The App Store Liberation 🍎
One of the biggest event development for crypto this year didn't come from a dazzling new protocol, a regulatory breakthrough, or a VC funding round.
It came from a court battle between two titans that, on the surface, had nothing to do with crypto at all.
Epic Games, the creator of online video game Fortnite, has been waging a legal war against Apple since 2020. After nearly five years of litigation, they've finally secured a victory that could reshape not just gaming, but the entire mobile crypto landscape.
The details of the ruling are complex, their implications — straightforward.
The fortress walls of Apple's ecosystem have been breached. For an industry that's long been relegated to the sidelines of the world's most important computing platform, this represents an unexpected turning point.
Today’s edition looks at why this legal battle matters so much for crypto's future, and what might bloom in the absence of Apple's policies that have historically suffocated innovation.
Grayscale Makes Crypto Investing Super Simple
You know how getting into crypto usually means setting up wallets, writing down seed phrases, and hoping you don’t lose everything in a browser tab? Grayscale skips all that mess.
They let you invest in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital assets just like you’d buy stocks through regulated, SEC-reporting products. No keys, no stress, no DIY crypto rabbit holes.
It’s crypto exposure, the Wall Street way.
What does this actually mean?
Want to invest in Bitcoin? Buy GBTC like a stock
Curious about Ethereum or Solana? There’s a product for that
Don’t want to touch an exchange or wallet? You don’t have to
Want crypto in your retirement account? You can do that too
Grayscale brings crypto to the table without making you sit through a Metamask tutorial. It’s the easiest on-ramp for anyone who wants it, especially institutions.
This isn’t just crypto made accessible. It’s crypto made investable - Check it out.
🎮 Play
After nearly five years of legal warfare, Epic Games just landed a decisive blow to Apple.
In an 80-page ruling, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple "willfully violated" a previous court injunction by maintaining anti-competitive barriers around its App Store.
She referred Apple and one of its finance VPs to federal prosecutors for criminal contempt charges.
The ruling strips away Apple's ability to:
Charge commissions on purchases made outside apps
Monitor or track external purchases
Prevent developers from linking to external payment options
Restrict how those links are designed or placed
Epic's CEO Tim Sweeney couldn't contain himself: "NO FEES on web transactions. Game over for the Apple Tax," he tweeted, presumably while doing Fortnite victory dances in his office.
The biggest winner might not be Epic at all. It could be crypto.
Under Apple's new guidelines, apps in the US can now include buttons, external links, or other calls to action when allowing users to browse NFT collections owned by others.
And most importantly: The prohibition on encouraging users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase does not apply on the United States storefront.
Get 17% discount on our annual plans and access our weekly premium features (Mempool, Game On, News Rollups, HashedIn, Wormhole and Rabbit hole) and subscribers only posts. Also, show us some love on Twitter and Telegram.
🔄 Rewind
Since the App Store's inception, Apple has maintained an iron grip on how developers can monetise. The rules were simple yet draconian: if you wanted to sell anything through your app, you had to use Apple's payment system and surrender 30% of revenue.
For most traditional apps, this was burdensome, still manageable. For crypto applications, it was often a death sentence.
Read: Apple can breathe 🍎 🫣
Imagine trying to run an NFT marketplace where Apple takes a third of every transaction.
While the typical gallery or auction house might charge 15-20% commission, Apple's additional 30% would push the total take rate to 45-50% — an economic impossibility.
Or consider play-to-earn games, where thin margins and complex token economies simply couldn't absorb Apple's cut. The mathematics just didn't work.
The result? A bifurcated ecosystem where mobile crypto experiences were severely crippled.
OpenSea's iOS app let you browse NFTs, not buy them.
MetaMask's wallet had to resort to a clunky in-app browser workaround.
Most blockchain games either avoided iOS entirely or created watered-down versions that stripped out their most innovative features.
In essence, Apple's policies forced one of the most promising new technologies to largely bypass the world's most important computing platform.
⏸️ Pause
Before we all start building the next Axie Infinity for iPhone, let's pause and acknowledge some limitations:
First, this only applies in the United States. If you're targeting global audiences, you still face Apple's restrictions elsewhere (though the EU has its own Apple-taming regulations).
Second, Apple is definitely appealing this ruling. Their lawyers are probably working overtime brewing some legal potion to delay implementation.
Third, Apple still maintains other crypto restrictions. Their guidelines still prohibit:
Offering crypto rewards for completing tasks
Facilitating initial coin offerings
Mining crypto with users' devices
And finally, this ruling doesn't magically solve crypto's usability challenges.
The most painful truth? Most users still don't have crypto wallets, and onboarding remains about as pleasant as a root canal. The ruling creates space for innovation, but we've still got work to do.
🔋 Power-Up
What happens now?
1/ NFT Marketplaces go mobile for real
OpenSea, Magic Eden, and Blur can now create actual functional iOS apps where you can browse AND buy NFTs without Apple's 30% tax. No more "view only" mobile experiences or clunky browser workarounds.
2/ True play-to-earn on mobile
Mobile games can now properly integrate with token economies, allowing in-game NFT purchases and token transactions through external links. Research from Game7 found that mobile games already make up about 30% of blockchain gaming – that number could explode.
3/ Stablecoins become a payment alternative
Consider the math: Credit cards charge 2-3% plus fees. Apple's in-app purchases take 30%. Meanwhile, stablecoin transactions cost pennies. For developers, accepting USDC or other stablecoins directly could dramatically improve margins while simplifying global payments.
"Such high fees made it unviable for most Web3 games to target mainstream audiences on the US App Store but now the friction is gone. We've still got a long way to go before Web3 gaming is truly mass-market but a huge source of friction just got removed," Immutable co-founder Robbie Ferguson said.
Dodging fees? Big win. It's about removing artificial barriers that have been holding back an entire category of applications from reaching the most important computing platform on the planet.
For years, we've all wondered what crypto's "killer app" might be. Ironically, what the industry needed most wasn't a killer app, but the freedom to actually distribute those apps without getting killed by platform fees.
The irony? Crypto's biggest mobile breakthrough came from a video game company fighting for its V-Bucks. Epic wasn't trying to help crypto – they were just trying to avoid paying Apple's tax on Fortnite skins.
Sometimes the most significant advancements come not from technical innovation but from changes to business rules. Epic vs. Apple wasn't about crypto, but for an industry constantly searching for mainstream adoption, it may have just provided the platform where crypto gaming can finally thrive.
Now, we just need to build something normies actually want to use. No pressure.
Got questions about a hot crypto topic that you want help understanding? Ask your question using the form and our crypto experts may answer it along with your name in our weekly News Rollups.
The Week That Was 🗓️
Mattel will wind down its Hot Wheels Virtual Garage NFT series, with no new releases or feature drops planned for 2025 and beyond.
Coinbase has launched x402, a new payments protocol designed for instant stablecoin transfers directly over the internet's HTTP protocol.
Notcoin co-founder Vladimir Plotvinov believes the tap-to-earn gaming model is likely "dead" due to a lack of sustained player interest.
Gala Games is shutting down its Ethereum NFT-based role-playing game, The Walking Dead: Empires, with the last playable date set for July 31, 2025.
OpenAI is restructuring its for-profit arm into a "public benefit company," removing the previous cap on investor returns while aiming to serve the public good.
Michael Saylor, founder of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), revealed that artificial intelligence played a significant role in building the company's $52 billion Bitcoin treasury.
Hailey "Hawk Tuah" Welch has expressed remorse for the investors who lost money in the Solana-based meme coin named after her viral interview.
Upcoming Launches 🔍
Fellowship's Daily Highlights: 24H Reserve Auctions Start Tomorrow. Fellowship Daily presents its May collection on Thursday, May 8th at 1 PM EDT. Featuring new works from numerous Resident Artists via 24-hour reserve auctions and "Buy It Now" options.
MapleStory N: Blockchain-Integrated Game Launching Soon. MapleStory N, a blockchain-integrated version of the popular 2D side-scrolling game, from Nexpace (backed by Nexon), is set to release on May 15th. Running on its own Avalanche L1 chain called "Henesys," the game will allow players to own and trade in-game assets as NFTs.
Upcoming Token Unlocks: May 7 - May 11. Key token unlocks starting tomorrow include: $KAS (May 7th, $13.68M), $MOCA (May 9th, $217.48k), $MOVE (May 9th, $8.79M), and $LAYER (May 11th, $71.87M). Investors should pay attention to these events.
Art of the Day 🖼️
Memories of Qilin by Emily Xie
Token Dispatch is a daily crypto newsletter handpicked and crafted with love by human bots. You can find all about us here 🙌
If you want to reach out to 200,000+ subscriber community of the Token Dispatch, you can explore the partnership opportunities with us.
Fill out this form to submit your details and book a meeting with us directly.
Disclaimer: This newsletter contains analysis and opinions, not financial advice. Trading crypto involves substantial risk - your capital is at risk. Do your own research.