If you are a developer and thinking to slip an app for cryptocurrency mining into the iOS store to make some quick money, Apple has put a stop to that. Recently, the company announced a new restriction for cryptocurrency usage on iPads and iPhones. Apple’s app store iOS guidelines now read that apps are not allowed to mine for cryptocurrencies unless the processing is done off the device.
Cryptocurrency mining is the math calculation done by highly powerful computers. To trade bitcoin, these transactions need to go through highly-complex math equations, which are then added to a distributed ledger. For solving these equations, miners are rewarded with a small share of bitcoins. This process generates about 1,400 watts of electricity, which is sufficient to power a hairdryer.
Apple and cryptocurrency mining
There were many apps in the iOS store that allowed its users to mine with power generated by their personal devices. Examples of these are Crypto Cloud Mining and Crypto Coin Miner. The former even allowed its users to earn money and cryptocurrencies without major hassle or investment from software or hardware.
The company’s new policy has been motivated by apparent concerns that mining for cryptocurrencies could drain the battery life of the mobile devices, generate excessive heat, and put an unwanted strain of device resources. According to the policy, apps, including the third party ads displayed, may not run any unrelated background processes like mining for cryptocurrencies.
There have been many websites that have been fighting this issue for a long time – people submitting ad scams to networks that later hijacks the user’s CPU to mine for cryptocurrency and send the profits back to the ad creator. The same process was briefly going on in YouTube as well, before Google noticed the problematic activities going on and it straight-away banned ads.
How Apple devices are no good for mining of cryptocurrency?
Apple’s guidelines related to cryptocurrency was set originally in 2014, after its app store unlisted cryptocurrency apps like Coinbase, citing unresolved issues. Devices running on iOS are anyway not good for mining cryptocurrencies.
For long, the cryptocurrency mining has been dominated by custom-made ASIC chips. While some cryptocurrencies are designed to be resistant to ASIC, there are some that are mined on the latest graphic cards with ample memory and processing power.
An Apple device like an iPhone or an iPad cannot offer such raw and high computing power for each dollar spent; hence, it is probably not a good idea to buy an expensive Apple device just to mine cryptocurrencies.
At a time of growing concern over scammy behavior, Apple’s new policy has further locked the seal for the future of cryptocurrencies in the world. Both, Facebook and Google, has banned cryptocurrency ads from their networks earlier this year.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is now aggressively shutting down fraudulent or law-breaking initial coin offerings. Bitcoin has also hit its lowest in two months after a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange got hacked and digital coins worth about $37.2 million got stolen. Bitcoin was trading at $6,726 on Monday, as reported by CoinDesk.