4 min read
Listen up, kids! A cryptocurrency exchange called OKCoin will next month pour $100,000 of free STX tokens from the skies.
If you’re well-behaved, don’t defraud it, and promise to use the money for crypto stuff, OKCoin might give an extra $500,000 to $1,000,000 later in the year to you and your kin. If you’re really good, OKCoin may give even more.
OKCoin’s announcement comes the day after Blockstack, the company that created Stacks (STX) tokens, said that STX wouldn’t be considered a security after the launch of its new blockchain on January 14, and thus US exchanges, such as San Francisco-based OKCoin, could finally list it, a year after its $23 million ICO (which received the blessing of the SEC).
So, sign up for its waitlist and pray very hard that the US Securities and Exchanges won’t sue OKCoin for distributing Stacks tokens to US users, and starting around January 20 the exchange may drop a little something in your wallet.
In the first wave, most will receive between $25-50 worth of Stacks tokens from a pool of about $65,000-$75,000. At least three will receive $5,000, and one will receive $10,000. It’ll take a maximum of 90 days to give away the money.
At the front of the line are the first people to sign up for its mailing list. OKCoin will aggressively market the airdrop to Stacks Discord and Telegram chats.
At the back of the line are South-East Asians, who will receive less; they’re in OKCoin’s bad books after fraudsters from the region tried to scam Blockchain.com out of its $125 million Stellar airdrop in 2018.
Haider Rafique, currently OKCoin’s CMO, masterminded Blockchain.com’s airdrop, and told Decrypt that he will not waste his time rooting out scammers this time around.
“The key learning I had was like, it's not that easy to give money away. Which is something I never thought I'd say,” said Rafique.
So behave. Rafique will only tip the second pot of STX tokens from the heavens if he’s satisfied that people aren’t ripping him off or selling their Stacks tokens as soon as possible.
“We’re really excited about the technology,” he said, and the crypto exchange expects those who receive the free STX coins to be really excited about the tech too. If 20-30% stake STX on OKCoin and the whole thing doesn’t blow up in flames, he’ll think about giving away more money. That phase will take “at the bare minimum of six months to get done.”
And a third phase? “TBD. I wouldn't say there would be a third phase at the moment. Of course, if the performance of this deployment goes really well, we will want to negotiate that with the STX team.”
OKCoin is the first US exchange to announce its support for STX. US exchanges held off listing the token because it constituted a security under US law. The SEC could chase after them.
Yesterday, Blockstack published a memorandum from a US law firm that had concluded that STX would not be considered a security (i.e. an investment vehicle) after the launch of the Stacks 2.0 blockchain, since the network would become sufficiently decentralized.
This is because Blockstack PBC would hand over the keys to a non-profit (headed by a former Blockstack employee) and would not run any nodes.
“The transfer of the STX token to the non-profit foundation in August, planned control of the 2.0 mainnet launch by the mining community in January, and significant upgrades to the protocol have lowered the likelihood that STX version 2.0 could be considered a security under US Securities Law and solidified our support for this new asset on OKCoin,” Megan Monroe-Coleman, OKCoin's Chief Compliance Officer, told Decrypt.
Signups for the airdrop are open. But if planning on messing around, you’ll spoil things for everyone.
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