Guys, HTC is launching a Blockchain based phone.
The title goes like "First blockchain phone from HTC is coming soon".

I dont know if this is worse than the AI video i found on pornhub.

@Alice If that wasn't sarcasm, I'd say it's pretty well explained: https://youtu.be/bBC-nXj3Ng4

These assholes should get their shit together regarding fucking conventional updates instead of farting buzzwords.

Most of you guys should read about the subject before posting bullshit...

The phone has a dedicated "kitty" wallet (not sure if thats the correct name for the coin) which should be more secure.

So they are not just using buzzwords, they are partnering with the creators of the coin.

If its something consumer want is a different story...

@Codex404 reas about the subject allright. Still think its bullshit

@AleCx04 its bullshit indeed, but its not just buzzwords, it actually is what they say. Dedicated chips for wallets. I do see a future in it. Imagine festival coins to be in an encrypted part of your phone. Or medical data for if you have an big accident, so paramedics already know what kind of things you are allergic for.

@Codex404 you do have a good point there my dude.

@Codex404 buzzword miss-use of words have desensitized devs the same way labeling conservatives as Nazis sucks up the meaning of actual Nazism.

@systemctl @Alice they’ve built a crypto coin phone so they’re pretty much right on this one haha

@Codex404 medical data can already be stored. I think that even my Samsung Corby had a feature for it back in the day.. now here in Belgium it's been standardized and centralized into the eID card (since 2002, making Belgium the first to implement this I think), eliminating further needs.

As for a hardware-based crypto wallet in the phone, that's something very promising. It should support common coins though and be versatile. But each one uses different crypto algorithms, making hardware backing at least for processing difficult.. hence why a Bitcoin ASIC can't be used for Ethereum etc. Storing them should be feasible though.. I mean all it has to be is pretty much just a glorified TPM that stores a private key.. heck, that's even similar to the chips on those ID cards which also store a private key.

So yeah, promising for sure but way too much buzz for what it is.

Disclaimer: I haven't looked up any of this and just went with preliminary knowledge of cryptocurrency, and how I would implement the "hardware wallet" feature.

not the first one

@Condor there are hardware wallets already, they're basically just a small chip used to store your private keys and sign transactions when requested.

ASICs are just for mining - the algorithm used for the private/public key generation is not necessarily the same.
Plus, you don't need that much computational power, since signing transactions is a one-off process: any low-power cpu can easily do it (and maybe have a few hardware AES instructions for a speed boost).

That said, I don't really like the idea of a pre-included third party product dedicated to cryptography, especially if the hardware and software are not open sourced and allow you to check its secure implementation, so I'd say it's a bad idea on principle. There are multiple hardware wallets already on the market anyway.

@endor Yeah, most certainly. I mean chips in the eID cards that we've been using here in Belgium for over a decade now have been able to store private keys just fine. But indeed I wouldn't really trust a closed-source implementation either. Sure it's better than paper in ID papers and magstripes in bank cards, but far from ideal if it can't be readily scrutinized.

I'd personally prefer a hardware wallet in which at least the key can be reflashed on demand and the cryptographic scheme can be upgraded of. Also I'd want the chip to not be populated by default - I don't want the manufacturer to be able to know or even determine my private key because that defeats the whole point.

Perhaps a Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or NFC based hardware wallet would be better? That way the phone could communicate with the wallet, people can easily replace it and the hardware could be made open source without having to rely on phone manufacturers to do so, or to even include it to begin with.