Another major leap of blockchain technology is marked as Bangladesh embraces the world’s first smartphone built on top of blockchain technology—Finney. The smartphone, manufactured by Sirin Lab based out of Switzerland, has recently been cleared by Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) for importing into the country and will be available in the market this October.
First unveiled to the world in 2018, Sirin Lab’s Finney represents a robust and secure flagship with an integrated cold storage crypto wallet. Priced at $899, the sleek and sporty looking smartphone runs on Android 8.1 as well as Sirin OS, backed by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage, which is expandable via MicroSD. The device is manufactured by Taiwanese multinational electronics behemoth—Foxconn Technology Group.
Sirin OS from Sirin Labs perfectly secures storage and transactions using cryptocurrencies in a mobile environment, alongside offering a seamless Android experience to its users. What sets the Sirin OS apart is the built-in cold crypto wallet accessible only via the Safe Screen. The firm believes that all these factors will majorly contribute to the mass adoption of blockchain technology through Finney.
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Moshe Hogeg, co-founder and co-CEO of Sirin Labs, believes that Finney adeptly blends multiple facets of blockchain and cryptocurrency into a single state-of-the-art device. He says,
Before the Finney, you needed a ledger, you needed a computer, you needed wallet software and then you needed to go to an exchange, and then you could convert. The Finney does all of this on one phone.
The smartphone market in Bangladesh is experiencing a steady boom and Finney’s launch is most likely to propel that growth forward. In a report released by global research firm, GSMA Intelligence, last year, says that about 75% of Bangladesh’s population (138 million) will have access to smartphones by the end of 2025 and 41% (73 million) of those will be mobile internet subscribers by then. Although the increasingly urbanized population is more inclined towards budget smartphones, Finney’s price label is more on the side of high-end smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S10 which is available in the country for 74,900 takas or $894.
The blockchain technology has made pretty impressive progress in Bangladesh. In August, the government allocated a part of its $208 million IT project, to be invested in training several graduates in blockchain, in India and Japan. Sources also report that 100 fresh IT graduates are also going to be sent overseas to learn and enhance expertise in the nascent fields of distributed ledger technology, besides machine learning, AI, and cybersecurity.
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Experts believe that more developing nations embrace blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, the easier it will get for the new markets to gain mainstream acceptance.
