giveaway

Elon Musk Launches $1M Daily Giveaway Campaign — And Explains Why It’s So Important

October 20, 2024 Bitcoin.com

Chipotle takes ‘buy the dip’ literally with new $200K crypto giveaway

July 25, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Business

The restaurant chain will give away Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, Avalanche, and Dogecoin through its online game.

United States-based fast casual restaurant chain Chipotle has started an online game which will give customers the chance to win more than $200,000 in crypto.

In a Monday announcement, Chipotle said that through July 31 fans would be able to play its "Buy The Dip" — and “eat the dip” — game using their rewards accounts. The company will give away $45,000 in Bitcoin (BTC), $10,000 in Ether (ETH), $13,750 in Solana (SOL), $14,250 in Avalanche (AVAX), and $14,250 in Dogecoin (DOGE) through the game.

"We want to build the next generation of Chipotle fandom by connecting with the Web3 community," said Chipotle chief marketing officer Chris Brandt.

Free crypto giveaway?
— Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets) July 25, 2022

The restaurant chain gave away $100,000 in BTC in April 2021 as part of a promotion around National Burrito Day. In June, Chipotle announced its roughly 3,000 restaurants in the United States would accept 98 cryptocurrencies as payment through digital payment provider Flexa.

Other major fast food chains in the U.S. have organized similar crypto giveaways as the space grew. In November 2021, Burger King partnered with Robinhood to give away BTC, ETH and DOGE as part of customers’ purchases. McDonalds’ China arm started a campaign for customers to win 188 nonfungible tokens in celebration of its 31st anniversary while its U.S. operations later filed multiple trademark applications suggesting an entry into the metaverse.

Many users have been buying dips in the price of Bitcoin following significant volatility in the entire crypto market. Chipotle said it would give prizes based on the exchange rate on the day of the award, rather than at the end of the campaign. However, ProShares stepped in offering investment vehicles with exposure to shorting BTC amid many reports a crypto winter had arrived.

A Decentraland Game Is Giving Away Thousands in MANA Tokens

April 20, 2022 The Crypto Briefing

Bitcoin.com to Give Away $25,000 In “December to Remember”

December 20, 2021 Bitcoin.com

Missouri mayor suggests giving residents up to $1K in Bitcoin

August 20, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Missouri mayor suggests giving residents up to K in Bitcoin

Adoption

Jayson Stewart hinted Cool Valley residents could be required to HODL the funds for five years.

The mayor of Cool Valley, Missouri said he was exploring giving more than $1 million in Bitcoin to the city’s 1,500 residents.

In a Thursday interview with St. Louis news outlet KSDK, Mayor Jayson Stewart said he wanted to see “every single household in my city receive some level of Bitcoin.” Stewart said the funds would likely come from some “very supportive donors” but did not rule out using money from the government’s pandemic relief response to launch the venture.

The mayor did not specify how much Bitcoin (BTC) the city would be able to distribute to each resident, but suggested it could be any amount up to $1,000 — roughly $1.5 million, or more than 30 BTC at the time of publication. However, he also hinted the funds could require Cool Valley residents to HODL for five years.

“My number one concern is that someone just sells their Bitcoin to pay their car note, and then when Bitcoin is sitting at like $500,000 all these years later, they’re going to really regret that,” said Stewart.

He added:

“I feel that fundamentally, this is the best way to meet [everyone’s] basic needs — to get Bitcoin into the hands of people who can use it the most.”

Stewart’s Bitcoin initiative is similar to that proposed by Andrew Yang, a candidate in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Yang supported giving every American $1,000 a month in universal basic income, or UBI. Though he failed to receive the Democratic party nomination, UBI was often in the media spotlight and had seemingly strong support.

Lawmakers in other U.S. cities have also taken a pro-crypto policy stance. Francis Suarez, the mayor of Miami since 2017, has proposed allowing residents to pay taxes with Bitcoin and said he was aiming for the city to have the “most progressive crypto laws.”

As data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro shows, the price of Bitcoin is $48,710 at the time of publication, having briefly risen to more than $49,000 earlier today.

Shanghai to Hand Out $3 Million in Digital Yuan Lottery

June 6, 2021 Bitcoin.com

Elon Musk impersonators make bank as crypto scammers’ profits surge

May 18, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin

Scammers are impersonating Elon Musk and other prominent crypto figures to dupe naive investors out of their coins at an accelerated rate.

The United States Federal Trade Commission has found that crypto scammers’ profits spiked in the last two months, noting a surge in fraudulent impersonators posing as prominent figures associated with digital assets, such as Elon Musk.

The findings report that cryptocurrency investment scams rose sharply in October 2020 as the impacts of coronavirus pandemic and lockdown deepened, with nearly 7,000 people reporting losses of more than $80 million to digital asset scams over the six months that followed.

The FTC’s Consumer Sentinel notes many of the thefts arose from giveaway scams where con artists pose as celebrities or crypto influencers and falsely promise to multiply cryptocurrency deposits sent to their wallet. More than $2 million in digital assets were to Elon Musk impersonators over the past six months.

The data shows an overall increase in losses to crypto scams by roughly twelve times year-over-year. The median loss reported by victims has also spiked nearly 1,000% to $1,900 in 12 months.

On May 11, Business Insider reported that fraudsters took advantage of the Tesla CEO’s appearance on the Saturday Night Live show on May 8 to pocket $5 million worth of DOGE.

The report asserts scammers set up fraudulent live streams on YouTube targeting viewers searching for “Elon Musk SNL.” These bogus broadcasts promoted links to spurious websites that viewers could purportedly visit to receive Dogecoin, with one claiming: “Elon Musk has devoted 500,000,000 DOGE to be distributed to all DOGE holders. Anybody can get some, just visit the website.”

Victims were asked to transfer DOGE to a fake address to double their holdings. As of Sunday, May 9, the FTC identified scam addresses that had received about 9.7 million Dogecoin worth $5 million.

The FTC noted that individuals aged 20-to-49 are five times more likely than older age groups to report losing money in a cryptocurrency investment scam. Those in their 20s and 30s lost more money to investment scams than any other form of fraud over the six months, with more than half of their investment scam losses in crypto assets.

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