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Comment by nluken | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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......

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.

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

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 :)

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