Yes, I’m back – the guy with the dubious definitely not financial advice, here to talk about another might-be scam. It’s been a while…
This time out I'm looking at two apps: Free Litecoin and Free Bitcoin Cash. Both of these are Bitcoin Aliens projects and I am sure they're lovely people.
*Just to be clear, I am not going to get into anything about privacy, tracking, data theft, etc. in this article. I’m purely looking at this from a passive income perspective and kind of assume they’re stealing all my data.*
The words “Passive Income” first crossed my radar maybe four or five years ago, when I was trying to make it as a freelancer. I sought out and absorbed all kinds of information on things like drop-shipping (too much up-front investment), Amazon self-publishing (too much work), social media marketing (too dependent on whimsical algorithms) and several other get-rich-not schemes that ultimately came to nothing. The main stumbling block was, usually, having to fork over money to some guy who was going to tell me the 100% Guaranteed Secret Method of retiring early.
I never ponied up, so I’ll never know if they were full of it or not, but I have no regrets… Mostly…
Passive Crypto
Within the last year or so I finally tumbled down the crypto rabbit hole after circling the edge for a few years and, like many others I’m sure, thought, “This is it! This is the Passive Income Dream!”
And it might be. Someday. Not today though… (Market down nearly 10% across the board at time of writing #SadFace)
Anyway, it didn’t take too long to discover that there are a million shady-looking sites promising Passive Income in the cryptosphere, from faucets to casinos, shady staking sites and elaborate Ponzis – there’s no end to the ways the unscrupulous can take advantage of the greedy in Crypto!
But I’m a dreamer, so despite all the evidence that I should just HODL and be happy, I’m still hunting for Passive Income streams and on my travels I discovered one (well, two really, but they’re very similar) that kind of appeals to me and bizarrely actually seems to work (with caveats).
Free Litecoin/Bitcoin Cash
Two apps – Free Litecoin and Free Bitcoin Cash, which are essentially identical save for the currency they disperse – both promise a great deal in terms of free crypto. At the top of the Bitcoin Aliens website they say: "Since 2014 the Bitcoin Aliens games have given away over 1090btc (7+ million USD)." If true, that's pretty amazing...
I’ll start with Free Litecoin, since that was the first one I encountered. At this point I can’t recall where I heard about it (maybe on Publish0x, maybe not), but the article said it was legit and if it’s written on the internet it must be true, right?!
This is what the app looks like in play. Yay! I won 223 Litoshi!
The idea is that once an hour you push a button that causes a cute little animation to ‘randomly’ select a number, which will be credited to your account in Litoshis. The amounts range from a couple hundred to 100,000 – which I have yet to win – and you have the option to get more spins by watching an ad.
Once you’ve done that, you can claim a bonus by – you guessed it – watching more ads and pressing a button for a spinny thing that picks another ‘random’ number.
The Bitcoin Cash one works in exactly the same way, except the ‘random’ numbers are all way lower, presumably because BCH is worth more than LTC (for now…).
I put random in scare quotes because, frankly, I’m not convinced it’s random. I reckon there’s a max hourly payout and they control that quite tightly – it wouldn’t do for people to be making all the money!
There are also offer walls that let you do surveys and things, which can be quite good for boosting your account, but it’s also time-consuming. It is possible to do this while watching TV or whatever, and I find it’s a good way to pass time waiting for buses, etc.
The Good News
They actually do pay out! If you hit 20,000 Litoshi or 10,000 BCH Satoshi it’ll send them to whatever wallet you nominate on a Tuesday.
Free money!
Whoop! 156 BCH Satoshi for me! (I would have made more if I hadn't been taking screens for this article)
The Bad News
It pays out very little.
In case you’re not aware, there are 100 million Litoshis/BCH Satoshis per whole coin, while the average hourly claims are <500 for BCH and 1000-2000 for LTC. To put this into perspective, if you were to somehow hit the LTC app every hour at an average of 1500 per claim you would make 36,000 Litoshi per day. Sounds like a lot, until you divide it into a whole LTC:
100,000,000/36,000 = 2,778 days
That’s over SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS to get a lousy $55 coin.
For BCH, you’re talking 12,000 sats a day, which again sounds like a lot until you do the maths:
100,000,000/12,000 = 8,333 days
That’s 23 YEARS!!!
Of course, you can boost this with the surveys and offers, etc., but you’re still a long way from that fabled Passive Income.
Still, I cashed out nearly a million Litoshi (€0.62 – whoop!) over the past couple of weeks, so I’m only two years away from a full LTC.
And if LTC ever hits a mill, well… I’ll have some money!
Dumb Mistake #735
I nominated an exchange wallet for cash-out the first week. Thankfully only on the BCH app (not sure why I did that…) 30K BCH Sats gone… That’s, like, 6c… Sniff…
Make sure to link it to a proper wallet!
Conclusion
Is it worth it? Depends entirely on how much you mind tapping buttons for little gain. Fortunately it tickles my OCD, so I quite like it and the fact that I get anything at all out of it is quite a novelty!
If you are interested in this madness, well, I got your referrals right here!
LTC: https://bitcoinaliens.com/?ref=985649&game=8&pf=2
BCH: https://bitcoinaliens.com/?ref=985649&game=7&pf=2
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Bitcoin Aliens, I just use their apps and I suspect they'll be cross with me for writing this anyway.
