Monday’s biggest story — with no contest — was news related to Apple, unusually enough. The company took to a stage in San Francisco, California to announce new software products, and what happened next came as a shock to the bitcoin community.
Apple amended their App Store Review Guidelines policy with regulation 11.17, which declares the following:
Apps may facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided that they do so in compliance with all state and federal laws for the territories in which the app functions.
One sentence has opened the door to a number of possibilities, and the bitcoin community is not surprisingly expecting the best to come from Apple’s change of heart.
The hope is that apps that were previously removed from the iOS App Store for violating policies will make a comeback. Apps like Coinbase, Coinjar, and Blockchain.info.
And speaking of Blockchain, NEWSBTC caught up with the company’s CEO, Nic Cary, to get his point of view on today’s biggest talking point (which may have been attributed to today’s bitcoin price increase of 5 percent at Bitstamp).
“We’re cautiously optimistic about the news,” he said to me on Monday evening. “A lot of users and development have migrated to Android so Apple has a big job ahead to swiftly cultivate and attract apps.”
And that they do.
With a huge market share, Apple has seemingly realized they’ve alienated a user base that continues to grow significantly every single day.
As for the bitcoin user, you just may have access to the web’s most popular bitcoin wallet once again in the near future.
“We will definitely be resubmitting the Blockchain iOS app and look forward to the day where we can invest and improve the experience,” Cary says.
Apple did not alienate all users, and the door was never closed. Like all things Apple, there was a need to time acceptance so that the optimum user experience would prevail.