HTC yesterday launched early access to its first blockchain phone, the ‘EXODUS 1’ at www.htcexodus.com using either BTC or ETH, in an industry first crypto-only payment acceptance.

Expected ship date is December, the HTC ‘EXODUS 1’ contains a secure enclave – a locked area on the device that is protected from the Android OS to hold the keys to your crypto, whether that is currencies or non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or in the very near future, all your digital data.

According to Phil Chen, Decentralized Chief Officer at HTC, “It’s been both 10 years since the launch of the first Android phone by HTC and nearly 10 years since the launch of Bitcoin and the Genesis Block. EXODUS 1 is a foundational element of the crypto internet. For digital assets and decentralised apps to reach their potential, we believe mobile will need to be the main point of distribution. We look forward to partnering with developers in the blockchain community to usher in this vision.”

The phone also has a unique Social Key Recovery mechanism in case your phone is lost or stolen, or you forget your keys. It is an easy and secure way to recover keys lost in the hardware. It also ensures that HTC does not hold your keys in a central location at any point. HTC allows you to pick a few trustworthy contacts, and each one of those must download a key management app. Your seed then gets split using a secret sharing algorithm and is sent to the trusted contacts. Should the need arise, you can successfully regain access to your funds.

As this is the early access version of the EXODUS device, HTC is inviting cryptographers and developers from all over the world to join the EXODUS community and help improve the strength of this secure enclave.  HTC will also soon release APIs that will allow third-party developers to use the ‘EXODUS 1’ hardware to protect keys and sign transactions. It will release the Zion key management API and wallet SDK to partners who hold the same vision – to expand the blockchain ecosystem and build a foundation of security and trust.

‘EXODUS 1 will be available in 34 countries including the US, Taiwan, HK, Singapore, New Zealand, UK, Austria, Norway and other European countries.

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