Apple Wants Their Cut as Always

Coinbase Wallet on iOS

IF you're not familiar with Coinbase Wallet, it's a cryptocurrency wallet app created by Coinbase, that doesn't have to be linked to your account. In essence, you can hold your crypto in the wallet and own your keys without having to trust Coinbase. The wallet app has slowly getting better over the past couple years, adding support for different EVM chains like Polygon and Binance Smart Chain, and even adding NFT support with a dApp browser. I've been using it since it was called Toshi, and boy let me tell ya... It's a lot better than it used to be. Luckily for me, I have an Android phone.

Today, Coinbase Wallet tweeted that the Coinbase Wallet app on iOS no longer has the NFT functionality. It has been disabled by Coinbase to comply with Apple's absurd terms of service, which is no surprise at all really. They seem to hate the idea of having crypto or DeFi related stuff on their phones or app store. Hell, they have yet to even approve the LeoFinance app and it has been pending for over a year. My suspicion as to why they are stalling on approving it is that they want to find a way to get a cut of rewards. I could be wrong though.

Judging by what Coinbase Wallet said was the reason they were forced to disable the feature... I wouldn't be so sure it's not just them trying to find a way to get a cut. Apparently Apple's claim is that the gas fees required to send NFTs need to be paid through their proprietary In-App Purchase system. This would allow them to collect a 30% cut of the gas fee in theory, but they clearly have no idea how crypto or gas fees work. As they went on to say - anyone that understands blockchain and NFTs, this is not possible. The gas are paid to get the transaction included into the blockchain, and if Apple somehow took 30%... These transactions would just fail.

Coinbase Wallet compares this to Apple trying to take a cut of fees for emails send over open Internet protocols. They're not wrong. That would literally be impossible. So Coinbase Wallet was forced to disable the NFT features on their wallet app on iOS devices to be in compliance. It was either do that or have the app totally removed from the App Store. Clearly they would lose a massive amount of customers and money if that happened, so they are making a smart choice to comply at the expense of customers' experience.

In a nutshell, what this means is that if you use the Coinbase Wallet app on any iOS device, you won't be able to send NFTs. Obviously not everyone that uses the app is going to care about NFT functionality, but those that do will have to use a different app. There's a few different options to choose from, so for the time being if you're trying to send some NFTs... You either have to get an Android phone or use a totally different wallet app. I advise getting an Android phone either way, but that's just me.

From a user perspective, this really sucks. This is just another example of Apple finding a way to try to ruin something for their customers because they wany a cut of money. They can claim all day long that it's to "protect their users" or whatever mental gymnastics they need to but at the end of the day, we know why this happened. Apple has never been crypto friendly, and I don't think that will change. Just wait until they find out there's gas fees on other crypto transactions on wallet apps. Are they going to want a cut of those fees too?

Article written by: @l337m45732 AKA 0xNifty.nft

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta