Bitcoin Forum

Here is the issue.

Some months ago blockchain.com makes a giveaway. $125,000,000 dollars in stellar. The idea was $25 for each user. But when you try to claim the money they ask you to verify your identity. So, in the end, it wasn't a giveaway at all, they pay their users to verify their identity. And I think it was a nasty move.

By the way, I don't think they will really giveaway $125M and I don't think they have 5 Million users.

We can just avoid the verification and still using their service, but why they want identity verification from their users? only they know the answer. I keep using their service but I begin to doubt if we can trust them. What do you think?

In giveaways like these, ID requirement is a must; otherwise, people would simply abuse the giveaway through multiple accounts (and attempt to claim more & more Stellar) as creating a Blockchain.com account takes nothing but an e-mail address.

BTW, it's not like that I'm trying to convince you that they're absolutely honest & won't do anything bad with your sensitive details. They can do anything at all with your information if they like; however, they just can't go ahead with a giveaway costing nothing but an e-mail address. Anyone who's providing them the private details should be well-aware of the possible consequences of it.

I tried to over-think it as you did, but I figured that the answer might be really simple, they just want to avoid cheaters and make sure they have given the giveaway to legit right people and not just abusers.
I didn't apply for there giveaway, but I am just saying that they can reply with this simple answer and it will be 100% legit answer, and no one can blame them.

I can't trust blockchain.com as a wallet to hold a large amount of bitcoin because it's an online web wallet also I don't want to give my important ID's to them because anytime they can use my documents from other activity or sell my documents in the black market and use it in illegal activity. That is why it's not safe to give your real identity online. So they are just using it to take advantage of asking for KYC to get unique customers.

And they just want to make sure that the claimers or customers are unique just like Raja_MBZ said "people might abuse the giveaways by simply making multiple accounts" which is easy to do.

$125m is a really big amount of money and I don't believe that they can give away such a big amount maybe it is just a marketing strategy so that more people will attract and join.

I typically don't give out my identity related information for a very small amount of money either, as I value security very highly in crypto and $25's nothing compared to the costs you could pay if your information is somehow stolen from Blockchain, however unlikely the odds may be. I've already heard of people cheating the giveaways by photoshopping images for free XLM and such, and I expect that's going to be a problem for Blockchain and the Stellar Foundation.

Definitely seems like Blockchain's trying to verify as many of their users as possible considering they have a bias for the oldest confirmed accounts in this giveaway; I do wonder if they're going to begin to require verification in the future for their service.

Can't trust them with huge amount. Can't actually trust any web wallet with huge amount. They are always prone to hacks no matter how much they emphasize on being "extremely secure".
They probably had some terms and conditions about the give away you didn't read. High chances of taking this move is to avoid users claiming multiple times with different wallet accounts.

The identity verification is used for exchanging your coins on their site if im not wrong. Yes we don't need to do KYC, since we can use other exchange without KYC but someone probably will do it to get that giveaway.

For trusting funds, i trust them but in short time and small amount of money.

Ok, after reading your reply i realized they do it for security, looks like the question should be 'Can Blockchain.com trust their customers?' and you are right, maybe blockchain don't want the same user creating 200 accounts to claim the giveaway.



This is a good point, maybe we can trust blockchain.com but if they get hacked our info could be exposed for $25  :-\

Most giveaways has a mutual benefit though, one for the user and one for the company. I really doubt they just decided to whole heartedly give out free coins. I think there's more about this kyc considering that they have been releasing new products and features recently, I wonder if that has something to do with it? could be for another product or is kyc going to be required in the future? and this is just to prepare for that 'cause its a nice strategy to keep the demand and lessen the bad rep.

There is always a risk of something like this in every exchange. If you really value your privacy & identity then don't use centralized exchanges which require KYC and don't join giveaway or similar events.

Anyway, I wonder how can exchange verify real users without KYC in an event like that. It's quite hard to filter sock puppet accounts. Maybe physical airdrop? Or they could simply use the funds for something else like charity. It's also a good thing to push crypto adoption which is what they aim to achieve when they run the giveaway afaik.

I have account there, but I use it very rarely and my balance is always very low - I never trust online wallets, and it will not change in the future. I was not familiar with this giveaway, but I bet 25$ seemed very tempting for some users. In some way they pay you for KYC, but at the end all centralized exchanges will have to implement KCY&AML laws and regulations at one point.

Some exchanges will simply force users to do that if they want to continue to trade, others seem to have a different approach. The amount of money for this giveaway is probably symbolic, and I bet it is not only from blockchain.com wallet. This was a smart move from Stellar to promote their coin, they pay to be listed there, and they probably pay for extra promotion.

I am looking at this differently because of the intense movement around knowing who is buying cryptos and who has money/coins in his account.
A lot of trading platforms & services are starting to turn to the central, this wallet "Blockchain.com" cannot be far from them.

35,000 BTC would not be a large sum for a wallet that had been in operation form the first few days, "in addition to its new contract with hardware wallets" although I doubt their ability to pay the money.

Can we trust Blockchain.com? No

I use Blockchain.com wallet, but I have tiny amount of BTC on this wallet. I can say that I trust them, but only up to certain level. I wouldn't hold large number of BTC on web wallet, especially when I have hardware wallet.
I haven't claimed Stellar airdrop from Blockchain.com wallet. It's not because I don't trust them, KYC is probably is the most effective way to prevent abuse in similar giveways, but I just don't want to sell my identity for just $25. And from my personal perspective I don't see reasons to do KYC which I use as crypto wallet and nothing more.
Probably majority of you in this thread have done KYC on various exchanges and don't see nothing wrong in it. In my opinion KYC on Blockchain.com wallet isn't something worse. It's better than give your sensitive personal information to random ICO's with easy hand.
P.S I wouldn't be surprised if one day they will require KYC for all their users. It's just my prediction, but I see that they are moving to it step by step.

I saw a particular person posted that he already claimed the promised $25 airdrop from them. I have the same sentiment like what others said. I use them and I enjoy that but when its comes to sending my IDs, thats another thing which I disagree.

Theres a dual purpose for their KYC now, as the stellar airdrop ends if you want to use their integrated exchange they also require ID verification. Whats good with them even we wont pass KYC, we are still able to use them as wallet.

I trust them somehow with their service but I dont trust them to keep my data.

I have an account in blockchain.com wallet but never use them in sending any amount by any means, I just use the wallet for notification purposes when I receive an amount from the watched only address I imported.

And regarding for trusting my personal information for some $25 of altcoin on such company that manipulated by ver, no way..

there's two ways to approach this.

1. they are compromised by government agencies. they want a quick and easy way to link identity to wallet transaction history. this is by far the most lucrative way to exploit their market share.

2. they're trying to expand their exchange service, which requires KYC. the $125M is just a gimmick; they won't have nearly that many takers at $25 a pop.

This is what im thinking. They do make that $125M as a gimmick just to pull in people to make identity verifications which theres really a possibility that these infos
would be linked to any wallet transaction history. Sounds too paranoid? but this one is really possible.

For the amount of $25 i dont know if someone would really agree on these terms.

I also have an account on blockchain.com but I didn't pass verification for only 25$ on altcoin that called stellar that they have given away if you've passed ID verification which is very risky on us. Well, I understand them, in that way having verification just to avoid possible abuse on the activity having a giveaway but I think 25$ is not worth it to reveal your identity.
I used this wallet to receive fund into my main wallet, but I don't use it for storing my crypto asset.

So, getting on this point and after reading your replays, we all agree on something. They are asking for users verification paying $25, so, they shouldn't call it a giveaway. If they want to give money to their users, then ok, make a giveaway, but if they want to pay for their users' verification, then don't call it a giveaway because that's only a bait and not a true giveaway.

Yeah that's a bait that they are trying to implement KYC a little by little. They aren't surprising their users of totally implementing the KYC alone, maybe stellar just sponsored that 'giveaway/airdrop' or they are just making a story with it.

What I've found out, they also have a 'Swap' now. You need to verify few of your info to be approved as tier 1 which includes a $1,000 limit and if you want to upgrade you need to pass on additional requirements including the ID and it gives 'eligibility' for the airdrop.

It's how marketing works, everywhere. Free money doesn't exist, people should understand that by now.

The main point is that most people using blockchain or any other service, are not using it to ever spend money. What's the best way to increase the odds of having them become a potential paid customer? Right, offer them a giveaway in form of whatever crypto currency, and in return for that people 'only' have to verify themselves.

By verifying yourself you basically take away a massive obstacle that stands between you and the exchange. Now you can participate in future giveaways, and more importantly, buy coins instantly and use other services that involve fees, which is what they want you to do the most because that allows them to make money. Business are here to make money, blockchain too.

There's a fair chance stellar actually did. If you think about it, there's a mutual benefit here since blockchain.com one of the most used wallet started integrating their coin which would help the adoption


Inb4 mandatory kyc  :D

Gotta agree to 1referee tho. The kyc will basically earn by themselves and sooner or later they will get back the monies they've sent to their users but the good news is, they will get more!

They can use services to do kyc without knowing user data For example ( civic , thekey , selfkey ... else ) to fix this problem..
But this will make it difficult to get users data privacy ! from this services

100 XLM about 10$ in this days

as far as i can remember Stellar has always required your identification in their giveaways. and this is not their first giveaway. so i don't think it was a "blockchain.com" thing but more of a stellar thing that they asked for identification. in any case i have never bothered with anything like that even if the value of the giveaway were high.
not to mention that these days with all these companies selling or at best leaking your identification on dark market, it is not such a good idea to give it to them!

I agree with you, even if the giveaway is high, is just a terrible idea to give our information to those businesses. I don't think they would sell it, but no one know when they could get hacked.

I do recall there was an airdrop of XLM if you were able to sign a message from a wallet you owned a while back (perhaps a year ago?) if you consider airdrops giveaways, but it does indeed seem like Stellar's requiring Id as of their most recent giveaways.

Did some searching and the airdrop was around March 2017, so nearly two years ago with some details here (click for link (https://www.stellar.org/blog/bitcoin-claim-lumens-2/)) if you're interested in looking back at that. Seems like the airdrop was also for XRP holders back then, though I personally only participated in the BTC side of the airdrop.

i dont think that their give away is high because a giveaway usually means little to less  .  but its okay and you must not worry alot to give your information because its obvious that blockchain.com is 100 percent legit and trusted for a long time up until today  .  not unless you will get a phishing email or invitation  , that simply means it is your own fault and not blockchain if ever something bad happend to your account and info  .

Maybe we can trust in blockchain but remember we can trust in hackers, sometimes isn't about the site, is about the vulns. Remember there are zero days exploits who can vuln all the internet and isn't about the site security. Is like this forum, we can trust admin 100% but the site already got hacked once. So, think two times before exposing your information.

Any Centralized entities can't be trusted.

Bitcoin nature is trustless, why would you choose something that defects from Bitcoin nature's.

After all, I don't get the point why would people exchange their full identity for $25, and some even for participating worthless altcoin bounties.

Their giveaway is high to be fair because they 100% pay you 25$ in just uploading KYC documents. If anyone plans to use blockchain.info for long term, maybe it worths tu upload now and get those 25$ because probably they'll require KYC in anyway to use their service, why not to benefit now especially when you have 100% legal transactions and have nothing to worry about.
Also it has nothing to do with email spoofing because that message appears on blockchain.info's website and mobile app.

Using blockchain.com service doesn't imply strict KYC compliance unless if you do tend to buy or use up their service then you would really need to comply but
using it solely as a wallet then it doesn't really need at all and also $25 in exchange with your identity isn't really a good deal.It wont really be fair on the first place.