The era of Blockchain Wallets for Mobile: Samsung’s CoinDuck and Kakao’s Bitberry

There have been tremendous stirs in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry as of late, with something particularly captivating the interest of many, the new evolution of digital asset wallets.
Almost 32 million bitcoin wallets had been set up globally by Dec 2018.

Many top companies in Korea who are involved in blockchain are now starting to pour more focus and resources into the development of crypto wallets more now than ever.

Currently, most individual users and investors are using ‘hot wallets’ that are able to connect to the network more quickly, allowing immediate access to funds, rather than ‘cold wallets’ for secure storage, with the more recent trend being that hot wallet users are now favoring mobile wallets as opposed to the traditional desktop versions. One of the biggest advantages of these mobile wallets is that it provides easy transaction services.

Samsung unveiled its new cryptocurrency wallet, CoinDuck, available on the new Galaxy S10.

Samsung Electronics is introducing its brand new products every year just like its competitors, Apple and Huawei. With the recent unveiling of the Galaxy S10, which will be launching sometime in 2019, came something very different and special that is set to raise the interest for this particular edition. Concerns were made prior to the announcement that the S10 wouldn’t boast many ‘new’ features, however, they wowed us with the introduction of their new mobile crypto wallet, CoinDuck, becoming the first of its kind.

In the presentation, they demonstrated the installation of CoinDuck in the Galaxy S10, and with that, the partnership between CoinDuck and Samsung was officially announced to the world.

CoinDuck (same name with its DApp) is a subsidiary company of the blockchain unicorn company, Chain Partners of Korea, a block-chain start-up that is currently amassing enormous attention from all over the world.

CoinDuck is the world’s first Ethereum network-based payment service that launched in January 2018. They have collected more than 1,000 franchises nationwide in one year. There are many more affiliated stores than the well-known Crypto Valley city, Zug, Switzerland.

In December 2018, CoinDuck, who was selected as “C-Lap,” a start-up incubating program for Samsung Electronics, finally collaborated with Samsung Electronics to build a crypto payment service.

CEO of CoinDuck, Minsub Shin mentioned: “It is possible to change the current situation in a day when it becomes possible to pay a cryptocurrency which is paring to the Korean won or US dollar with a mobile like one of the biggest players in the global market, Samsung.”

Coin Duck is currently only accepting ETH but is planning to increase the number of cryptocurrencies with the support from Daybit, a crypto exchange established by Chain Partners.

The leading Moblie Crypto Wallet Bitberry, hand in hand with Kakao

The representative mobile crypto wallet in Korea is Bitberry, a blockchain start-up named Rootone Soft who has been acquired by Dunamu investment (Kakao).

Bitberry is a custody wallet that does not provide users with their private keys and assets directly but instead stores them in their system.

Choi In-wook, CMO of Rootone Soft said, “Most users have some difficulty keeping their private key safe. Many individual users are losing their private keys or are being hacked because they cannot manage well. Bitberry keeps your private key safe and allows you to use your PIN code to authenticate and withdraw passwords from your wallet.”

Bitberry works with KakaoTalk, the largest IM service in Korea (similar to WeChat in China) to provide mobile payments and a transfer service. Users can log in with their Kakao accounts and send their funds with just a phone number.

Such news shows us that users who have not been interested in cryptocurrencies and blockchain in Korea will now have access easily via their smartphones, which can broaden the width of users and broaden the cryptocurrency ecosystem itself.

The active movement of the industry to provide easy and convenient crypto wallets is likely to be continued. Crypto wallets will continue to play an important role that connects users to cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystems in the future.

I would say the first generation hegemony was a cryptocurrency exchange, with the second being a crypto wallet.