Finney Phone: Cryptocurrency-Centric Phone

Sirin Labs, the company behind this odd new phone, is aiming to make cryptocurrency commonplace. How will they do so? With the Finney Phone, or so they hope. While adoption of the odd new style of currency has been less than enthusiastic by the public, Sirin aims to change that. Many consider cryptocurrency an unusual, hard-to-understand technology that resembles a Ponzi scheme. Sirin wants their phone to be for the average Joe as well as the Bitcoin Billionaire. How will they do that?

Sirin Labs’ Goal

The company’s co-CEO, Zvika Landau, had this to say about the phone. “Most people are afraid of cryptocurrencies, and don’t know where to start. The user experience we want is one that is so simple, you won’t need to understand how blockchain technology works, you won’t need to understand how to sign a transaction, or what happens in the background at the time.”

This makes sense, if they’re looking to incorporate a mass-market. Many are wary of cryptocurrency, unsure if it’s safe and unwilling to bet their money on it. Younger people, especially, are generally leery of sinking their money into platforms they fear are unstable. It’s mirrored in most millennials lack of interest in the stock market. Sirin aims to hold a number of events and seminars to help people get started.

Finney Phone: Cold Storage Wallet for Crypto

The Finney Phone has a second screen built into the phone. That screen is the display of your crypto wallet: it’s completely isolated from your phone. What that means is, the crypto tokens stored on your phone are safe and secure behind a layer of security. Without the authentication key from your phone’s crypto screen, your coins can’t even be used.

The other feature that Sirin hopes will set the Finney Phone apart is the token conversion built into the phone. The phone will start by hosting Sirin’s own SRN coin, which can be converted into whatever your coin of choice is afterwards. However, it seems that Sirin is more interested in its cryptocurrency taking off than its phone: the phone is simply a means to and end. If people are more comfortable with cryptocurrency, it makes the crypto market more stable.

The Risks

The risks associated with cryptocurrency aren’t cured by this one phone, though. As it stands, cryptocurrency is still very young, and largely unproven. There is no central agency to ensure security, and there is no way to use the currency in normal transactions. You can’t go into a grocery store and buy your weekly groceries with Bitcoins, and a phone won’t change that. As it stands, cryptocurrency is used for investing in online endeavors and purchasing things of dubious legality. That’s hardly a glowing review, but we’ll withhold judgment until we see the phone in action.

The Finney Phone is set to release in November and will retail for $1,000. We’ll see how fast people are to adopt the odd handset then.