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 difficulty, these puzzles require significant computational resources, which is why miners usually rely on specialized hardware solutions to make the process more efficient. These puzzles also consume a lot of electricity. In…

This story continues at The Next Web