SamMobile, the biggest online Samsung community recently announced that the company is planning to integrate cryptocurrency cold wallets in its upcoming mobile phone Galaxy S10.

Samsung leading the way

Adnan Farooqi, the editor of SamMobile, stated:

“After hearing about Samsung’s blockchain and cryptocurrency software, we resolute to dig around a little deeper. We can verify that the company is indeed developing one and that it may be launched with the Galaxy S10.”

The crypto services will come in two parts; a cold wallet for saving and storing cryptocurrency and a crypto wallet for transfers, viewing account information and transaction. Samsung’s new wallet is expected to support Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and Ethereum-derived token ERC20.

Why the cold wallet

Samsung ventured into the cryptocurrency market about ten months ago with the focus on bitcoin mining. The company started creating mining equipment from its factory based in Suwon, South Korea to ship to international distributors.

Reportedly, the company has been working with Halong Mining in China and Squire in Canada. However, as of December, the partner distributors of Samsung’s ASIC mining chips remain unclear. With increased mining activities, it seemed that cryptocurrency wallet would be the next step for the company.

If the company is to enter the cryptocurrency exchange market, which nearly every major company in the country including telecommunications, gaming, financial, and insurance companies are involved in, it will have to build a new infrastructure from the ground up, similar to what Shinhan Bank has done with Gopax.

However, Samsung is not fooling this line of thought. The company has decided to use its existing line of products to strengthen the infrastructure surrounding cryptocurrencies as an asset class.

How it will work

According to SamMobile, if the wallet is integrated into the Samsung Galaxy S10, users will be able to import their data from wallets such as MetaMask and Trust Wallet to transact natively with the mobile phone. Customers will also be able to create a new wallet in the cold wallet app.

The news comes when the cryptocurrency market has fallen below everyone’s expectation. Many have to halt their operations until the market becomes favourable. If Samsung and other companies integrate cryptocurrencies support, many companies that focus on creating mining hardware stand to become irrelevant.

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