Smartphone manufacturer HTC has confirmed that users will be able to mine monero (XMR) with its Exodus blockchain phone. 

According to a report by Forbes on April 10, HTC has partnered with ASIC chip design firm Midas to allow users to mine XMR through their Exodus smartphone using an application called DeMiner. The app will reportedly be available for download in Q2 2020. 

HTC and Midas Labs addressed concerns related to the high energy consumption required for mining. According to the report, the DeMiner application will have a comparable hash rate to desktop computers while requiring far less power consumption, making it suitable for a mobile phone user. 

Phil Chen, Decentralized Chief Officer at HTC, said the company’s goal is to further crypto-asset decentralization by making mining feasible on smartphones. 

He said, 

Bitcoin and mobile phones are the most important and impactful technology inventions of recent times. I am lucky enough to be involved on the frontlines of both these technologies.

Chen highlighted the world’s 3.5 billion smartphones as an opportunity to further distribute the hash rate of cryptocurrency networks. He also lauded monero as a cryptocurrency resisting trends towards centralization. 

He continued, 

Monero is an important and crucial experiment resisting the trend of centralized mining. It utilizes an algorithm called “Random X” that is suitable for CPU-based calculation. The use of this algorithm is actively fighting some of the centralizing forces that create the mining pools in Bitcoin.

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