The Stellar team has been actively distributing XLM tokens to Bitcoin holders for some time now. Right now, their second airdrop is almost coming to an end. The original target was to distribute 16 billion XLN across different exchanges, Bitcoin owners, and Ripple holders. This giveaway started on June 27th and will finish in around 24 hours. Anyone who still hasn’t claimed their XLM should do so as soon as possible. Getting free of money – even small amounts – should never be overlooked by any means.
It is always quite interesting to take note of cryptocurrency-related airdrops. The Stellar team is doing things on a very broad scale these days. Last year, they gave away 19 billion XLM to Bitcoin and Ripple holders. That number of coins represent 19% of the total Stellar Lumen supply, mind you. The second airdrop sees another 16 billion XLM handed out to users free of charge. This means around 35% of the entire supply is now in the hands of the masses.
Make Sure to Claim Your Free Stellar Lumens
A lot of people are still confused as to why the team is doing this. This project is designed to rival Ripple, to a certain degree. By taking some inspiration from Bitcoin, the goal was to create a group of untrusted parties and have them agree on a common database. Stellar initially generated all of its coin supply and is now distributing it to cryptocurrency users in quick succession. This gets XLM in the hands of many people without subtracting from its actual value. Although most beneficiaries will dump coins across exchanges, there will be holders as well. After all, the XLM value increased after the previous airdrop.
This latest airdrop will conclude tomorrow, on August 27th. Instructions for the claiming process can be found in this blog post. Any unclaimed XLM will be donated to Stellar’s operating fund and the Build Challenge. It is important to note residents in certain US states are automatically ineligible for this airdrop due to regulatory concerns. This affects New York, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Connecticut residents. Some countries are also “blacklisted”, including Iran and North Korea. Not entirely surprising, but still worth pointing out to avoid any confusion.
It is good to see more XLM being brought into circulation. After all, the company hopes to bring their technology to the financial sector sooner or later. To do so, they must ensure the average cryptocurrency user knows what Stellar is and give them some coins. Considering how there are 100 billion XLM in total, these airdrops only represent a small amount of all tokens. Still, it is always good to successfully diversify your portfolio. Holding on to these Lumens can prove to be quite lucrative in a few years from now.
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