HTC begins taking preorders, only in cryptocurrency, for its blockchain phone Exodus 1 for 0.15 BTC or 4.78 ETH, about ~$960, and expects to ship in December
You have to buy it in bitcoin or Ether — HTC just announced actual specs for its much-hyped blockchain phone, the Exodus 1, and is letting people sign up for preorders.
Context & Ripple Effects
HTC first sketched Exodus in May as a phone with a secure enclave and universal wallet aimed at easier cryptocurrency trading and a better DApp experience; today it converts that promise into an actual preorder, priced natively in bitcoin and Ether rather than dollars. The move lands HTC directly against Sirin Labs' Finney, a $1,000 blockchain phone with an embedded cold wallet due in November.
The crypto-only pricing is the boldest part: at 0.15 BTC or 4.78 ETH (~$960), the sticker moves with the coin, and only existing holders can buy. The related coverage shows where this ends up — by March 2019 HTC is selling the same Exodus 1 for $699 in ordinary currency, alongside Opera integration for micropayments.
First-order effects
- Buyers must already hold BTC or ETH to reserve an Exodus 1, and the effective price floats with those coins between now and the December ship date — HTC is filtering its launch audience to crypto holders by design.
- Sirin Labs' Finney loses its novelty window: two cold-wallet phones now hit the market within weeks of each other, competing for the same small pool of crypto-native buyers.
Second-order effects
- The later shift to a $699 fiat price signals that crypto-only checkout constrained demand enough that HTC had to widen the funnel — the wallet-first pitch survives, the payment experiment does not.
- Rival flagships like HTC's own U12+ ($799) show the Exodus 1 is priced above conventional hardware, so the premium has to be justified entirely by the secure enclave and universal wallet features.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, 'blockchain phones' settle into a niche accessory category — hardware differentiated by wallets and DApp support, sold through normal channels — rather than a new distribution model where devices are bought with the assets they secure.
- For a handset maker under pressure, crypto-native features become a differentiation lever in a commoditized market, but one narrow enough that pricing power still comes from conventional retail economics.
The trend: Smartphone makers are courting cryptocurrency holders as a differentiation strategy, but the crypto-only sales experiment gives way to fiat pricing once the enthusiast audience proves too small.