1. Ripple / XRP

On May 10th, 2013 a cryptocurrency startup named Ripple announced a promotional give-away. Beta users would receive 1,000 XRP (Ripple) just for signing up to their mailing list.

Back then that 1,000 XRP was worth a few dollars. Like many other cryptocurrencies, the value of those coins has increased significantly. Today, that free 1,000 XRP is worth about $1,000 USD. Cha-ching!

How to find out if you own 1,000 XRP

If you don’t remember whether you signed up four years ago, it’s relatively simple to find out. Just search your email inbox for “ripple.com”. If you’re using Gmail you can click this handy link.

Here’s one of the emails I found:

Didn’t find any emails?

Skip to the next section (2. Stellar) to see if you own any of those.

Found the email? Great!

If you read closely you’ll notice that this email merely informs you that you’re elligble for the give-away. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like Ripple actually sent an email after you received the 1,000 XRP, so this is the closest thing we get to confirmation.

If you did receive this email however, I’d bet there’s a decent chance you participated and have 1,000 XRP sitting somewhere in an inactive account.

What’s next?

Ripple Trade, the service that initially hosted your “XRP wallet” containing the coins has been shut down. Unfortunately that complicates the process a bit, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

All you have to do is follow their instructions. You’ll need to migrate your old Ripple account to a new service called Gatehub. It’s all explained on Ripple’s official webpage: http://rippletrade.com/

Click the button “Migrate Wallet to Gatehub” to start the process.

You’ll be asked to create a new Gatehub account (assuming you don’t have one yet). After that you can follow the instructions to migrate your old Ripple account to Gatehub so you can access your coins.

Unfortunately I did this a few months ago and don’t remember the exact process anymore, but I think it was relatively straight forward. In my case I had to verify my identity first to activate my old Ripple.com account. I don’t recall why, but ultimately it worked.

If you’re having trouble signing in to Gatehub try a different browser. Safari didn’t work for me, but Google Chrome did. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here’s my Gatehub dashboard:

And here’s a screenshot of the Exchange showing how much the 1,000 XRP is currently worth: