None of the ‘mining phones’ announced at MWC19 actually mine cryptocurrency

Though “foldable phones” and “5G” were undeniably the top buzzwords at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, there was one minor trend that caught my eyes: “mining phones” – or put elsewise, phones that mine cryptocurrency. For the uninitiated, mining refers to the process of solving cryptographic puzzles to verify transactions on the blockchain; in return for solving puzzles, miners get rewarded in cryptocurrency. Due to their dif