This is good news, but it's important to remember that the way Coinbase works is for Coinbase to keep the private keys. A Coinbase "wallet" is really more like a Coinbase demand deposit account. That means you are trusting Coinbase to hold on to your bitcoins, thus losing one of the key benefits of bitcoin, which is that you hold your money. A better alternative is the Blockchain.info app, but from my understanding this is not available for un-jailbroken iPhones (please correct me if I'm wrong).
This is good news. Congrats to Coinbase guys.<p>If you are new to Bitcoin apps, you may want to check out Gliph. [1]<p>The app lets you view your Coinbase, Blockchain.info or BIPS bitcoin wallet and send Bitcoin to people easily.<p>[1] <a href="https://gli.ph/" rel="nofollow">https://gli.ph/</a> (I work on Gliph.)
Coinbase already had an app... At least I had one installed from way back. It had the exact same icon and name. It was basically just a list of transactions and you couldn't take any action. Maybe they aren't counting that app. Interestingly, this new app must be using a different bundle if because I now have both Coinbase apps installed next to each other on my phone.
Wow. This seems like big news in the Bitcoin world to me. This means Apple is giving the green light to Bitcoin related apps in the iTunes store.<p>I wonder if Apple will start allowing entirely phone-based wallet apps now...
I'm still a novice to Bitcoin but I thought the lure of it was so that there is no way to track/audit money transactions in as far as who was involved.<p>The top screenshot seems to show such an audit trail. I hope it is stored on the device (never on Coinbase's servers) and only temporarily.
Finally! Now when the inevitable "Coinbase is shutting down" post appears, I'll have some idea of what they're referencing...<p>( <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6573455" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6573455</a> )
Coinbase taking over a lot of the bitcoin ecosystem makes me nervous. They seem to have great engineering skills, but have the morals of PayPal. It might be better to push for other services that seem to be pushing for the betterment of the whole bitcoin community like inputs.io
For those curious: Yes, there is already a wallet app available on the App Store called "Blockchain". It's a thin client app, which is usually more secure than using Coinbase (which keeps your private keys). It supports sending, receiving, etc. from your phone. The UI is so nice that I prefer using it to all other Bitcoin apps, be they mobile or desktop.