When leaked pictures of Samsung’s latest smartphone went viral, the crypto sphere lost its mind over a singular feature: a built-in cryptocurrency wallet.
Samsung would quickly deny rumors that the S10 contained a baked-in hardware wallet. Well, the wallet definitely exists. It’s just missing a few features you might expect of a crypto wallet. Specifically, it doesn’t support bitcoin — only ether and ERC20 tokens — which would be akin to your broker at Charles Schwab or Fidelity telling you that your 401(k) lets you invest in silver, copper and other metals but not gold.
The Wallet
I bought my S10 yesterday and downloaded the wallet first thing this morning from Samsung’s Galaxy Store (interestingly, it’s not available on the Google Play Store). Upon setting up the wallet, the app asks for permissions, like access to your phone’s calling function, storage, camera and body sensors, and it asks you to sign in with either a Samsung or Google account.
I tried to take screenshots of the process, but when you try this, an error message reads: “Can’t take screenshots due to security policy.” So there’s a plus-one for mindful security practice even if the app’s asking for access to your phone leaves you wary.
Setting up the wallet is pretty standard procedure. You can either import an existing wallet using your seed phrase or create a new one. If creating a new one, you’ll be asked to enter a 6-digit PIN, and after you confirm this PIN, you’ll be given a 12-word seed phrase (aka recovery phrase or mnemonic phrase).
The device will warn you to store the phrase on another device (or, if you’re being really security minded, offline entirely), adding that if you lose it, then your wallet will be lost to the blockchain abyss if you need
