Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, said that mining crypto on mobile phones “is a fool’s game.”

This statement comes as a reaction to HTC’s recent announcement saying users can now mine Monero using Exodus smartphone.

The co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, spoke against the idea of cryptocurrency mining via mobile phones. In a recent tweet, he said that mining on mobile phones “is a fool’s game.” It appears that he was referring to the announcement made by HTC saying users can mine Monero (XMR) through its blockchain phone, Exodus.

In reaction to HTC’s announcement, Buterin said:

[It] goes against everything we know about hardware economies of scale and more likely to trick users with false hope than help them.

He also added that “staking on phones,” on the other hand, is “quite promising.”

Buterin’s opinion received mixed responses. Some said that he minimized the concept of mobile crypto mining, referring to cases like Ardor, where one can mine using an Android phone. A Twitter user questioned how using CPU power to mine “is worse than rich people getting richer by virtue of the size of their bags.” In response to this, Buterin said:

As though PoW is some virtuous act of working with blood and sweat and not largely just sitting around waiting for hardware (that you bought because you’re rich) to make you even richer.



