Why the iPhone may be the key to a cryptocurrency revolution

<p>Apple has a market capitalisation of $US2.5 trillion. There are only so many opportunities that the company can pursue in order to significantly increase its bottom line. Self-driving cars and mixed-reality glasses come to mind (as much as I love the Ted Lasso cinematic universe, it's not going to change the world).</p> <p>Another huge opportunity that the iPhone maker has been relatively quiet about is cryptocurrency. "Apple's position on cryptocurrency is somewhere between neutral and hostile," says Ric Burton, a founding member of the Ethereum project. "However, the iPhone may be the tool that brings millions of people into the ecosystem."</p> <p>How? By developing a user-friendly interface for interacting with the crypto economy.</p> <p>"You have to remember that Apple is a company that makes products for people to access protocols," Burton says, noting that the iPod assisted users in interacting with the MP3 standard, whereas the iPhone does the same for internet standards.</p> <p>Cryptography is a set of protocols, and there are numerous tools for interacting with it. However, as designer and technology advisor Holyn Kanake recently wrote for CoinDesk, "these products are miles away from decentralisation, aggressively technical, and composed of discordant user interfaces."</p> <p>Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike hammered home the point in January with a viral post titled "My First Impressions of Web3."</p> <p>He noticed that crypto's promise of a decentralised tech stack is colliding with human behaviour: "People don't want, and will never want, to run their own servers." (In my rough translation, this means that we tend to be simple and lazy.)</p> <p>Burton believes that the iPhone, which more than 1 billion people carry in their pockets on a daily basis, can help to solve this problem in two ways:</p> <p>Safari browser add-on</p> <p>Metamask, a Chrome extension crypto wallet with 21 million users, is one of crypto's most popular onboarding tools so far. Apple's iOS 15 update, released in Novem