Apple has not played a niche with crypto and its anti-crypto policy raises potential antitrust issues, says Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase. He highlighted that the iPhone giant has banned a bunch of crypto features in its App Store.
Armstrong talked about Apple’s crypto policy in an episode of the Superteam podcast last week. He said one can try to get their app in the App Store and Apple ejected it and then they had this competing one which got approved. The Coinbase boss described it as a “black box”.
He pointed out that Apple has so far not really played nice with crypto. The company has actually banned a bunch of features that Coinbase would like to have in the app. But Apple won’t just allow it. Armstrong believes there is a potential antitrust issue. But he says there is going to have to be crypto-compatible phones that could actually become quite popular in the future. The executive called on Apple and Android to add crypto-features to their operating systems. These would make users more comfortable with the space by having it on their phones.
Armstrong doesn’t want Coinbase to be like Apple. He says decentralized exchanges are very interesting for that reason. In 2020, Coinbase had lashed out at Apple for stifling policies. But Coinbase’s app is one of the most downloaded finance apps on the App Store. It has 89 million downloads. The app provides users with unique features like the ability to use Apple Pay to buy crypto on Coinbase.
