Samsung/CopPay Partnership Reportedly Fake News
In a VERY surprising turn of events, the previously reported rumors of a deal between Samsung and Lithuanian company CopPay turns out to be fake!
CopPay posted a (now deleted) medium post announcing that Samsung would begin accepting cryptocurrency payments for its products in a select group of Baltic countries, specifically Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. CopPay would be handling the transactions for their products. Samsung would accept the following cryptocurrencies in for the purchases of their products: Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, Dash, NEM, and Steem.
This move could have made sense, as Samsung has expressed interest in cryptocurrencies in the past. In January 2018, Samsung announced that it would begin to produce cryptocurrency mining chips. Their Q4 earnings report confirmed that the demand for mining chips was increasing and it was greatly boosting their profits. Samsung has also expressed interest in Blockchain technology for tracking global shipments worth tens of billion of dollars a year. They expect it could also cut shipping costs by as much as 20 percent.
CopPay said, “There is a growing trend toward business digitalisation and allowing customers to pay for goods and services in cryptocurrency, whether at global retailers or local restaurants”. This latest move may be a test designed by Samsung to see how effectively these cryptocurrency payments work out. If this project goes well for the aforementioned countries, who knows how far Samsung will expand it cryptocurrency acceptance”.
Alas, fake news can be a problem with any form of information distribution; not just politics. With CopPay being the perpetrators of this fake news, it is worth thinking about what they have to gain. I had not heard about them until this story first broke, so I’m sure that this was the case for many others as well. A story of them partnering with one of the biggest companies in the world would be sure to generate a lot of attention for them, which it did.
However, I could give CopPay the benefit of the doubt. It is unlikely, but maybe a partnership is actually in the works, but CopPay got too excited and announced it before they were supposed to, which forced Samsung to deny involvement. This theory would allow for the possibility of a deal in the future, but really who knows at this point.
For now, keep your eyes on CopPays’s Medium page, as this seems to be the main path of communication from them to the public.
