Earn.com is being acquired by digital currency exchange Coinbase in a reported $100 million deal. The platform allows users to earn cryptocurrency by performing micro tasks, shifting the adoption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies away from the current investor-driven model to the start of a new economy. Their goal is to turn “the billions of smartphones worldwide into a new source of work.”
By posting lists of skills and interests, Earn connects people with recruiters, startups and researchers. The Earn.com app features a customizable list of paid micro tasks and emails suited for a user’s skills and interests.
Participants are incentivized to join the platform by creating a public profile where they can earn crypto by responding to email campaigns, among other tasks. Senders use Earn.com to create paid email campaigns and surveys.
Leveraging the strength of the blockchain, Earn.com can compensate a user in any country, with or without a bank account, for replying to an email.
For crypto startups, Earn provides a platform to build a community and crowdsource data by posting tasks.
Brian Armstrong, CEO and co-founder of Coinbase, can now be reached via Earn.com for $5. Users pay the fee only if Armstrong replies to a request.
“One thing that is great about @earndotcom is that it is helping shift cryptocurrency from the investment phase to the utility phase. Great real world use case.
Many people first got into crypto through the investment phase, and this will continue to be a major driver: trying to make money. But there is another huge segment of the world that doesn’t have disposable income to invest in volatile assets (or even a bank account)…
Those people will get their first crypto by earning it, not buying it. Completing a task, or finding a job (employment!) in the gig economy, will be a major gateway for people to obtain their first bit of cryptocurrency.
This could be paid responses to email, or answering questions, upvote equivalents on reddit, mechanical turk/elance/odesk/etc type tasks, and probably many more we haven’t considered.
Our goal is 1B monthly transacting users accessing the open financial system within 5 years. To get there we’ll need to see crypto usage grow with commerce, dapps, emerging markets, and more. Each of Coinbase’s business units are working toward this common goal.” – Brian Armstrong via Twitter
Earn is promising upcoming announcements and new features as it focuses on full-scale integration with Coinbase.
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