August 14th, 2019 at 7:04 am UTC · 3 min read
There are a lot of opportunities to earn freebies in crypto – even by not actually doing anything to earn them in the first place.
Many popular cryptocurrencies have eagerly distributed their tokens for free: both to existing holders and to new ones. During the early days of Bitcoin there were numerous, and well-known, ways to get a few satoshis for free. In 2017-2018, during the boom of new crypto projects, some issuers distributed their tokens through airdrops. Others rewarded their loyal holders with additional payouts from the pools of investors they were bringing in.
On top of that, people interested in passive income have always been able to earn cryptocurrency via cloud mining or masternodes leasing. Those were the good ole days… If money didn’t grow on trees, it was growing in your cryptocurrency account. With those days gone, it begs the question:
Good news, crypto enthusiasts. Of course there are new ways to earn crypto without taking on a boat load of risk!
We recently came across a brand new opportunity to do so. It’s called the swap bonus.
What’s a swap bonus?
Well, consider this: some projects these days are busy upgrading their ERC-20 smart contracts because many of these smart contracts are outdated. Let’s say a token was released in 2017; a lot has changed in the industry since then, let alone in the smart-contract itself.
Some bugs have been discovered and new opportunities for project development are making the smart contract update a necessity. With the necessity for upgrades and project fixes, crypto projects are deploying a new smart contract and swapping the tokens on old, existing wallets to newer ones, issued on the new smart contract. Some projects are rewarding their token holders during the snapshot day.
For example, a token called Kick, which has been around for 2 years, announced its smart contract upgrade will be supported by a tokens swap. Those who keep the tokens on their personal wallets will have a chance to receive bonuses, which can be as high as 150% for people who keep a considerable amount of Kick coins in their personal wallets.
Why are companies doing this, given the fact that a project does not really earn money in doing so? It’s because this type of transaction can increase the number of token holders and works better than other free distribution tools because if someone had invested in the project as an early supporter, they deserve to be rewarded much more than those who came in later.
Also worth noting for token issuer, the swap can be a good chance to recalculate the number of token holders, since many of them hold their funds on various exchanges. This activity is good opportunity to make them withdraw funds and become more visible to the token issuers.
The question is whether there will similar swap activity by other projects like Kick? The opportunities for both the core team and the token holders seems to be promising. It’s a good accounting of the investor base. And it’s a good opportunity to increase one’s crypto portfolio simply by holding a certain amount on a personal wallet instead of an exchange, without any trading and no risky investment.