Telecommunications company Telx Technologies has announced the launch of a SIM card which can be used to transact cryptocurrencies via SMS. The agenda behind the project is to enable people to send money internationally without the need for a smartphone, Internet connection or wallet app/address. According to Telx, its launch will be the world’s first such SIM card used for this purpose.
Super excited to announce the launch of Telx!
Send crypto via SMS with the first cryptocurrency sim card and phone number wallet.
Read more about the Telx sim here:https://t.co/KmlF84h1MW
— Telx (@telx_tech) August 22, 2019
Telx seems to be catering to the non-technical audience in the cryptocurrency community and claims to be providing services in over 180 countries. Using telecommunications towers, Telx’s SIM will not rely on ISPs to facilitate transactions between users, supporting trades in Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, Zcash, and Bitcoin Cash.
Instead of using long wallet addresses, Telx’s solution is to use a phone number to identify parties involved in a transaction. Telx has a list of commands on its website that can be used with a Telx SIM card via SMS to manage and trade cryptocurrencies. Through the hardware SIM card, Telx claims to ensure that only those transactions sent by the user’s unique SIM will be acknowledged.
Telx claims to use a third-party multisig wallet provider that will impose a small fee on each transaction, while Bitgo for wallet services will impose a 0.10% fee on all transactions. Founder and CEO Mark Penovisch had this to say about the launch,
“Our goal at Telx is to natively embed peer to peer transactions into the world’s most widely used communication method, SMS messaging.”
However, few questions remain. For starters, Telx Technologies seems to be a very new company with no obvious record of business with other entities. Also, the link to its Privacy Policy page generates a 404 error. A cached version of the page, last updated on January 9, 2019, can be visited here.
Another interesting thing to be noted is that Telx claims to be actively providing services in countries like Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Nepal and even China, countries where the sale and trading of cryptocurrencies is illegal.
