No Free Lunches: Stellar Lumens Giveaway and the Price of Identity
I got a surprise this morning when I checked my Bittrex account; I had received a few Stellar Lumens (XLM).
I had no idea how or why I had them, so I checked out the Cryptocurrency Collectors Club to see if anyone else had experienced the same.
There had been a 16 billion XLM giveaway to all Bitcoin (BTC) holders on 27th August (Ripple, too). Strange, there's no such thing as a free lunch, right?
I had previously had no experience trading or holding XLM, and this struck me as suspicious.
Bittrex was one of the exchanges that had agreed to automatically credit its users' balances. Individuals, however, actually had to claim their free XLM manually.
I checked out the official blog article (https://www.stellar.org/blog/bitcoin-claim-lumens-2/), just to be sure.
The claim process involved having to reveal your identity (via Facebook) and provide your BTC address and sign a displayed message.
For each Bitcoin you have, you could claim around 10 USD of XLM. The price to reveal your identity?
What is the incentive for XLM? What would the project get in return?
Surely, increasing the number of XLM holders - who would most likely immediately sell their giveaway - and in doing so reduce the price was not in the interest of XLM.
What does the Steemit community think?
Was this merely a gesture of goodwill, or is something else going on. I look forward to any insight you may have!
This has been sold as a means of distributing their token. Bitcoin used mining 9and still does) as the initial means to distribute the token. Ethereum used the presale coupled with mining. Stellar claim they are issuing tokens to individuals who hold bitcoin as they are proven crypto users etc. I thought of dumping mine (and did with some) but after looking into Lumens, they seem to be one of the better alts so I am hanging onto a few. Maybe that was partly the idea!
Thanks for your comment. I guess I just approach this kind of thing with a healthy degree of scepticism but it certainly is a legitimate means of distributing the token. I must admit I haven't sold the handful of XLM I was given. As to the identity question, people reveal their identities in connection with crypto all the time when they use an exchange that requires ID checks, or when they simply talk about crypto on social media...
Thank you so much for the clarification @ljd91, I was super confused! Though someone had sent some lumens to the wrong address , ending up at my account .😂
Thanks for the info. I too was confused when I saw I had some XLM in my Bittrex account.