Leaked screenshots of the flagship S10 smartphone showing a multicurrency cold wallet reveal that apart from Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin, Korean technology giant Samsungs new ‘crypto phone’ supports ERC20 and ERC721 tokens. Some in the altcoin community hailed this as a possible indication of imminent mass adoption for various platforms in the Ethereum ecosystem, although from what we’ve seen, there
Mobile devices and cryptocurrency integration
Peak adoption will come when all smartphone makers including Apple, have full web3 DAPP browsers. Samsung has a long history of working with Ethereum through its IOT arm. Some of us may recall the partnership with slock.it back in 2016 to create tiny Ethereum nodes for smart locks and robots.
Samsung is not the first manufacturer to integrate cryptocurrency in to their devices. HTC marketed the Exodus to enthusiasts last year, their phone included a hardware secure enclave to store private keys, and Sirin labs have their Finney phone. Apple still lags behind only giving users the ability to download trustwallet or any similar type of wallets.
Phone makers should encourage instead of discourage developers from making phone based wallets for their coins and platforms. Apple has to allow these apps as long as they are bug free. And all phone makers should integrate a web3 enabled browser.
Starbucks X Cryptocurrencies
Crypto company BAKKT announced it has solidified its partnership deal with Starbucks with a generous equity offer to allow payment in store with BTC and possibly ETH.
“Starbucks has agreed to allow coffee-lovers to pay in-store using Bakkt’s software, which will instantly transfer their crypto to fiat. Although Starbucks’ final books will remain clear of digital assets”.
With over 28,000 Starbucks stores worldwide, this move will bring serious public exposure to crypto payments as well as publicity for the coffee chain and even more the relatively “new” startup exchange and financial services company Bakkt.
From what we’ve seen so far major adoption will be led by the Ethereum and Bitcoin ecosystems. This trend seems to indicate that adoption will occur simultaneously with both large hardware manufacturers producing crypto-enabled devices and large retailers able to easily receive and process blockchain payments. The next phase however, will be full integration of web3 enabled DAPP browsers in all devices.
With the issue of governance still in the ‘wet’ experimental phase on both Bitcoin and Ethereum, Bitcoin having several contentious forks, and Ethereum developers clashing with the community over “Toxic threats” is any of it really ready for use at scale?
