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Comment by nawitus | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin to money is what app store is for mobile software, or the web is to newspapers etc. It's decentralization of power. There's no gatekeepers to prevent new innovative payment services. You need $100 to create a new payment service, not millions. You don't need to ask anyone permission to do what you want.

In practise, individuals will now have the power that only large corporations used to.

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I'd disagree that Bitcoin is to money what the app store is for mobile software. If you are talking about the Apple App Store, they are the gatekeepers to what software you can load.

I agree that it's not a perfect analogy. App stores (I'm talking in general, not referring to Apple's store) are still centralized and act as gatekeepers, but the "gatekeeping level" is in another level to what it used to be. Before app stores it was practically impossible to for a lone developer to create an application and release it.

You do realize that software development existed before app stores, right? Lone developers created and released applications all the time. App stores are about convenience, and so they are not like your other examples, which are about decentralization. They just don't fit.

>Lone developers created and released applications all the time.

The context was applications for mobile phones.

every time i have read a statement like this in the past it has been followed at some point by a crushing, total and complete, reversal that shows that the exact opposite effect was produced from the anticipated outcome.

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