Category Archives: Airdrop

How to Claim the Bitcore / Bitcoin ‘2nd Snapshot’ Airdrop

I’m a bit of a fan of Bitcore (BTX) as is clear from my BTX blogging history – largely, I confess, because it has so many airdrops! Who doesn’t like free coins?!

Airdrop (Image: NMUSAF/Wikimedia)
Airdrop (Image: NMUSAF/Wikimedia)

Less than a week after the last 25% airdrop on 30 October (based on how many BTX you own), there was another airdrop on 2 November (based on how many Bitcoin/BTC you own) – both taking place in parallel with the weekly 3% airdrops. It’s raining free Bitcore coins!

Naturally I claimed it. The process is covered fairly well in the official 2nd Snapshot description on Steemit. It is effectively a second version of the airdrop back in April that gave me my first BTX.

However, getting the private key to your BTC account as required by that description can be tricky, so here I’ll explain how to do it if you’re holding your Bitcoin in Electrum as per my previous posts.

To be eligible you need to have held Bitcoin on 2nd November in a wallet you control, i.e. one to which you have the private keys, and you will get 1 BTX for each 2 BTC. Log into your Electrum Wallet go to Wallet -> Private Keys -> Export, then enter your password and wait a few moments. Look for the address containing your Bitcoin in the left column and copy the private key from that right column:

Electrum Export Private Keys screen (Image: BIUK)
Electrum Export Private Keys screen (Image: BIUK)

It’s this key that you paste into the Bitcore Wallet console as described in the Steemit description linked above. Note, as ever, as soon as you have exposed a private key you may have compromised your wallet security (you can see in the screenshot to be safe I had already moved out my Bitcoin from the wallet before making the claim). At this point, if you want to be completely safe, you should wipe the wallet before using it again.

Anyway, that’s it done – the new BTX should appear in your Bitcore Wallet straight away if it works, otherwise check that you used the correct location address for your BTC on 2nd November.

It worked for me – my 5.8 BTC gave me 2.7 more BTX, so in total currently worth about $50/£40 – not a bad freebie!

Bitcore 2nd Snapshot (Image: BIUK)
Bitcore 2nd Snapshot (Image: BIUK)

Airdrop Tidy-up

I have registered for loads of airdrops recently, so many that I have not done a very good job of keeping track of them. Often they are barely worth the trouble of claiming so last weekend I decided to take stock.

I knew I had received EtherDoge (eDoge) and iBTC coins so I decided just to dump them as I couldn’t see any long term value in either of them. They are both Ethereum based so I headed to EtherDelta.

First to go was iBTC. Here you can see I had received 3312 iBTC in my attached Ether wallet:

iBTC balance on EtherDelta (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
iBTC balance on EtherDelta (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

I deposited them into EtherDelta and was pleasantly surprised that I was able to sell them for 0.116 Ether:

Selling iBTC (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Selling iBTC (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

That’s worth about £27 so not bad for a complete freebie.

Next I offloaded my eDOGE. My impressive 5 million eDOGE, however, turned out to be nothing like so valuable. They had almost no trading value and selling the lot only got me 0.005 ETH, or about £1!

Selling eDOGE (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Selling eDOGE (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

In fact it was worth than that, as it looks like the transaction cost me 0.02 ETH (45p) so wasn’t really worth the doing.

Never mind, I’m very pleased with the iBTC outcome.

Bitcore Airdrop arrived this week

I have been following Bitcore (symbol: BTX) for some months. It seems to be one of the more interesting new altcoins as it seems to have momentum. It has regular airdrops and community discussions which is more than most here-today-gone-tomorrow altcoins.

I first heard about it because it had an airdrop that allowed you to claim free Bitcore if you had Bitcoin in a private wallet on a specific date (26 April 2017). On that day I had 2.8 Bitcoin in my Ledger so I decided to claim. I assume this airdrop is still open so if you had some Bitcoin then you can still claim yourself.

The process is pretty straightforward – download and install a Bitcore Wallet from the Bitcore website as per the usual process (much like I detailed in How to Make a Bitcoin Wallet). You then need to sign a message using your Bitcoin Wallet to prove you own the Bitcoins, and then you register for the airdrop by providing the Receive address for your Bitcore Wallet, plus the message, on the Bitcore Airdrop page.

For me an additional complication was that my old Ledger Nano can’t sign messages so I had to import the account into Electrum and sign it there. I therefore didn’t make the claim until August.

From that original airdrop I received 2.8 BTX. They have held their value fairly constant at about $6 so that was worth $17 or about £13. Not as great as some airdrops (e.g. eBTC) but not bad.

I missed a trick, though, as Bitcore provides free airdrops weekly worth 3% of your current balance. That certainly beats the 1% per year you might get with a conventional fiat savings account! However, you only get the airdrop with a minimum balance of 10 BTX which, of course, I didn’t have.

Anyway, when I heard of proposed changes in BTX airdrops from 30 October I decided to do something about it. The airdrops would only be available to those who registered, but would start with a free 25% airdrop which seemed rather attractive. Therefore last week I bought £100 worth of BTX (so 19.77 BTX) – that brought my total to 22.6 which was more than enough.

I have covered the process of buying and transferring the BTX previously.

My reasoning was that £100 was enough to be worth doing – since I would get about £25 free for the effort of registering – and that I didn’t have the nerve to do what I maybe should have done. Which was buy £10000 worth of BTX and make £2500 overnight. Of course, the latter would have left me open to big losses if BTX devalued quickly.

Bitcore Wallet - recent transactions (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Bitcore Wallet – recent transactions (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Anyway, I’m pleased to report the free 25% BTX (5.64 BTX so worth about £30) has arrived in my wallet. And the price has remained relatively stable so I should really have bought much more…

I plan to keep hold of my BTX for some time (whereas I usually sell airdrops fast) because of the weekly airdrops I should now get. Of course, Bitcore know that’s what people will do and I credit them with coming up with a very clever way of keeping their currency stable and with significant value.

Upcoming Bitcore (BTX Airdrop)

There’s an airdrop coming up on 30 October for the Bitcore cryptocurrency (symbol BTX). This airdrop promises 25% on top of your BTX holding, followed by 3% per week. That’s pretty generous!

I have a small amount of BTX from a previous airdrop (which depended only on you holding some Bitcoin on 26 April this year – more details here). This time I’ve decided to go in bigger and buy some BTX ahead of the airdrop date.

Bitcore Homepage (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Bitcore Homepage (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

BTX is primarily traded on Cryptopia so I registered there and transferred some BTC from my Ledger to my new Cryptopia account. I decided to go for £100 (0.0238 BTC) so the 3% would be worth something.

Cryptopia Homepage (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Cryptopia Homepage (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Although it was the first time I used Cryptopia the deposit was easy to do:

Depositing Bitcoin to Cryptopia (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Depositing Bitcoin to Cryptopia (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

It went through smoothly, though it took nearly an hour.

I bought the Bitcore and transferred to it to my wallet (which only took about 10 minutes), to join the 2.8BTX already there from the previous airdrop:

Bitcore Wallet (BItcoin Investors UK)
Bitcore Wallet (BItcoin Investors UK)

I registered my wallet address following the excellent detailed instructions put out by Hashers. They also cover downloading and installing the Bitcore wallet if you don’t already have one.

My Bitcore is now ready sitting in my wallet, with the address registered with the Bitcore site for the airdrop. Now I just need to wait for the free Bitcore!

 

Current Airdrops – October 2017

There seem to be a lot of airdrops going on around now, so here’s my take on which ones are worth getting. My primary references for upcoming airdrops are BitcoinTalk and AirdropAlert.

If you do decide to join any, I’ve given a rundown of the basic process on my Airdrops page.

Airdrop (Image: TS J Harper/USAF)
Airdrop (Image: TS J Harper/USAF)

The following are the main Active Airdrops as listed on AirdropAlert (though they changed around even as this was being written):

Spectre (BT): Fairly popular (BT is up to 24 pages). No exchange or Whitepaper. Easy to register. Result: Tried to register, 1st airdrop complete, 2nd not yet open.

Etrust fund (BT): The coin supply is so large (1 trillion) I just can’t see this having any meaningful value. No exchanges listed or pending, no Whitepaper. Result: No action.

420 Tokes: Airdrop closed.

Copy Trader (BT): Has website and Whitepaper but no exchanges. You need to join their Telegram to comply. Result: No action.

Greenbit (BT): Not very popular (17 pages). No exchange or Whitepaper. Looks unprofessional. Result: No action.

eBTGold (BT): Not very popular (11 pages). No exchange or Whitepaper. Looks unprofessional. Result: No action.

iEthereum (BT): Doesn’t pay out until 14 November (‘becouse [sic] of spammers’). Doesn’t look very professional. No exchanges listed or pending, no Whitepaper. Result: Undecided.

YajuCoin (BT): Not very popular (13 pages). Has exchange (CoinsMarkets) but no Whitepaper. Looks unprofessional. You need to download special wallet Result: No action.

Ethernem (BT): Airdrop on 25 November – will return to this one.

POStoken (BT): Looks popular (BT is up to 200 pages). Has exchange (EtherDelta) and Whitepaper. Result: Registered.

eReal: Currently only for Brazilians.

eBit (BT): Reasonably popular (BT is up to 80 pages). Has exchange (EtherDelta) but no Whitepaper. Result: Registered.

Marvel Coin (BT): Reasonably popular (BT is up to 60 pages). Has no exchange or Whitepaper. Lots of spelling mistakes and I suspect there has been no licensing of Marvel imagery. However, registering is easy so there’s little to lose. Result: Registered.

CoinsMet (BT): Not very popular (12 pages). No exchange or Whitepaper. Need to follow on social media to get airdrop. Result: No action.

FujiCoin: Requires joining Bittrex Slack Team. Result: No action.

eDOGE (BT): Fairly popular (24 pages). Has exchange (EtherDelta) but no Whitepaper or website. Easy to join. Result: Registered. Update 21 October: it now looks like a scam.

Ethereum Cash (BT): Reasonably popular (BT is up to 70 pages). Has exchange (EtherDelta) but no Whitepaper. Multiple airdrops with very small time window to claim. Result: Tried to claim but failed.

Ethereum Blue (BT): Evidence of this airdrop, and even the coin, appears to have been deleted.

Botacoin/Adbota (BT): Fairly popular (25 pages). No exchange or Whitepaper but have website and a roadmap. Result: Registered.

ILS Coin (BT): Fairly popular (19 pages). No exchange, Whitepaper or website. Result: No action.

BTCMoon (BT): Airdrop closed.

iBTC (BT): Airdrop closed.

Evolution DASH (BT): Fairly popular (37 pages). No exchange, Whitepaper or website. Easy to join. Result: Registered.

LitecoinStake (BT): Fairly popular (50 pages). Has exchange (CoinsMarkets) but no Whitepaper. Requires downloading and installing a special wallet, and airdrop has low value (about £1). Result: no action.

MyCash (BT): Fairly popular (38 pages). Has Waves exchange but no market exchange, website or Whitepaper. Requires downloading and installing WavesWallet.io. Result: Undecided. Update 21 October: Missed airdrop.

BitcoinG on Waves (BT): Reasonably popular (BT is up to 80 pages). Has Waves exchange but no market exchange, website or Whitepaper. Requires downloading and installing WavesWallet.io. Result: Undecided. Update 21 October: Looks dubious, no action.

 

 

Today I Was Given £250!

I love Cryptocurrency and am continually learning about it – but it can still surprise me. I have registered for a few airdrops but they usually only deliver small amounts of money.

eBTC logo
eBTC logo

However, about a week ago I signed up for the eBTC airdrop. Having received an email that said I had successfully registered I didn’t think too much more about it.

This weekend, though, having read about it being traded I realised that it had a significant value. It took a bit of doing but eventually I was able to sell it. First I registered it on MyEtherWallet, then imported that to the EtherDelta exchange. There I sold it for Ether, and transferred that to my Bitfinex trading acccount where I was able to sell it for Bitcoin.

Bottom line – it gained me about £250 worth of Bitcoin. Not a bad outcome for a simple airdrop!