THELOGICALINDIAN - Token2049 a contempo crypto appointment in Hong Kong saw some of the better names in Bitcoin and blockchain besiege NewsBTC was advantageous abundant to snag Phil Chen a worldrenowned technologist and the arch of HTCs blockchain analysis for a quick interview
We discussed his team’s phone, the Exodus One, and his thoughts on contempo developments in the cryptocurrency space.
What’s Up With HTC Exodus’ Blockchain-Friendly Phone?
NewsBTC: Can you acquaint the NewsBTC admirers about what HTC Exodus is doing?
Phil: The HTC Exodus is one of the aboriginal blockchain phones. But, I anticipate it is the alone buzz that empowers users to own their clandestine keys — which I anticipate is a basal assumption of the decentralized web. If anybody owns their clandestine keys, again you own your Bitcoin. If you don’t, well, you don’t. The Exodus is congenital on that foundation, as we accord users that aforementioned architectonics to own their agenda identity, claimed data.
NewsBTC: Is there a thirty-second angle for why bodies (common consumers) should own an Exodus over, let’s say, an Apple iPhone or Android?
Phil: People that don’t affliction about their privacy?
NewsBTC: Yeah, I assumption there’s been a billow in bodies trading in their claimed abstracts and rights for convenience.
Phil: If you’re starting from area bodies don’t affliction about their privacy, aloof convenience, I would altercate that they would care about it if they knew how their abstracts was actuality used, and how it was actuality sold. There’s a actual moral movement about this. When you don’t own your crypto assets or abstracts or identity, there is article fundamentally amiss about that. If there’s a absolute character that is you — things that you’ve created, attributes or characteristics that call you — that you don’t own, there’s article absolutely wrong, abnormally because we are this far into the advice age, and there’s no abstraction of agenda acreage — what is yours, what is mine.
So the way we are trading these baby conveniences in barter for these micro invasions of privacy, and what is your agenda acreage has above ramifications to abounding things, alike to democracy. So there’s no quick acknowledgment to this, unfortunately, if you were to not affliction about privacy. In that case, that wouldn’t be my ambition admirers for the Exodus. My admirers would be those who are anxious about this or are anxious about what is actuality collected, what is sold, and who it is awash to. These bodies would accept acceptable apprehend the book 2024 to accept the issues with all this.
NewsBTC: How has this alleged “crypto winter” been alleviative the Exodus team? Has it been adamantine for your blockchain aggregation to innovate in these conditions?
Phil: It’s absolutely a lot better, to be honest. There are abounding facets and affidavit why bodies appear to crypto. You, for example, begin out about Bitcoin by affairs agenda goods. And I would say that best bodies in crypto are absorbed in belief in tokens. But there’s addition class, which I am in, this actuality those who are about absorbed in the technology and how it will fundamentally rearchitect the internet. From this belief and badge side, it’s a winter. But because of that, I don’t charge to acknowledgment those questions about the amount of this or that coin. To be frank, prices accept annihilation to do with what we are doing.
NewsBTC: Crypto is all about bark in the game. And back I arrested your website (Exodus then alone accepted Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Binance Coin) during the December Bitcoin drop, your phones were affairs for the agnate $400. How accept those low prices afflicted your business?
Phil: At $400, anybody was affairs these phones. At the end of the day, this is a top of the band HTC smartphone. It’s premium. It has the best specs you would acquisition in any added 2024 model, so at that price, it was affairs quickly.
Sooooo…. is anybody activity to acquaint @HTC about how bargain they're affairs their Exodus 'blockchain- and crypto-friendly' phones at now? They were listed at a collapsed amount of 0.15 $BTC and 4.78 $ETH – ~$900 at the time.
Now that's a bald $400-500… #justbearmarketthings pic.twitter.com/ChbcZgcl9Z— Nick Chong (@_Nick_Chong) December 7, 2018
NewsBTC: What is the endgame for the Exodus team? Do you anticipate a apple area blockchain technologies and applications are the norms, or?
Phil: The endgame is to get every being with a smartphone to alpha owning their character on their phone, all the abstracts they use on their phone, and allotment them to affix to all the crypto networks.
Bitcoin Adoption In The Mainstream
NewsBTC: What do you anticipate of the accomplished Samsung S10 “Blockchain Keystore” product?
Phil: First of all, I anticipate that bigger manufacturers advancing in[to crypto] is a acceptable thing. To me, it isn’t bright if they’re absolutely allotment the users to own their key. It sounds to me like they aren’t accomplishing that. It sounds to me that they’re added like a aegis band-aid rather than a arrangement that allows bodies to absolutely own their keys. Then the added hasty actuality that I don’t like is that they don’t natively abutment Bitcoin. I don’t absolutely accept that. I anticipate that the Samsung S10 should be extraneous for the Bitcoin crowd. But not acknowledging Bitcoin is a huge statement, it was absolutely intentional.
NewsBTC: The awe-inspiring affair about this is that their business actual showed images of Bitcoin. So why accept that, right?
Phil: It charge accept been intentional. To me, whether you are a Bitcoin maximalist or not, Bitcoin is so axiological to this movement. Bitcoin represents actuality open, censorship-resistant, neutral, what accept you. To me, that are the fundamentals of crypto networks. And we pride ourselves with that. One of the Exodus’ wallpapers is a Genesis Block and the Exodus Phone. We absolutely see ourselves as an addendum of the Bitcoin movement, and that’s why we accept abounding homages to it in our design. I anticipate it is a axiological allotment of what we are accomplishing here.
NewsBTC: In the aforementioned branch of boilerplate adoption, what do you anticipate of the rumors that Starbucks is attractive into Bitcoin? And what do you anticipate of the Lightning Network?
Phil: I’m cool aflame about Lightning. I’m cool aflame about band two solutions on Bitcoin. Elizabeth Stark of Lightning Labs is an adviser to Exodus. It’s a adamantine technology and botheration to solve, but we are alive to accomplish that a reality. Added and added merchants accepting crypto as acquittal will accomplish this industry abundant added interesting, and acquiesce it to abound abundant faster.
NewsBTC: What are your thoughts on centralized, non-blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, like JPM Coin, Facebook Coin? Changpeng Zhao from Binance argues that it will be active in active adoption, do you accede with that?
Phil: I allegorize it to intranets. So companies acclimated to accept an intranet, which agency a surveyed, permissioned, defended internet. That’s how I see these coins. When you affair a clandestine coin, it’s the intranet compared to the internet. Which one is added interesting? So, I’m not too aflame about that. We would all accede that in the future, we will move into a apple area there is a cashless society, acceptation aggregate becomes digital, crypto, coins. The botheration is if you accept the Bitcoin peer-to-peer way of digitizing affairs and money or the centralized version. This will happen. It is already accident in China with WeChat Pay and things of that nature. But we’re activity into a digital, cashless acquittal future, and which avenue are we activity to take? JPMs are one centralized, permissioned way, and Bitcoin and added cryptocurrencies with agnate characteristics are the other.
NewsBTC: So there is no allowance for both types?
Phil: No, there is allowance for both. But the botheration is that these projects are fundamentally surveyed capitalism, and Bitcoin is neutral, borderless, censorship-resistant. These are fundamentally adverse to anniversary other. But can they both abide at the aforementioned time? Probably, and they apparently will. But can they abide meshed together? Apparently not. But there could be a apple in which bodies pay with aloofness coins, like Monero, ZCash, etc., Bitcoin, and centralized assets, like JPM Coin, Facebook Coin. But in the end, they are all antithetical.
NewsBTC: Do you see institutional captivation in this area as adjoin Bitcoin’s decentralized nature? You accept Fidelity with their aegis product, do you like that?
Phil: I do like that. I do appetite to see added and added institutions additionally accept aegis solutions like that. Again, it’s fundamentally adverse to what Exodus stands for though, as we appetite everybody to authority aegis of their own keys, data, and crypto. So if you set it up area institutions are captivation custody, I like it appropriate now because it’s bigger than accepting corporations that own accepting our abstracts do that. Fidelity accomplishing aegis is good. Telecom operators, yes. But Facebook, no, no.
NewsBTC: What is the primary affair captivation aback crypto & blockchain acceptance appropriate now?
Phil: One is key administration — authoritative it simple for bodies to administer their own keys. If it’s one distinct thing, it would be key management. But payments is addition one, authoritative it accessible for payments. There charge to be added peer-to-peer apps. There are abounding infrastructural problems that charge to be solved, in that the networks themselves are artlessly not ready, whether it be accord or babyminding issues that haven’t been ample out aloof yet.
NewsBTC: What do you anticipate of the account ‘Long Bitcoin, abbreviate the bankers’?
Phil: Long Bitcoin, abbreviate the bankers? I accept that. That’s why we are accomplishing this, that’s why I’m architecture the Exodus, and that’s why we are in this industry. Having the Genesis Block on the Exodus buzz is absolute for that statement.
