Is Apple turning your iPhone into a crypto Wallet?

Apple’s new CryptoKit is gearing up to enable the exchange of private and public keys. This is an important step to unlock your ability to purchase goods and services using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies stored in the crypto-wallet on your iPhone.

“For the first time, developers can leverage the secure enclave to manage a user’s keys in an iPhone, achieving a similar level of security to hardware wallets.”

Alejandro Machado, co-founder at Open Money Initiative

Apple, the maker of the world-famous iPhone, appears to be taking the first baby steps into the realms of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in the form of a “cryptographic” developer tool.

Apple iPhone a crypto wallet?

Apple has carefully avoided the trigger words “cryptocurrency” and “blockchain”, like Facebook, Samsung and other global tech companies who have begun experimenting with their own versions of and support for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

Apple announced the release of the iPhone CryptoKit at its Worldwide Developers Conference at Cupertino. The indications are that Apple is preparing to enable crypto-wallet functionality on the iPhone 10.

Alejandro Machado, co-founder at Open Money Initiative explained, “For the first time, developers can leverage the secure enclave to manage a user’s keys in an iPhone, achieving a similar level of security to hardware wallets.” “The implications for cryptocurrency developers are significant.”

If Apple is seriously looking into cryptocurrency adoption on its smartphones, it would be following Samsung and HTC, who already announced their plans to create native cold storage wallets on their smartphones. The HTC Exodus 1 smartphone will be able to natively store bitcoin or Ether cryptocurrencies and Samsung is aiming to do the same on its flagship Galaxy 10 phone.

A new study from Juniper Research found that the number of people using digital wallets for all types of currencies is expected to increase from 2.3 billion this year to nearly 4 billion by 2024 with an expected wallet transaction value of more than $9 trillion a year.

This story, “Apple may be prepping to turn your iPhone into a crypto wallet” was originally published by Computerworld.

Ryan Danvers
Founding member of ABACON IT
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