In a recent blog post, Coinbase announced that they’ve eliminated the ability to send nonfungible tokens (NFTs) due to interference from Apple.
On December 1, Coinbase Wallet tweeted that the company with a market capitalization exceeding $2 trillion had blocked the latest release of its app in order to collect 30% of the gas fees through in-app purchases. The platform alleged that Apple wanted Coinbase Wallet to disable nonfungible transactions, introducing new policies to protect their profits at the expense of investment by consumers in nonfungible tokens and developer innovation across the crypto ecosystem.
According to Twitter user, who goes by @BitaMacro on Twitter, “for anyone who understands how NFTs and blockchains work, this is clearly not possible.” They went on to say that, in their opinion, “Apple’s proprietary In-App Purchase system does not support crypto. We couldn’t comply even if we tried. This is akin to Apple trying to take a cut of fees for every email that gets sent over open Internet protocols.”
Recently, Coinbase announced that it will be adding support for NFTs to its self-custody wallet sometime in December 2021. One of the future features includes the ability to trade virtual assets on OpenSea and other marketplaces. On November 29th, they announced that they would be suspending Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Stellar Lumen (XLM) and XRP (XRP) due to low usage.
