Jason Davis/Getty Images
- Bitcoin millionaire Erik Finman has big hopes for his conservative-friendly Freedom Phone.
- “I see it absolutely as one of the ultimate political tools,” Finman told The New York Times.
- The Freedom Phone “does everything your current phone does, except censor you and spy on you,” Finman has said.
This 22-year-old, self-described world’s youngest Bitcoin millionaire has big hopes for his newly launched Freedom Phone – a smartphone designed for conservatives that “does everything your current phone does, except censor you and spy on you.”
“I see it absolutely as one of the ultimate political tools,” Erik Finman said of his Freedom Phone with American flag branding in a recent interview with The New York Times published Monday. “Everyone has one in their pocket.”
The $499.99 device comes with apps for conservative-friendly social media platforms like Rumble and Parler – which has been banned by tech giants Apple, Google, and Amazon – already pre-loaded onto the phone.
In a video posted to Twitter in July, Finman announced the launching of the phone, which he called, in a tweet, "the first major pushback on the Big Tech companies that attacked us - for just thinking different."
-ERIK FINMAN (@erikfinman) July 14, 2021
"I made it in Silicon Valley and I accomplished a lot in my life already, but now I'm leaving Big Tech to fight for free speech because the Big Tech overlords are violating your privacy, censoring your speech, and I think thats so wrong," Finman said in the less than three-minute video, which has been viewed more than 1.8 million times.
"That's why I created the Freedom Phone and its uncensorable app store," Finman said, as he claimed, "Freedom Phone truly is the best phone in the world. It does everything your current phone does, except censor you and spy on you."
In the infomercial video, Finman discussed how former President Donald Trump was banned from platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
"Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg [Facebook CEO] banned MLK [Martin Luther King Jr.] or Abraham Lincoln," Finman said in the clip. "The course of history would have been altered forever."
In the aftermath of the phone's launch, Finman soon had thousands of orders for the device, according to the NYT.
Finman, who teamed up with the Utah-based firm called ClearCellular to create the phone, told the news outlet that he had orders for about 12,000 Freedom Phones, generating around $6 million in revenue in about seven weeks.
In its report, the NYT noted that other news outlets had quickly reported that the Freedom Phone "was based on a low-cost handset from Umidigi, a Chinese manufacturer that had used chips shown to be vulnerable to hacks."
Finman did admit Umidigi made the phone, but he said he was "100%" positive that it was more secure than the iPhone, according to the NYT.
The NYT reported that in order to make the phone, Finman did have to rely on Google software, so he hired engineers to pull any remnants of Google from the software and stock it conservative-leaning apps and news sites like Newsmax and One America News.
The software was then uploaded on the phones that Finman purchased from China, according to the NYT.