The Offer

Direct Link to Offer

• Blockchain the cryptocurrency wallet provider is offering $25 worth of XLM for signing up and verifying your identity.

The Fine Print

• Offer available until XLM giveaway supply is depleted.
• Limit 1 XLM giveaway per person, unless participating in any bonus activities. A person can receive the XLM in only 1 Blockchain Wallet.
• XLM is provided on a first come first rewarded basis, with priority for those with the oldest, completed (i.e., accounts with a verified email address) Blockchain Wallets.
• Participants must have an eligible account, be willing to verify their identity, and reside in an eligible market or jurisdiction (see list here). See Terms of Service.
  • The list excludes the following states: Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, and Washington.

Deal Thoughts

Some of the Risks

Personal Information Risk

Blockchain bills itself as “the most trusted and fastest growing crypto company”, but as Will highlights even the largest financial institutions are getting hacked daily.

Promotional Risk

My guess is Blockchain will stand behind the promotion given the big marketing push and the significant funding ($70M) that they have raised.

General Cryptocurrency Risk

There are all sorts of cryptocurrency risks – from your wallet (exchange) getting hacked to making a transaction error (generally there is no undo button or reversal mechanism), so trade out to fiat currency if you don’t feel comfortable holding cryptocurrency.

Value

$25 might not be worth it to you to verify your identity.

I’m not certain the extent of identity verification required for the promotion but probably at least the following:

• To link a bank account for trading I needed to provide name, address, SSN, and DOB
• To trade/exchange between cryptocurrencies I needed to upload a driver’s license or passport image

But it might offer some extra incentive to play around in the space, or perhaps if you are very long term bullish on crypto [though we would never recommend cryptocurrency (or anything else) as an investment].  Looks like around $25 is the going crypto signup rate (Voyager, …)

The offer also mention the potential of additional giveaways, but I wouldn’t expect significant additional value (though a little potential upside is always nice).  For instance the $125M airdrop sounds like a lot of money (and it is), but if you add a denominator to the equation like the number of wallets supported (30M), that’s only about $4 per wallet [number of wallets may be an irrelevant denominator, but it offers some perspective on scale].

Execution

Your bonus is expected in XLM (Stellar Lumens) which is a top 20 cryptocurrency by market cap.  Currently priced at about $0.25/XLM.

If you wanted to cash out to USD within the Blockchain Wallet interface it looks like you’ll need to follow a 2-step process:

• Trade XLM for BTC (Bitcoin)
• Sell your Bitcoin for USD

When you receive your XLM I don’t believe you’ll be locked into selling them within the Blockchain wallet so you could use other exchanges if you prefer [see How I Sold My Ripples for an example].

Last Few Words

I can’t claim to be a crypto specialist, more of a free money generalist … but always looking to find free money in any form it takes.

(HT: Coindesk)