In brief:
- Billionaire Tim Draper's venture studio is giving away $1 million in Bitcoin to attendees of LA blockchain week.
- eToro has also pledged to provide free tickets to the event.
- The giveaways are an attempt to drum up adoption for Bitcoin.
The venture studio of Bitcoin bull and billionaire Tim Draper is giving away $1 million in Bitcoin to attendees of the Los Angeles blockchain summit in October.
While crypto "giveaways" tend to raise immediate red flags, this one seems legit.
According to the LA blockchain summit, every single attendee will receive $100 from Draper's blockchain-centric venture capital, Draper Goren Holm. The venture capital studio told Bloomberg he is prepared to give out more than $1 million in total, in an attempt to spark critical mass for crypto.
"There is currently no limit but we hope to hit $1 million in Bitcoin given away," Alon Goren, founding partner at Draper Goren Holm, told Decrypt, adding, "We decided to do this for one main and simple reason. The best way to learn about Bitcoin is to own some and to use some and to see its power firsthand"
"After we give everyone the BITCOIN we are going to provide them with tutorials on how to spend it, how to save it, how to send it to family members on the other side of the world, how to invest it, etc..." he said.
Draper bought 30,000 Bitcoin in an auction in 2013 from US authorities, paying just $19 million. That amount of Bitcoin is now worth $288 million today.
The event, which is set to kick off on October 6, has witnessed 1,000 sign ups so far. However, organizers expect over 20,000 attendees.
It's not just Bitcoin on the table, either. Trading platform eToro is offering a free ticket to the event. There are only a couple of provisos. You must live in the US, sign up to eToro as a new customer, and buy at least $50 of any crypto on eToro. Still—for those eligible—the combined offers guarantees both a free ticket and at least $50 in assets.
These adoption tactics aren't anything new in crypto. In 2010, developer Gavin Andresen devised the bitcoin faucet—a rewards system that dispenses bitcoin for simple tasks. The idea was to drum up interest in Bitcoin via incentivization. In the early days, the faucet paid out an inconceivable five bitcoin per person—a current USD equivalent of almost $50,000.
But as Bitcoin fees increased, the faucets ended up costing more money than they were handing out, and have since disappeared.
This article has been updated with comments from Alon Goren.