Apple having a row with developers and app providers is nothing new, but the tech giant seems to be especially targeting the cryptocurrency industry.
Last month, Epic games and Apple got into a legal battle when the Fortnite creator launched its own in-app payment system, which also involved the use of bitcoin and cryptos, to circumvent Apple’s “monopoly over in-app payments on iOS.”
As a fact of fact, Apple doesn’t allow to add the ability to earn money using crypto and access Defi apps or Dapps in their iOS apps, said Brian Armstrong, CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase, which has regularly come under fire for taking up the authorities’ side against their customers.
“Why would Apple want to prevent people from earning money during a recession? They seem to not be ok with it, if it uses cryptocurrency,” he said.
According to market participants, tech giants want to be everyone’s bank, and as Podfather Adam Curry told Joe Rogan, it is how they control people.
Stop This!
In a Twitter thread, Armstrong shared the struggles Coinbase is also going through with Apple, which end up creating a “worse” experience for customers.
Besides the company’s Coinbase Earn program, Apple doesn’t let them provide a list of decentralized apps, “which are really just websites” to iOS users.
In the past couple of months, the DeFi sector has exploded, reaching almost $10 billion, amidst the central banks’ quantitative easing and interest rate cuts, which have been devaluing the fiat currencies around the world.
“DeFi and Dapps are a major area of innovation in financial services that has seen rapid growth lately,” and has “enormous potential.”
But Apple doesn’t let companies help the “unbanked and underbanked” on the grounds that the “app offers cryptocurrency transactions in non-embedded software within the app, which is not appropriate for the App Store.”
According to Armstrong, Apple is “holding back progress in the world” by censoring the features and further protecting competition.
He likened Apple’s actions with Microsoft forcing users to use Internet Explorer on Windows, which “led to all their antitrust issues.”
“Apple, it’s time to stop stifling innovation in cryptocurrency. We would like to work with you productively on this. Some day, cryptocurrency could even be integrated into IAP to give people in emerging markets better access to the financial system globally,” said the Coinbase CEO.