Coinbase Expands the Earn Program to Over 100 Additional Countries

The role of the Coinbase company in the crypto markets has been long and well-established established. The company is no longer known just as one of the safest and most trustworthy digital wallets for cryptocurrency storage, but a multi-faced crypto business spanning the globe. Its services are numerous and its clients number millions across the continents.

In fact, the company celebrated its 25 million user mark and at one point in 2018 to keep adding over 25,000 new users per day. Recently, the company once again came into the crypto headlines, but this time with a new angle on the crypto market that is in many was still completely fresh – earning low amounts of cryptocurrencies for completing education tasks about the same ventures. Here is what Coinbase Earn program means for the company, but also the world, especially its poorer nations.

Massive Expansion

The users from UK, US, most of the EU, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and South Korea are just some of those who can sign up and earn cryptocurrency for learning about blockchain and crypto tech. Coinbase announced the big expansion using a blog post and provided over 100 countries where it is offering these services. Coinbase Earn started working in December 2018 with the plan of rewarding users in different cryptocurrencies for a series of educational tasks.

These include watching videos on blockchain and cryptocurrency systems and taking quizzes about the same ventures. The idea behind the program is to expand the domain of attaining cryptocurrencies from mining to their buying it to today’s option of earning it. This way, people can also get a chance to further learn about the blockchain technology as well.

Crypto on Offer

It could be expected that the cryptocurrency rewards come in the form of bitcoin. After all, the original Earn.com platform used this cryptocurrency for its reward system. However, Coinbase Earn program does not involve any bitcoin payments. Instead, it offers rewards in 0x or the ZRX token that was the only available at the start of the program in 2018. Since then, the offer has grown to stellar lumens XLM and the zcash or ZEC. The supported digital currencies include the Brave’s basic attention token or BAT that is used inside of this crypto browsers.

The company stated that more tokens will be available soon and presented to the users. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the way Earn and other systems used to airdrop new tokens that came out after ICOs, but in this case, the existing currencies will be used. The same is a sensible move, especially on the count that the ICO phenomena have dwindled a lot after the Chinese ban and the general knowledge that many initial coin offerings had been fraudulent.

However, for anyone to get a chance to join the program, they must first have their identity checked using some kind of a valid ID. This is likely due to the desire of the Coinbase and other interested parties to put down any issues to a minimum. Otherwise, with rewards that are in the tens of USD, there is a certainty that many would try to scam the system with multiple accounts, all with the purpose of getting the same cash in any currency they can.

Natural Alliance

CEO and co-founder of Brave, Brendan Eich said that the cooperation between the two entities is completely expected. According to him, Coinbase Earn, just like Brave, removes intermediaries and many other inefficiencies that the users can attain the maximal benefit. For him, it is very exciting to see the company expand its reach globally and attract even more users to become involved in some manner with digital assets.

Jed McCaleb, the co-founder of the Stellar Development Foundation said that Earn initially helped with the expansion of the Stellar network. Of course, it goes without saying that all of the connected entities are also benefits from that boost in engagement. Brave, in particular, will be defined in its early open phase by its active user community. If the browser and the coin it uses fail to get these there will be no chance for it to succeed later on. In this sense, Brave and Stella are not that different from esports and many other digital-first ventures.

Big Money

According to the Coinbase, the number of funds that will be available will be over $100 million in different cryptocurrencies. Earlier in May, Balaji S. Srinivasan, the founder of Earn.com stated that the company managed to finalize its integration with Coinbase that closed a deal worth about $200 million. Obviously, the sums in the question are not small.

Even if they are dosed through the users through some means that limits the amounts that individuals “students” can attain, it is still a big amount of digital cash that will be handed out. More importantly, it would cover a range of countries, many of which are located in developing or even underdeveloped nations.

Using Crypto Funds

The scheme sounds more than fair for anyone who is looking to both earn cryptocurrency and learn more about them. However, as with Earn.com, the basic premise remains the same – can anyone really create an ecosystem for a cryptocurrency which is not one of the big ones by airdropping funds? So far, there have been few experiments in this domain that have proven to be a big success.

At the present moment, it simply seems that the money involved is not sufficient enough to attain this possibility and that it is distributed too fast to make this possible. For example, a person in an underdeveloped country will keep onto the $100 in BTC or use them fast, almost regardless of where the same individual lives. But, if the person has $15 in XLM and $5 ZRX, are these options the same?

Most likely they are not and only a fraction will go to the effort to exchange these for ETH or BTC. Even then, chances are that the person in question does not have a regular bank account where it could get fiat cash for the same crypto.

On the other hand, for the users from the developed nations, even $20 in BTC is not a big deal and any other crypto is more than likely to stay in their Coinbase wallet, unused. This looks great for the said company and its user numbers, of course, but it does little for the wider ecosystem at least in the short-to-mid term.

Source: CoinDesk