The Cryptocurrency Hex has gotten much attention from both fans and critics during these past few weeks, due to massive spikes in the price. This has caused many Bitcoin-Hodlers to look towards the Hex airdrops with a curious eye, but the "free" Hex, might not be completely free, since it uses a rather unusual method of distributing or "Airdropping" the currency.
For those not yet familiar with this method, you can "claim" free Hex if you owned BTC on Dec. 1 2019. If you claimed the Hex then, you got roughly 13.200 Hex for each BTC you control. The price of Hex is about $0,0028 at the time of writing, making the airdrop just a little more than $35 for each BTC you control. Also, this amount decreases weekly as described on the Hex website, so the actual amount will probably be closer to $25, depending on when the claim happens.
The price of Bitcoin has recently risen to $7.500, making the airdrop-value a puny 0,3% of the value of the BTC used to claim them.
This would not normally be an issue, since free profits is very welcome for most people, but with Hex you have to sign a message with the BTC-keys to show you actually control the coins.
Essentially, you have to sign the same way you would when making a transaction, but without actually making a transaction, and many wallets have a feature for this built into them, making it not directly risky. But, it can still greatly compromise your privacy by showing coin-activity and potentially linking your BTC to your real life identity.
How much is your privacy worth?
Many would agree that 0,3% is nowhere near enough to justify any risk to their BTC and privacy.
Defenders of the Hex will point out that the project is less than 6 months old and that the price will increase over time, but that is an impossible guarantee to make. And since it is only possible to claim any "free" Hex during the first year of the projects existence, BTC-Hodlers do not have the luxury of waiting to see if these promises will come true.
Privacy is very valued in the crypto-space, but so is profit and people might disagree on this final question:
Is Hex "free" enough?
