I'm no friend of Bitcoin, but won't disregarding early adopters lead them one step closer to becoming Microsoft?

ironically, microsoft is less toxic nowadays than osx for software freedom.

technically. but then, neither with ios. but its not whats being discussed.

It's not one dent that makes a difference. But a thousand little dents do make a difference.

Cash is used anonymously and for shady dealings too. Compare this to the blockchain, which is public, not anonymous.

There is no rule that says a currency has to be backed by a government, since people have traded without government backed currency since the dawn of man.

It's a legitimate argument.

Regulators DO care about money laundering they have just been completely incompetent at regulating it.

> If you seriously think regulators care about money laundering

I think that WE should care about money laundering.

I think that WE should care about the HSBC situation.

And consequently I think that everyone should care about the potential for Bitcoin to be used for money laundering.

What aspects of Android (or any OS, in general) make it unsafe for bitcoin use?

Android is the wild west compared to iOS

A) Bitcoin is not as big as you think, yet. 120K downloads is not that bad.

B) Since Apple is so hostile towards Bitcoin, many people have switched to better alternatives and simply don't care about Apple's private North Korea with an insane leader.

You dont have to use google's app store, I have plenty of apps from other sources.

I thought that for money laundering to work you had to purchases with the dirty money items that can be sold for clean money, or exchanged for items that can be sold for clean money (and you also want the transactions on one or preferably both ends to be hard to trace).

What are some examples of in-app purchases that would be good for this kind of thing?

And that's because those companies have made deals with Apple behind closed doors that your average app developer can't leverage. It's rational in the sense that it serves their interests.

Apple is acting completely rationally. They are being selfish. Bitcoin wallets have a terrible reputation for losing their customer's money and Bitcoin itself still has very unsavoury elements (drugs, money laundering etc) to say the least. Given that the press love a good Apple story you have to ask yourself why take the potential hit to the brand for no benefit ?

You're incorrect -- this is an example of the rule, not an exception.

Apple will not let Fandango (or anyone) sell a real-world item through IAP. That is why PayPal is acceptable. It's clearly stated in the app guidelines that IAP must be for virtual / digital items only.

I worked on an app that let you buy drinks at bars. In-app purchase was clearly out, so we integrated PayPal and Stripe. Apple allowed that and it's been in the store, with periodic updates and their reviews, for years.

PayPal has obtained appropriate licenses to act as a money transmitter in most states [1].

I can't tell from a casual reading of Blockchain's site if they are doing anything that would require state licensing or not. It seems that they hold a backup copy of their user's Bitcoin wallet. If that is just a backup for the "real" wallet on the mobile devices, or just used for syncing copies of the wallet between the user's multiple devices, my current vague understanding of the rules is that this would not be money transmission. However, if their servers are acting as intermediaries between the user and third parties for the exchange of Bitcoin (for goods, services, or real or virtual currency), then I think that would make them a money transmitter (or even make them a bank, which also opens up a huge regulatory can of worms).

[1] https://www.paypal-media.com/licenses