Initiative Q and Blockchain.com Airdrop! What are they about?

Hello Steemians! Today I am going to share 2 giveaways that are making waves on social media and the cryptocurrency space. Before I get to the details, I will like to warn that these giveaways promise rewards in the future and you will not get the payouts immediately. At this stage, they are still highly dubious. Therefore, if you are keen to register, I highly recommend you to use a dummy email address. In addition, in cases where you need to provide a password, please use a randomized unique password.

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Initiative Q

"Initiative Q" is an interesting initiative which aims to build a fast and efficient payment system. In order to do that, they proposed a new global currency named "Q", which will be the currency used in the payment system that they are building. A brief summary is as below,

Initiative Q is an attempt by ex-PayPal guys to create a new payment system instead of credit cards that were designed in the 1950s. The system uses its own currency, the Q, and to get people to start using the system once it's ready they are allocating Qs for free to people that sign up now (the amount drops as more people join - so better to join early). Signing up is free and they only ask for your name and an email address. There's nothing to lose but if this payment system becomes a world leading payment method your Qs can be worth a lot. If you missed getting bitcoin seven years ago, you wouldn't want to miss this.

If you prefer to watch a video, here you go:

"Initiative Q" positions themselves as an social experiment. They would like to know how many people are interested to join their payment network. By doing so, they will be solving the "chicken and egg" problem whereby consumers will be waiting for merchant adoption before they are willing to use the network while merchants are also waiting for consumers to adopt first.

Through this giveaway, "Initiative Q" first secures the consumers and with that, merchants will naturally follow. According to the team, they are only collecting email addresses and your name to register you to the network. After which, you will be provided a sum of "Q" which may have value in the future.

It is also important to note that while they compare themselves with Bitcoin, "Initiative Q" is not a cryptocurrency. It is likely to be built as a centralized payment network with its own currency. In addition, there is no technological development as of now. And they claim that they will start hiring the necessary specialists to build the network once they get millions of people to sign up.

Potential Risks on "Initiative Q"

"Initiative Q" is currently an empty promise of a payment network and future adoption. They project 1 "Q" to be worth 1 USD in the future and their network might be worth trillions of dollars. It all sound too good to be true. But they are only requesting for your email address and name, what can you lose you might ask?

Firstly, there is a chance that this is an elaborated mass email and password harvesting scam. There are still many people who use the same password across different applications. By registering an account with "Initiative Q" you need to provide an email address and a password. If you are guilty of that, with the registered password, they can potentially compromise your other accounts. Furthermore, these information can be sold in the black market for some money and if millions of users register, I am sure it is still worth something.

Second, they could be selling your "profile". By registering an account, you are likely to be profiled as someone who will fall for "get rich quick" scams. "Initiative Q" may not be a scam on its own, but they can email you future scam mails to phish some money from you. Again, if they do not do it themselves, they can always sell this mailing list for some money.

Personally, I have signed up with a dummy email address and a random password. Doing so reduces my risk by a fair bit, making it worthwhile to give it a try for potentially something valuable in the future. After signing up, you will get an invitation link to invite 5 more people. If you are interested, do contact me via discord and I can extend the invitation to you.

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Blockchain.com XLM Airdrop

Blockchain.com is staging the biggest airdrop in history by give away $125 million worth of Stellar Lumens (XLM)! By registering your email address, you will be on the waiting list and potentially, you can get $25 worth of XLM. It is not a lot, but it is certainly worth it to spend 2 minutes registering.

Blockchain.com is a crypto company founded in 2011 with the mission to push for mass cryptocurrencies adoption. I checked out their products and services, and interestingly, they are offering web/hardware wallets and institutional advice/crypto asset management. Furthermore, they are also a crypto data provider and developers can make use of their APIs to access crypto data.

Potential Risks on Blockchain.com XLM Airdrop

Personally, I do not think there is much of a risk here. Again, they can certainly sell your email addresses for a bit of money but they are a rather established company with 7 years of history and have actual users and products. Hence, I doubt that is their objective. Moreover, they are giving away Stellar Lumens, which is an established cryptocurrency. Overall, there is very little incentive for this to be a scam and I think it is quite safe to register. I will still recommend using a dummy email address though as they will likely be sending some pesky marketing mails later on.

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Conclusion

Both the "Initiative Q" and Blockchain.com Airdrop are giving away easy money. "Initiative Q" seems too good to be true and is highly dubious in my opinion. But with a dummy email address and a random password, I think it is a risk worth taking. As for the Blockchain.com Airdrop, I think it is not a scam and safe to register.

What do you think of these giveaways? Have you heard of them before reading this post and will you be registering for them? If you find this post useful, please give it an upvote and give me a follow. Thanks for reading!

Projects/Services I am working on:

• Steem-Oracle Project
• Byteball to Steem conversion service

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