I got a surprise this morning when I checked my Bittrex account; I had received a few Stellar Lumens (XLM).
I had no idea how or why I had them, so I checked out the Cryptocurrency Collectors Club to see if anyone else had experienced the same.
There had been a 16 billion XLM giveaway to all Bitcoin (BTC) holders on 27th August (Ripple, too). Strange, there's no such thing as a free lunch, right?
I had previously had no experience trading or holding XLM, and this struck me as suspicious.
Bittrex was one of the exchanges that had agreed to automatically credit its users' balances. Individuals, however, actually had to claim their free XLM manually.
I checked out the official blog article (https://www.stellar.org/blog/bitcoin-claim-lumens-2/), just to be sure.
The claim process involved having to reveal your identity (via Facebook) and provide your BTC address and sign a displayed message.
For each Bitcoin you have, you could claim around 10 USD of XLM. The price to reveal your identity?
What is the incentive for XLM? What would the project get in return?
Surely, increasing the number of XLM holders - who would most likely immediately sell their giveaway - and in doing so reduce the price was not in the interest of XLM.
What does the Steemit community think?
Was this merely a gesture of goodwill, or is something else going on. I look forward to any insight you may have!