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About 45 million Americans currently owe a combined total of $1.56 trillion in student loan debt, according to Lending Tree’s Student Loan Hero. Many are willing to do just about anything to finally be rid of it.
How about joining a blockchain network?
Blockstack, the company behind the decentralized computing network by the same name, today announced the launch of its “Delete Your Debt” campaign. The clever marketing gimmick is designed to entice young college graduates into signing up for a free Blockstack ID at deleteyourdebt.co.
Every week over the next four weeks, Blockstack will randomly select an entrant in its Delete Your Debt contest to receive up to $60,000 to pay off their student debt. Of course, if you went to a school like New York University (NYU), Harvard or USC, $60,000 probably won’t be enough to set you free. But it’s a nice start.
Participants can also increase their chances of winning by tweeting about the contest or referring their friends, according to Blockstack’s announcement. So get those tweeting fingers ready!
Founded in 2013 and based in New York City, Blockstack aims to create a “privacy-centric network” by returning “online data ownership” to those who utilize its blockchain. The company’s motto, “Can’t be evil,” is another clever bit of marketing—a play on Google’s forsaken “Don’t be evil” maxim.
The network’s #DeleteYourDebt campaign is designed to relieve people from excessive monetary burdens and “unleash their full potential,” according to Blockstack.
“By helping to free students from crippling, sometimes decades-long debt,” Blockstack CEO Muneeb Ali said in a statement, “Blockstack hopes to inspire a movement among our communities and beyond, to take further action on finding new alternatives to career building and unlocking human potential, free from abusive third parties and intermediaries.”
“Paying off student loan debt not only makes sense for Blockstack’s core belief of a life free from corporate control,” he said, “but it is also an initiative that I would have loved to participate in as a struggling computer science student.”
Blockstack is perhaps best known for its historic, ICO-like token sale, which the company completed earlier this year. After receiving approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the first blockchain company to achieve such a feat, Blockstack went on to raise $23 million through the sale of its Stack (STX) tokens to investors in the U.S. and abroad.