Why Apple Blocked This NFT Feature From Coinbase Wallet
According to the team behind this project, big tech giant Apple blocked an important component from Coinbase Wallet. Via their official Twitter handle, the crypto company says that iOS users cannot send non-fungible tokens (NFT) with their applications.
This announcement is the latest in a series of complaints about Apple Store policies. Coin Wallet claims that the major tech company intentionally blocked the feature on their latest release. The app will remain blocked until the project disables NFT transactions on the app.
Apple goes against Coinbase and crypto
Apple decided to block Coinbase Wallet’s latest release due to the terms of the store. Users must pay a percentage of the payments made using the Company’s In-App Purchase System on this App Platform. The big tech company enforces the same logic as Coinbase’s NFT feature. The team behind the project said:
Apple’s claim is that the gas fees required to send NFTs must be paid through their in-app purchase system, allowing them to collect 30% of the gas fee. For anyone who understands how NFTs and blockchains work, this is clearly not possible. Apple’s proprietary In-App Purchase system doesn’t support crypto, so we couldn’t comply even if we tried.
The decision confused Coinbase and its users. Until Apple implements a blockchain-based payment solution, the app may remain blocked, limiting people’s capacity to transact with these digital assets.
On its Twitter account, the wallet condemned Apple’s decision, claiming that it is trying to profit from its users. The project compared the measure to collect a fee from each email sent from a service provider.
Furthermore, the decision may negatively affect users’ capacity to withdraw NFTs and digital assets. Users will likely have their assets blocked on the wallet until the decision is changed. The team behind the project added:
Apple has just made it much more difficult to transfer that NFT to other wallets, or give it to friends or family. Simply put, Apple has introduced new policies to protect their profits at the expense of consumer investment in NFTs and developer innovation across the crypto ecosystem.
Not the first time this has happened?
A few days ago, Twitter CEO Elon Musk called out the big tech company for pulling their ads from the platform. Apple has reportedly considered removing Twitter from the App Store.
At the time, Musk asked if Apple “hates free speech in America?” and crypto project LBRY responded with their experience with the company. In 2021, this project had to “filter some keywords” or risk being removed from the App Store.
Apple allowed almost everything related to Covid, especially vaccines or human origin of the virus.
We had to build a list of over 20 terms to not show results for, only on Apple devices.
Apple also later rejected us because users included Pepe images in videos. pic.twitter.com/euw1ppkoKg
— LBRY 🚀 (@LBRYcom) 28 November 2022
As of this writing, Apple has made no official announcement about the decision. The team expects that the move was an oversight by Apple, but the company has made similar decisions in the past. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, expressed frustration with the decision.
A good example of the kind of discussions we have with Apple on a monthly basis, to deal with their app store monopoly. It has become quite absurd at times.
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) 1 December 2022
