Coinbase CEO says Apple’s crypto rules raises ‘antitrust issues’

Brian Armstrong, CEO and co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has called out Apple for banning certain features from the app and hampering the company’s product roadmap. In an episode of Superteam Podcast with Indian YouTuber Tanmay Bhatt, the CEO accused the iPhone maker of not being friendly towards the crypto industry.
“Apple so far has not really played nice with crypto, they’ve actually banned a bunch of features that we would like to have in the app, but they just won’t allow it — so there’s potential antitrust issues there,” Armstrong said.
The cryptopreneur also said that smartphone makers should get started preparing and building crypto-specific hardware features on their devices. “There’s going to have to be crypto-compatible phones that I think could actually become quite popular in the future,” he said.
When asked whether Coinbase would ever launch its hardware wallet, Armstrong said that the company already has some co-branded hardware wallets with Ledger. But he believes that the two major mobile operating systems—Android and iOS need to broaden their ecosystem of devices to crypto. 

This development comes a week after Coinbase first enabled UPI services in India, only to stop it a day after facing backlash from the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI). “With reference to some recent media reports around the purchase of Cryptocurrencies using UPI, National Payments Corporation of India would like to clarify that we are not aware of any crypto exchange using UPI,” NPCI said in a statement earlier.
Meanwhile, Coinbase has announced that it will launch an NFT marketplace ‘soon’. In a tweet, the company said that its team “met with more than 100 content creators to work on the launch of their new NFT marketplace.
In other news, Coinbase blocked over 25,000 addresses related to Russian individuals or entities that the company believes “to be engaging in illicit activity.” This development has come weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine. According to Coinbase, the crypto wallet addresses were blocked over fears that cryptocurrency could be used to evade sanctions. The cryptocurrency exchange highlighted that is in full support of sanctions.