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April 29, 2015, 06:10:38 PM |
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Bitcoin Airdrop: the story
VIDEO:[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbmWGrQjgTA/url]
The Bitcoin Embassy team has been promoting Bitcoin and educating the public for almost two years now, with the mission of putting bitcoins in the hands of as many people as possible. We've created educational resources, conducted events, organized training sessions, offered technical assistance and constantly reached out to the media. We realized that once people started playing around with bitcoins on their wallets and figuring out by themselves how powerful that technology was, most of them instantly became Bitcoin converts and, eventually, turned into Bitcoin advocates.
That's why we decided to team up with the McGill Cryptocurrency Club to give more than 1000$ of bitcoins for free to students on the McGill University Campus, during the Open Air Pub organized by the Engineering Undergraduate Society. The event took place on February 23rd and 24th.
When we met the McGill Cryptocurrency Club for the first time, we were impressed by these students' passion and dedication to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. We knew that they would be the perfect partners to promote these disruptive technologies on campus.
We're proud to say that this was an amazing event - another great success!
What is the Bitcoin Airdrop?
The concept of the Bitcoin Airdrop was first introduced at MIT in 2014. The goal was simple: create a Bitcoin micro-economy on campus by giving out free bitcoins to students. While our project is similar, we opted for a strategy that the Bitcoin Embassy had already tested out at the Montreal Grand Prix in 2014.
We prepared "Bitcoin Educational Packages" in which the recipient would find a paper wallet loaded with 17 000 bits (approximately 5$). Other contents of the package included:
- What is Bitcoin 4 page primer
- Bitcoin Wallet Guide (security and tips)
Funding and operation
Thanks to generous donations from the Bitcoin Embassy and Bitcoin Canada, we managed to raise around 4 bitcoins to fund the paper wallets. We generated 200 private keys via the bitaddress software, which we funded in two operations with Electrum. We kept a copy of all the private keys so that unclaimed bitcoins would not go to waste (this was explicitely stated on the paper wallet). Students have 2 weeks to redeem the bitcoins - remaining bitcoins will be used in a Bitcoin raffle for McGill students and for Bitcoin promotion (flyers, stickers, etc.). Around 25% of the private keys were successfully imported within the first 24 hours.
Generous thanks to
Bitcoin Embassy Directors and staff
McGill Cryptocurrency Club (Eric, Michael, Alexis, Lucien and Eric)
Bitcoin Canada's Michael Gord
McGill Engineering Undergratuate Society
Busty and the Bass: the McGill band which made the video's song
Olivier Jobin: the Embassy's resident volunteer filmmaker
...and all the volunteers who helped out!
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