Apple wants a 30% on fees, not the good itself. This is consistent with the rest of their policies. Arguably that still isn't ok, but this is not an encroachment.
Apple does not claim a cut of the exchange of stocks, but they do claim a cut of the transaction fees for the exchange of stocks. If eBay or Amazon charged a transaction fee to facilitate their transactions, that would be an in-app purchase of which Apple would claim 30%.
Are you sure / how? I’m not going to sign up for robinhood to confirm but my brokerage transacts with my bank, not in-app purchasing, pretty sure robinhood is the same. I’m pretty sure the differentiation is that stocks aren’t considered digital goods. And neither is coinbase’s mainline business which is allowed to facilitate buying & selling crypto without paying fees, even on their transaction fees, which users pay.
If not.. Could Coinbase Wallet offer Coinbase Wallet Prime for. $100 that provides free transactions on qualifying orders?
All these rules feel arbitrary to carve out as much money as they can from "lesser people" without upsetting the larger players that have a budget to afford a lawsuit.
The Coinbase thing is happening because it’s an all-digital purchase. There’s no physical benefit being transferred to the customer, as NFTs are wholly digital. Apple has been consistent about the fee being applied to all digital-only purchases, including for virtual yoga classes.
One can argue whether 30% is still an appropriate amount (compared to 15 years ago, it’s still a steal where pre-iPhone App Store models would take 50–75% of the revenue), but people should stop arguing in bad faith on this.
That’s why Kindle doesn’t sell directly in the ios app
Coinbase could do the same thing - sell it on the website