Crypto Wallet Firm Blockchain To Airdrop $125 million In Stellar Lumens To Users

Bitcoin wallet provider Blockchain said it will give away $125 million worth of cryptocurrency in the largest ever cryptocurrency “airdrop.” CEO Peter Smith said Tuesday on the company website Blockchain will give away Stellar Lumens tokens to its 30 million customers as part of adding Steller Lumens token to its listings.

"There are so many ways we could say thank you to our 30M ... Wallet users - but we narrowed it down to 125 million. Starting today, in celebration of adding full support for XLM [steller lumens token] in the Blockchain Wallet, we’ll begin giving away $125,000,000 of Stellar (XLM) to YOU, our users," Smith said in the statement.

Airdrop is the process where a cryptocurrency business distributes cryptocurrency tokens to the wallets of some users free of charge. It's usually carried out by blockchain-based startups to kick-start their cryptocurrency projects. Also, established blockchain-based companies like cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet services carry out airdrops.

"We’re thrilled to announce SDF’s largest lumen distribution to date: an up-to-500 million XLM distribution to users of leading digital asset wallet provider, Blockchain. This airdrop will put the Stellar name and technology in front of Blockchain’s 30 million account holders, and will bring many new users into our ecosystem," Stellar said.

This crypto giveaway is by far the biggest crypto airdrop."The purpose is to dramatically speed up adoption of the Stellar Lumens platform," Blockchain CEO Peter Smith told Yahoo Finance UK. Blockchain company provides cryptocurrency digital wallets for retail investors around the world. Customers have to verify their wallets with Blockchain to become eligible for the giveaway, which started Tuesday and would last for six months.

Stellar Development Foundation, the non-profit that created and promotes the currency, would provide the cryptocurrency for the airdrop. The currency was cofounded by Jed McCaleb, also the founder of Mt. Gox and co-founder of Ripple network, In 2014 McCaleb started Stellar as a crypto-powered platform intended to make cross-currency and cross-border money transfers easier and cheaper.

“We believe that airdrops are central to creating a more inclusive digital economy. Giving away lumens for free is an invitation to communities to design the services they need,” said McCaleb. Blockchain said that it isn't investing anything for this arrangement, rather that Stellar is utilizing its platform as a vehicle to distribute the lumen currency.

“The folks at Stellar, including Jeb, are really mission-driven and what they want to see is the adoption of their protocol. We’ve been approached by a lot of projects. I think the last I checked it was up to about 40. We were immediately drawn to stellar because of their mission. We’re at Blockchain to create a community driven and controlled financial system.” said Peter Smith.

Smith added that the by performing the airdrop, Blockchain would give its customers more utility by way of introducing "high-quality coins," in this case, Stellar Lumens. The company also expects the giveaway will accelerate growth in its wallet downloads.

Smith cited the example of PayPal, which has revealed paying early customers to use its product. Elon Musk, PayPal cofounder, had said the company spent as much as $70m on referral fees in its early years.“It certainly worked. This is probably, adjusted for inflation, about the same level,” Smith said when he cited the Paypal example.

Stellar is ranked sixth by market capitalization of $4 billion. It has increased by 15.51 percent from last week and the price at present is $0.258 (12:39 a.m Wednesday EST). Stellar was at its peak Jan. 4 when its price touched $0.864 and market cap was $25 billion, as tracked by CoinMarketCap.