A variant of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 smartphone that is preloaded with cryptocurrency apps and tokens went on sale Thursday in South Korea.
The phone, called the KlaytnPhone, comes preloaded with 2,000 KLAY tokens and various Klaytn blockchain applications, according to a statement by Klaytn, a South Korean blockchain platform.
A Samsung fan website called Sammobile reported pricing on the KlaytnPhone is equivalent to $1,047, similar to that of regular 5G Galaxy Note 10 phone models sold by Samsung and South Korean carriers.
The KlaytnPhone Wallet is linked with a preloaded Samsung Blockchain Keystore, which recently added support for Klaytn and bitcoin. “With the KlaytnPhone, we hope more users can more easily access and interact with blockchain-powered services,” Klatyn said in its announcement.
In fact, the complexity of using blockchain has been a significant reason it hasn’t grown faster as a consumer-based application, analysts have said. Ground X Corp. created the Klaytn platform and is the blockchain affiliate of Kakao Corp, a South Korean messaging app provider.
Blockchain is gaining ground in financial services and other business settings as an encrypted way to make transactions, everything from financial ledgers to supply chain purchase orders and payments.
Samsung’s is the world’s largest smartphone maker and its adoption of the blockchain approach from Klaytn could help promote the use of blockchain. HTC and Sirin Labs have also launched blockchain-ready phones but their impact hasn’t been measured.