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>Sirin Labs, for example, raised $158 million last year to create a mobile phone that allows consumers to trade and use crypto. The company, which will ship its
by ikeboy 8y ago
>Sirin Labs, for example, raised $158 million last year to create a mobile phone that allows consumers to trade and use crypto. The company, which will ship its first batch of a few thousand phones in December, is now considering abandoning hardware altogether and refocusing on shipping software for other phone makers to use, Chief Executive Moshe Hogeg said in an interview. Sirin now only has enough funds for six to 12 months of operations, he said.
Uh. Glad this bubble has popped. Of all the things I want in a phone, "trade and use crypto" isn't quite a requirement. Besides existing phones trade and use crypto quite well
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- easymovet 8y agoWhich phone (secure computing platform) do you trust to securely store your wallet key? All it takes to lose is an update to the wallet app that sends the key to a server.
- drb91 8y agoWhy would you want the wallet with you at all times? How often are you transacting? Seems like more of a risk than a benefit here.
- atq2119 8y agoThere's clearly a demand for people having their old-school credit card or equivalent on their phone and debitable wirelessly. I personally find that more risk than benefit, but traditional banking's security mechanism seems adequate for many people. If crypto currencies cannot offer the same level of convenience/security, then how can they compete in the mass market?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ikeboy 8y agoYou can install from an apk and not get updates. Besides, if all you're doing is some kind of chain of authority you could do it through fdroid which enforces a constant key. No need for a standalone phone which will anyway have the same components as any other phone.
- easymovet 8y agoThat sounds very reasonable, is there an equivalent chain of authority possible on iOS?
- RL_Quine 8y agoSounds like a perfect watering hole attack to make a "cryptocurrency phone". Think of it like selling a mail-order gold bar cozy. 100% of your customers have a physical item that's vulnerable to crowbar enhanced recovery.
- zanny 8y agoAssuming everything goes as planned probably the Librem 5 when it comes out or anything that can run Replicant (or any other similar radio isolating fully open OS).
- justaj 8y agoAren't its baseband and wifi drivers still proprietary?
- kojeovo 8y agoDefinitely not the one made by some shitty startup with no track record.
- mcintyre1994 8y agoIf I had to choose a phone, iPhone. I doubt they can build anything close to it in terms of security. Not that I would use any phone I have with me the majority of the time for it, but I doubt they can do better in that form factor.
- dragontamer 8y agoIIRC, Apple was banning actual BTC wallets because they recognized BTC was a competitor to their App Model. You could use BTC online wallets on Apple Phones, but it was difficult to find one where your iPhone itself stored the wallet.
- decentralised 8y agoIt isn't a requirement for you. Fortunately that's now how products are made because really we only need some mosquito nets in Africa and drinking water, everything else is a luxury for someone.
- hippich 8y agoI can understand why one would not want such "features" in their phone. But I can't understand why someone would be glad something failed unless one is a competitor of the failing company.
- ikeboy 8y agoIt's inefficient for capital to be spent in useless projects. I'd rather that kind of money go to startups actually building useful things or at least trying to build something that people actually want
- hippich 8y agomost of these bankruptcies are due to firms holding reserves in crypto. I don't think all companies combined spent that much of resources on employees in recent years, and most of the lost money is due to plummeted market, and that means that someone else got these resources to deploy more efficiently. so not all is lost in waste human work (if we would agree that it is indeed waste human work, which I personally do not agree with) also, all that money spent on human work ended up in someones else pocket to spend further. In a way it is a "bitcoin tax on capitalist (or wanna be capitalists)"
- ikeboy 8y agoCrypto being in a bubble meant a lot of capital pouring into crypto that would otherwise have had more productive uses. >also, all that money spent on human work ended up in someones else pocket to spend further. Broken window fallacy. There is no benefit from useless jobs. They are strictly worse than non-useless jobs.
- hippich 8y agoThere is certainly an opportunity cost related to all these bankruptcies - I agree with that. But without someone trying it, we would not know it would fail. So in a way, it is a valuable result as well. (and no, I do not believe someone can have perfect vision to know 100% one use of capital is right and another one is not - this is part of the process - trying and failing or succeeding)