involved.
However, just because a transfer method annoys the U.S. IRS does not mean it’s not legal.
I came to the conclusion of it’s legality, based on discussions with friends who have done it a lot and are basically Libertarian and anti tax.
So the problem is, who’s doing the evaluating, because that seems so subjective? My paperclip is as valuable as your pencil, but it seems to be bent on what you need done.
Thinking differently, If you are taxed on income from labor, it would seem that the government evaluates one’s labor as $0, making all pay as profit. Interesting thought. Maybe we should report our income based on pay minus the value of ones labor, which equals profit and as such taxable.
So what is the value of ones labor? I think it would be the value it takes to care for ones family, food, shelter, clothing, education and care for children. Anything left over is profit and taxable. Wow, I think 100K income just dropped to 30K. But that’s what the standard deductions are supposed to be, right? Well they’re too low. We need a raise in standard deductions.
You got me off track.
I don’t know if BitCoin will succeed or fail, but Virtual Currency democratizes money and is a great idea. Money is too import than to be entrusted with a government. Virtual Currency could be the greatest thing in history to help create world peace.
When 1% of the population holds 80% of the money, all we have to do is say “We don’t accept your money any more”, and start over. Whenever an imbalance occurs a new Virtual Currency will rise in its place.
This my friends is the true threat of Virtual Currency and why I expect governments to try to block it at every corner.
Bitcoin my fail, but a new currency will keep rising in its place. The cat is out of the bag and virtual currency is the biggest threat to those in power that the world has ever seen. Those little electronic bits have the power to crush armies!
History will reveal that digital currency will become the defining force of our time. Fasten your seat belts, this is the beginning of the end to everything we know.
While I may be a cryptocoin proponent (litecoin FTW! Ł), I resorted to less drastic measures – petitioning Tim Cook through e-mail. If enough do it, he has to listen.
no he doesn’t.
Having already bought these phones, Apple could really give a shit…
Sounds like the idiot analyst back in the dark days who was telling people to take their DVDs of Mac OS and other Apple software and publicly destroy them. He stated that this action would get Apple’s attention and Apple would change some of its financial policies.
He just didn’t get the fact that Apple had already made its money off the software and destroying the disks did nothing but embarrass the people doing it. (And then either beg Apple for a replacement or buy the disks again. Remember, this was long, long before software was commonly available for download over the ‘net.)
He’s also the idiot analyst that claimed AAPL would go BELOW the Book Value of Apple by about 10% to 20%.
I got lots of enjoyment making fun of that guy on several of the boards we both frequented back then. I wonder where he went.
Some people are just idiots.
These are a couple of examples of people with serious problems in higher cortical functioning.
Stupid! They could of got a lot of bit coin currency for the iPhones!
How do you pay share holders with Bitcoins? Try telling that to Icahn or CalPERS.
with Apple
Cote’s cousin will fine apple $Gazillions or some such sh*t for promoting ‘illegal currency’ .
with current ‘witch hunt’ and ‘punish the fat billionaire who refuses to spend on political lobbying ‘ Apple should take no risks. Govt will not go after the bit coin consumer user but fat wallet apple…
(ridiculous? the DOJ e book was ridiculous as well and see what happened to Apple).
Gold and silver are the only true currencies. Bitcoin is backed by the full faith and credit of…….of………um……nobody? Oh it’s another fiat currency! Talk about a bubble…
Bitcoin is a scam.Why should Apple support it.? Bitcoins are worthless.
Bitcoins are currently worth about $830 each.
It only worth it by blind faith… Like for anything else (any currencies on top) belief is a “fluctuant realty”.
Yeah, and at one point they were worth close to $1000. And at another point, a little over a year ago, I believe they were worth about $20.
These crazy fluctuations in value might make Bitcoin a good, if risky, investment, if you know when to get out. But it makes for a horrible currency. You want the value of a currency to be stable, with as little inflation as possible and certainly no deflation. Otherwise, you have trouble setting reasonable prices in the currency.
Bitcoin is trendy now, which is why some “hip” online merchants are beginning to accept it as payment. I remain convinced that they’re doing it more for the publicity than anything else.
——RM
i will change my phone then.
In the first video the instructions clearly say offer only with iPhone 5 or 5s….the sniping idiot said his was ip4 wtf…silly hillbilly……..now you gotta sell your gat!!!!
What was the banana for?
The shooter said the banana was for scale.
Ahhh… I rarely listen to videos like that one.
WTF is bitcoin. Whatever…
So, this is supposed to represent the maturity level of Bitcoin users? Have fun with your Android rubbish kids.
Meanwhile, there’s nothing wrong with Bitcoin. But obviously a bunch of crooks are turning Bitcoin into the coinage of crime. Maybe you should address THAT problem. Then when you’re done, Bitcoin can be used and considered to be a happy, smiley shiny currency! That would be great.
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whether BitCoin is evil or not, will survive or not, it is the 1st Free Democratic Currency that could work…gov. ban it only because they wish to tax yet another hole in our bodies
Apple was a Silicon Pirate, has it lost its mojo to ban BitCoin apps?! what does Apple gain from this? Apple does not agree with gov. spying, so why kill the freedom of BitCoin?
maybe gov. should realize that it failed on 1920s Prohibition, that it can not control human freedom, that BitCoin taxing is not going to save the economy but visionary brains will, that people would not go for BitCoins if gov. did not tax us to death for every bit we have & gave us back real freedom, so that we have nada to bitch about in the 1st place!
Pirates are pirates for freedom, not stealing. Gov. should not govern with tyrannical control but realize that the more freedom people have, the less gov. have trouble to fear
Looks like a terrorist organization. With that in mind Apple was right to toss bit coin out.
If Google did this exact same thing on Android, everyone would talk about The Evil Empire wanting to control All Money.