Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter and current CEO of Block, a Bitcoin-focused financial services firm, has taken to Twitter to ask Apple CEO Tim Cook why Apple Pay does not support Bitcoin (BTC). Dorsey tweeted, “Why doesn’t Apple Pay support Bitcoin @tim_cook?” quoting a tweet from Damus, a Bitcoin-friendly social media app, which was threatened with removal from the App Store for violating the platform’s terms of service.
The incident has sparked debate over Apple’s power over consumer applications and has validated cryptocurrency advocates’ push for a financial system that is resistant to censorship. If Apple Pay, which has over 500 million users, were to incorporate Bitcoin, it would result in a significant boost in mass adoption for the cryptocurrency.
Damus is a decentralized social media platform that runs on the Nostr protocol, which is popular with Bitcoiners partly because most implementations of it support payments over the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Apple had threatened to remove Damus for violating the company’s in-app purchase guidelines by allowing tips or “zaps” on content paid for with Bitcoin instead of using Apple Pay, which doesn’t support crypto.
William Casarin, founder of Damus, said that Apple wanted the zap button removed from all “notes” or content sections, although it was fine to have a zap button on user profiles. Casarin modified the Damus interface such that zap buttons would still appear on notes, but the zaps themselves wouldn’t be associated with any notes and would only be sent and processed at the profile level. Apple wasn’t satisfied with this compromise.
“The frustrating thing is that whenever you get feedback from Apple reviewers, they don’t tell you specifically how you’re breaking the guidelines,” Casarin said. “It’s very frustrating. I think a lot of Bitcoin apps are at risk.”