In a surprise move Coinbase has announced that it’s going to be giving away more than $100 million worth of Stellar Lumens (XLM) to users who participate in its Earn program. A generous gift to the cryptocurrency community or a shrewd move to increase demand for the protocol, it’s hard to say. In either case, here is how the program works.

The Coinbase Earn Program

In order to receive the Stellar Lumens a user will have to watch five videos about the Stellar protocol. These videos are short and can be watched in under an hour. After that there will be several quizzes and once these are passed the user will be granted their Stellar Lumens.

Currently the offer is only available to residents of the United States. However, Coinbase has said that it will be making the offer available to international users in the future. Presumably this will happen within the next couple of months.

How Much Can You Earn?

While a lot of outlets are reporting a figure of $50 this is somewhat misleading. By watching the videos and completing the quizzes a user can earn $10. From there they have the option to earn up to $40 more, however, in order to do so they have to send out referral links. Once someone else completes the videos and quizzes the referrer will earn their bonus.

Viewed from this light the Coinbase Earn program can be interpreted as a push to sign up new users as much as anything else. Still, they are giving away cryptocurrency and that’s not a bad deal.

Why Stellar?

Stellar Lumens is the latest cryptocurrency to be added to the Coinbase platform and it appears that they’re trying to boost sales and draw attention to the listing. In addition, it’s an economical choice. Coinbase is not actually buying all of this Stellar at spot prices. Instead, the Stellar Development Foundation has provided the currency.

The Stellar Development Foundation is a nonprofit organization that has been set up and funded in order to promote use of the Stellar blockchain, educate users about its benefits and generally provide for development of the Stellar protocol.

Coinbase Earn

For users looking to earn some cryptocurrency Stellar is not the only option. Coinbase Earn also has options for Zcash, BAT and 0x. Including the referral links, however, the Stellar Lumens offer is by far the most generous. Hopefully this giveaway pays off, people get some free cryptocurrency and the ecosystem grows as more people learn about the benefits of XLM.

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