A Blockchain Based Smartphone That Can Also Be A Cold Storage Wallet? Maybe, But There's More To The Story

When you think at it, it's a nice idea: a smartphone that will also be your cold storage wallet, for your precious crypto tokens. But, hmmm, I don't know...

Let's start with the cold facts.

Sirin Labs, a Swiss based company, decided to pivot from their initial product, a luxury Android device, focused on security, called SOLARIN and priced, hold your breath, at $14,000. Each. Not $14,000 for a dozen. $14,000 each.

So they eventually pivoted because, according to an article published in TechCrunch in March this year, they sold only 700-750 devices, for a total under $10 millions. In this market, this is very, very little. Especially considering the company raised $72 millions in seed funding. Not much demand for luxury Android phones, with a penchant on security, isn't it?

Well, when they saw this is not really a market, they pivoted in a very different area: the blockchain. Since security was always a priority, they thought to integrate it to the level of, you know, a wallet.

The new product is still a phone, called FINNEY, this time and it will be available in 2019. There is an ICO starting in about 10 days, you can get more info at their website.

The team is impressive and, among the bakers, you will even find a former president of FC Barcelona (yes, the soccer club).

I'm not involved in this project, although I'm watching it closely and I find it interesting.

The execution must be impeccable, otherwise the problems generated by such a device could be an order of magnitude higher than the problems it solves.

I'm keeping an eye on it.

I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

You can also vote for me as witness here:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses

If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):

I dunno, seems like a new fad these days. Not everything needs blockchain. And placing a wallet in a phone that's always connected to some data network ... doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of cold-storage?

With new vulnerabilities discovered in Android OS almost every 2 days, I don't think much can be done to make the phone secure. Apparently, they are also aiming for a FINNEY PC.
All we know is after a week of its launch, we will have hackers that broke the system.

why a special phone if you can have wallets in your existing mobile phones?

Security. FINNEY will also include a hardware wallet. Hard to tell how it will be securely integrated, that's why I think they must execute this really well.

So it's a phone with a wallet app and extra security.
I've always tried to stay away from smartphone apps storing my precious crypto. If it's priced as ridiculously as SOLARIN, I don't think it would generate a lot of sales.

It's a hardware wallet not a wallet app. Still, the execution must be impeccable.

Block chain will be everywhere soon, very good finding.

Are you kidding me with that name? I'm Resteeming on that fact alone...thanks for the heads up as always

It will worth the price if you are a big time cryptocurrency trader. But then, I would love to hear from McAfee too.

this will be cool infact where you can use the capabilities of an smartphone along with cold storage seems nice concept

With the price of Solarin, they must have really done some extraordinary things to keep hackers off. Has there been any information about Solarin performance against attackers?

Maybe if they could get this priced reasonably, and it worked well (both improbable IMHO), it'd make some folks less reticent about using crypto.

Security, and the humongous amount of things necessary to learn about both it, and crypto, has mostly kept me out of the market.

I've been hacked enough to where I no longer have any monetary exposure online, except Steemit, and I only sent .001 SBD for the first time this week. I don't even have a bank account, and after the recent credit bureau hack, feel vindicated.

I can just buy prepaid cards, which spend just fine, and leave 0 attack vector when the transaction is complete. EZ PZ. No KYC regs, credit history, etc...

I'll be interested in any followup to this post you publish.

Thanks!

It's really hard to secure a smartphone. You need a device with minimal attack surface and then it's not much use as a phone