In a strange turn of events electronics giant Samsung has denied any involvement with Lithuanian blockchain startup CoPay – after reports circulated widely last week that the two companies were partnering.
According to the report by thenextweb’s Hard Fork, rumours that the companies were collaborating to enable cryptocurrency payments in Samsung stores in the three Baltic states – are entirely untrue – with Samsung telling the site “our official response is that the rumor is not true.”
Originally announced through a since-deleted post on CoPay’s Medium blog (archived version here), CoPay at the time said in the post that:
Customers in Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius and Kaunas can buy Samsung smartphones, tablets, laptops, TV-sets, and more with digital money
Adding that:
the crypto-payment feature will be available soon at Samsung’s internet stores,
Samsung, Blockchain and Crypto
With the claimed deal between the companies boasting support for crypto payments in Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, Ripple, Dash and NEM – the story seems bizarrely to have no basis in fact.
Hard Fork explain that they had reached out to CoPay for comment – but the company simply directed them to Samsung themselves.
While Samsung have not shied away from the blockchain space itself – looking to the tech to help streamline its vast logistics network – a move into the cryptocurrency space would have represented a significant endorsement for the industry as a whole.
Although the story seems still to be developing – with comment from CoPay themselves no doubt to be expected, it seems for now that the industry will have longer to wait for Samsung to get involved with cryptocurrencies.
