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Comment by madrox | Hacker News Reader

At this point in the "30% is unfair" game, I'm fascinated by the general reaction by the crowd. In every high profile case, it comes down to which company you have more affinity for. I watched a lot of the gaming community side with Apple against Epic, because from their perspective it was Epic being greedy and not the other way around.

This time, I'm sure anyone still excited about web3 will side against Apple. It's going to take a coalition of companies with enough goodwill amongst enough people to break the general conception that Apple is, overall, working more in the interests of the consumer than other businesses.

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Honestly, I hate web3 but this move is absolutely bullshit on Apple's part. I think it goes a step further than just "30% of IAP money" since there's no download or product that the user is really buying. It would be like Apple demanding fees for Cash App or some other related service.

I'm convinced at this point that Coinbase intended for people to be confused about this: Apple is claiming a 30% cut of the transaction fees that Coinbase charges their customers. If Cash App charged a fee to transfer money, Apple would claim their cut of that fee.

Do you have a source for this? If this is true, then this tweetstorm seems completely out of line.

I believe in the title I originally saw, it specified "exchange fees".

But also from the tweet thread (second tweet):

> Apple’s claim is that the gas fees required to send NFTs need to be paid through their In-App Purchase system, so that they can collect 30% of the gas fee.

That's a fee paid to the Ethereum network, not to Coinbase itself, isn't it?

I'm not actually sure about this because it's their Wallet app rather than the trading app. If they obfuscate the gas fee behind their own transaction fee the way they do with their trading app, I believe my take is correct.

Otherwise, it actually seems way more open for debate. It's possible I am mistaken and this is a reach from Apple. It might also be that Apple is claiming that Coinbase needs to obfuscate the fee in such a manner, which sounds kinda crazy to me.

At any rate, this confusion about it being the assets themselves being cut is what I intended to be speaking about, so apologies if this response is not helpful.

> If Cash App charged a fee to transfer money, Apple would claim their cut of that fee.

They do, at least for rapid transfers to banks. It was perhaps not the greatest analogy on my part since transfers within the app are free, but I fully understand what Apple is claiming here. You don't see them claiming Cash App's transfer fees, or bank fees, or other similar charges.

I should apologize since I misunderstood the fees being collected; they are the gas fees as presented in the Wallet app (I'd been thinking the separate app they release that includes the exchange trading, which has transaction fees). It's likely that the gas fees as presented by the Ethereum network are simply being passed along to the app user, which is definitely not the same as I'm suggesting.

If Cash App charges their own fee (ie, it's not a bank fee that Cash App is passing along to the consumer) then I would actually expect Apple to want to claim their cut of that fee. At least, that would be consistent with how they've gone after this in, e.g., the Epic case. (Different type of in-app "purchase", but consistent considering who would be receiving the profit of the fee is the app developer.)

The reason this is different is because the fee does not go to Coinbase at all. It goes to the Ethereum network. If cash app could prove they got zero profit from a service fee that could be one thing. In this case, Coinbase can prove exactly how much the gas fee was and that they do not take a cut of this "fee"

Yes, I think I was mistaken. My thinking was based on a previous title, which didn't specify Coinbase "Wallet" and included the phrase "exchange fees". If they were the fees from Coinbase's trading application, they wouldn't be strictly the gas fees as charged by the Ethereum network. Tweets in the thread also specify gas fees and this is exclusive to NFTs, so I suspect the fees in question are indeed the network gas fees.

Sorry for the confusion.

Totally understandable :)

Exactly. This seems analogous to Apple demanding 30% of the bank fees I pay because I use my bank's app.

I placed a stock trade that carried a 50 cent commission from my iPhone this morning.

I sincerely can't tell if this is real or parody. Which is it?

If it is, it may not be soon. I have never been a fan of these app stores. I like a gatekeeper making sure malicious content doesn't get on our devices, but there should be the option to easily use other stores without jailbreaking the device.

Neither, I just suck at English. I did place a stock trade this morning, using my brokerage’s iPhone app. It had a commission.

Should Apple get 30%?

Yeah.....I use Schwab as bank/brokerage and pay fees for trading. Should apple get a 30% cut......

Except that NFTs are supposed to be a good and not a currency.

Ironically, this wouldn't be an issue if your hated web3 was the defacto app store. Maybe Apple sees crypto as a game, and buying/selling/trading crypto on the Coinbase app is in-game purchases to Apple.

I mean, decentralized app stores have existed for decades without blockchain. I don't see how its introduction helps anything.

Agreed, but I'm not sure we're anywhere near the tipping point. Apple users really love Apple and will (nearly) always interpret Apple's actions with the absolute best of intentions/benefit of the doubt. The company is not stupid. Like most of silicon valley they will always come up with some justification for doing what they want to do, and odds are good that they'll actually convince themselves that those are the real reasons.

Having been someone who also sided with Apple against Epic but has changed his tune, I think a big point there was that it was the first notable company that spoke up about Apple's practices.

While I tend to think most of this web3 stuff is trash (especially the centralized stuff), I think by now so many cases of Apple's excessive control have piled up that changing opinions is understandable. Especially as someone who hasn't had to deal directly with Apple's restrictive ecosystem before.

People are against Epic because the CEO is obviously acting in bad faith and so shameless about it. He claims to be in favor of open platforms when it is beneficial to his bottom line, but refuses to do the bare minimum to support Linux. Obviously tech nerds aren't going to like that.

I’m not sure it’s worse than what every CEO of dominant international companies say and do (Tim Cook included…he had to do a lot of declarations for the Epic trial, and boy were they bullshit).

I suppose it’s the sheer lack of linux support that pisses them, which is an impacting situation that goes beyond how they feel about the CEO ?

While Epic is definitely a shady company, an open platform is still free to choose what operating systems it supports. Epic doesn't support Linux, Flatpak doesn't support Windows, and neither are technical problems that can't be fixed.

Obviously Epic will never be as open as Flatpak, but just because they don't want to deal with Linux doesn't mean they should be barred from any other platform they do want to support.

The Android situation is a bit different they can absolutely support that. They choose not to and went after Google's fees instead, which is a bit harder to defend (but still shouldn't need to be defended, Google should still allow app developers to opt out of their payment processing, perhaps in exchange for footing the bill for storage and network traffic).

With EU regulations coming into effect next year, I think we're going to see big tech companies squirm even more, right up to the point where they'll lose a huge lawsuit. After that we'll either see Apple leave the EU out of spite or concessions will be made, paving the way for installing iPhone applications of your choice.

If anything this makes me sympathize with consumer rights professionals. How could you work full time to protect and empower people who actively work against themselves and your work and not be severely depressed? No wonder so many end up switching sides.

care to mention some of these companies that have enough goodwill?. Hopefully it is not Twitter and facebook because they lead the attack on app store policy ( beside epic of course)

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