Apple Brings New Revised Guidelines For Crypto-Related Apps on App Store

Last week on June 4th, Cupertino-based tech giant Apple introduced new guidelines for publishing cryptocurrency-related applications on the App Store. The revised guidelines will be applicable to all the existing as well new apps on the Apple platform.

Last year on December 20th, 2017, Apple has unveiled a new set of guidelines specific to digital currencies and ICOs. Under these guidelines, apps that allow for exchange/transfer or storing of digital currencies will have to mandatorily abide in compliance with all the relevant federal and state-laws.

Recently, Apple made further inclusions to their digital currency guidelines while considering specific crypto-related activities like wallet storage and even mining of apps from the App Store platform.

To protect its hardware and gadgets like iPhones and iPads, from consuming huge processing or battery power, Apple has now forbidden all the app developers along with third-party advertisements from running cryptocurrency mining.

This move From Apple comes in order to counter the recent menace of ‘cryptojacking’ which is a malware wherein malicious attackers present online can hijack the processing power of your devices. The updated policy reads: “Apps, including any third-party advertisements displayed within them, may not run unrelated background processes, such as cryptocurrency mining.”

Apple has also rejected all the apps from mining cryptocurrencies. An excerpt from the revised guidelines reads: “Apps may not mine for cryptocurrencies unless the processing is performed off device (e.g. cloud-based mining).”

For ICOs, the policy remains exactly the same as unveiled on December 2017, which states: “Apps facilitating Initial Coin Offerings (“ICOs”), cryptocurrency futures trading, and other crypto-securities or quasi-securities trading must come from established banks, securities firms, futures commission merchants (“FCM”), or other approved financial institutions and must comply with all applicable law.”

A few years back, Apple had removed every single Bitcoin wallet on its platform. However, last year in July 2017, Apple had approved Dash as a cryptocurrency. Six months later since then with the crypto mania taking place, Coinbase’s application was trending at the top spot on Apple Store. Hence apple also started to provide wallet services under a caveat which stated: “Apps may facilitate virtual currency storage, provided they are offered by developers enrolled as an organization.”

Apple also allows apps to perform crypto transactions “on an approved exchange, provided they are offered by the exchange itself.” However, Apple has also said that apps should not encourage users by promising cryptocurrency rewards. It states: “Cryptocurrency apps may not offer currency for completing tasks, such as downloading other apps, encouraging other users to download, posting to social networks, etc.”