Despite the lackluster launch of the latest Samsung Galaxy S10’s cryptocurrency and blockchain features, the Korean tech giant is reportedly looking to trickle the technology down to its budget smartphones.
In an announcement yesterday, senior managing director of Product Strategy at Samsung’s Wireless division, Chae Won-cheol, said “We will lower barriers to new experiences by gradually expanding the number of Galaxy models that support blockchain functions,” Business Korea reports.
It’s also reported that Samsung will expand the availability of its blockchain services after Korea, the United States, and Canada.
Don’t hold your breath
Rumors that Samsung was working on cryptocurrency and blockchain features for its flagship smartphone surfaced earlier this year. Naturally, enthusiasts were excited, but it all fell a bit flat when the S10 launched and the cryptocurrency wallet was nowhere to be found for those outside the US, Germany, and Korea.
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The real kicker though was that when it did launch, it only appeared to support some altcoins, tokens, and crypto-collectibles. Users are still waiting for the S10 to natively store Bitcoin private keys.
On this occasion, Samsung is still yet to say when and which of its budget phones will receive the additional blockchain features. It also didn’t allude as to when it would expand global support for its cryptocurrency wallet.
Indeed, even if it might take a while, Samsung is certainly trying to carve itself a space in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry.
As previously reported by Hard Fork last year, Samsung published a blog post suggesting its smartphones had the best security for blockchain and cryptocurrency.
At the time, Hard Fork spoke to several security experts to discern Samsung’s claims. The consensus was that although smartphones could be a potential good short-term storage solution, they carry many associated risks when it comes to storing users’ cryptocurrency funds.
So if your next Samsung phone offers this feature, you’ll want to fully educate yourself about how well it works before trusting it with your entire cryptocurrency fortune.
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