HTC Plans to Ship a Blockchain Phone This Year

HTC blazed trails in the late 2000s by bringing a smartphone to market based on the Android operating system.

While HTC isn't the only company working on a blockchain-dedicated smartphone - Sirin Labs recently raised $157 million in an initial coin offering to build the "Finney" - it's by far the biggest company of its kind to undertake the effort.

Raymond Pao, associate vice president of VR new technology for HTC, said that "Will be building the framework and phone that powers the decentralized web."

"If we look at the industry, there are moving in two directions. One side is 100% centralized so that the platform company knows all the details of the users. The value the platform companies can provide is fully customized service to each single person. The more the user shares to the platform company, the better-customized services the platform companies can provide. On the opposite side, there are the users who care about their privacy more and want to own their information and identification. As the phone is the most personal device we use every day, we want to work on the decentralized eco-system with the users who care most about their privacy."

HTC is pursuing what could be the next big thing for smartphone development.

HTC appears to be betting that the ubiquitous nature of the smartphone - data from Statista indicates that nearly 3 billion people today use smartphones worldwide - is a natural fit for blockchain, especially as it relates to greater control over one's information.

As a major smartphone maker, one might think that HTC is looking to jump into the market with guns blazing.

According to Chen, the Taiwanese manufacturer is taking a decidedly different approach, reaching out to projects like ethereum and DFinity as it looks to integrate those protocols into the Genesis phone.

"We want to be the Switzerland for all protocols, ethereum etc, so the phone can do 20-30 percent of it in terms of verifying."

In a nod to the crypto community, a forthcoming pre-sale for the phone will only accept bitcoin and ethereum as payment.