Coinbase Online Course: Why is the class free, and each person is given a 5,000 yuan scholarship?

Due to the severe epidemic, many physical courses have been cancelled, and online courses have unexpectedly become mainstream. Coinbase, a well-known American exchange, not only provides online courses, but also provides high scholarships to motivate people to participate. As long as you are authenticated (to avoid repeating classes and receiving awards by one person), you can get rewards ranging from $5 to $10 for every 2-minute course completed, and the currencies are different, which is quite interesting.

Sprinkle coins instead of ads

More and more token issuance teams choose to save the original advertising budget and issue tokens directly to users. However, most of the tokens issued by the team are worth one or two hundred Taiwan dollars, so most people still lack interest.

Coinbase saw the pain points of the team and launched the Coinbase Earn platform in late 2018. Coinbase Earn integrates learning information and bonus distribution of multiple tokens. Users can receive multiple tokens at the same time on one platform, with a total value of up to NT$5,000, which is close to the price of a set of AirPods wireless earphones. Originally, Taiwanese users could only join the waiting list for learning. Recently, Coinbase Earn has finally opened in Taiwan.

How can there be a free lunch in the world? It's normal to be wary. First, though, let's take a look at what scams usually look like.

"Let's find out"

There are more than 2,000 virtual currencies in the world, and most of them are unknown. Therefore, you may have seen invitations to "come and learn about this coin" on social media, attracting investors to participate in physical activities to learn new knowledge.

But this kind of activity has a very high chance of stepping on thunder, and learning new knowledge is often just a package. In 2018, Commonwealth Magazine revealed the potential purpose of this activity with the title "Red Blockchain Air Raid on Taiwan, Uncovering the Secret of Taipei's Top Hotels' Weekly ICO Activities" :

Publicity is the most important element in ICO, because the target of ICO fundraising is the general public. Without publicity and media coverage, there will be no retail investors to pay. That's why, the most fashionable hotels in Taipei, such as the W Hotel, have almost weekly ICO promotions from China.

After a year, people remember their experience, and the call of ICO is no longer a box office guarantee, but also allows a truly powerful team to come forward. But most people still don't have the time and energy to study thousands of coins. How to identify who is a strong team?

The two most indicative exchanges in the world — Binance, Coinbase — are willing to list coins that are more reliable, and are currently recognized as a simple method of selection. Ponzi schemes such as PlusToken , which are packaged in cryptocurrency, will be screened out by the exchange during the review stage and will not reach investors. Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron blockchain, who is known for hyping currency prices, recently pointed his short-term goal of listing his TRX coin to these two exchanges, and wanted to "gold-plate" the TRX coin.

In addition to checking for investors, the exchanges have also built their own learning platforms, Binance Academy and Coinbase Earn , to help investors learn actively. But the two exchanges are doing very differently.

Binance Academy looks like Wikipedia, building a dictionary of difficult words from scratch. Both Chinese and English are presented, and a video explanation is attached, which is suitable for "inquiries" at any time. Coinbase Earn, on the other hand, provides courses and bonuses in a way of learning by doing, so that people can get a little bit of cryptocurrency as a reward after listening to a course, which is suitable for independent "learning".

How does Coinbase Earn work?

At present, there are a total of 8 online courses on the Coinbase Earn learning platform, namely OXT, XTZ, DAI, EOS, XLM, BAT, ZEC and ZRX. As long as you complete the courses and assignments of the first 6 currencies, you can get a variety of cryptocurrencies worth 166 US dollars (about 4,980 Taiwan dollars), and the other two ZEC and ZRX coins have been issued.

Who is the gold master behind? As mentioned earlier, I speculate that it is the foundations that issue virtual currencies, allocate marketing budgets, and hand over the coins to Coinbase Earn to assist in distribution. This model is beneficial to users, the foundation, and Coinbase.

From the user's point of view, the basic knowledge of six virtual currencies can be learned on one platform, and there will be monetary rewards after completion, so why not do it. From an exchange perspective, it can attract more users to sign up. The exchange account opening process includes real-name authentication, which is very troublesome. Coinbase Earn now offers nearly TWD 5,000 in rewards, which is expected to attract a group of users to learn how to operate. From the foundation's point of view, users who registered accounts on exchanges are the first to understand cryptocurrencies. Instead of overwhelming advertising, rewards are issued through exchanges to find more accurate customer groups. It can also provide first-hand information through courses to prevent users from being misled by others.

After understanding the interests of all parties, at least it can be determined that Coinbase Earn is not a random coin, but what is the course teaching? Each cryptocurrency course consists of the following three parts:

1. Watch the 2 minute short
2. write a one-question quiz
3. earn cryptocurrency

Take the course on the stablecoin Dai as an example , it was the content that benefited me the most. The course has three 2-minute short videos introducing what is the Dai stablecoin, what Dai is used for, and the stability mechanism behind Dai. Completing the above clips will earn you a total of $6 as a reward. Then, if you can follow the steps to complete the smart contract operation, you can get another $14. After taking this course in a few minutes, you can earn $20 in Dai stablecoins.

Before that, although I have discussed the price stability mechanism behind Dai many times in Block Potential, I have never personally mortgaged ether into smart contracts and issued my own stable currency Dai. To operate a smart contract on Ethereum, you must first have ether (ETH), and the course will directly give away ether worth about 130 NTD as a teaching aid.

Other token courses are not difficult either. For example, as long as a user installs the Brave browser on their computer, they can get BAT tokens worth $7. All courses add up, and each user can earn BAT equivalent to 1,500 Taiwan dollars without sharing any information, inviting friends, or drawing a lottery. Of course, there are also some token courses, such as EOS and XLM. If you successfully invite friends to participate in the course, users can earn nearly 5,000 Taiwan dollars.

hard-to-copy patterns

I believe that many token issuers have seen this and have begun to prepare a cryptocurrency for Coinbase, but it is not so easy to list courses on Coinbase Earn. Tokens that can appear on the Coinbase Earn platform are equivalent to being endorsed by Coinbase alternative tokens. The review conditions are probably much more difficult than listing the tokens on the Coinbase exchange. Even if you have money, you cannot buy them.

It is also difficult for most exchanges to copy Coinbase to establish a learning platform. The exchange itself is enough for them to be busy: to strengthen security internally, increase transaction volume, to find good virtual currencies to list externally, and to meet the requirements of the competent authorities . Therefore, when exchanges have the spare capacity to build a learning platform, it means that they have a certain number of users and can attract well-known token issuers to cooperate.

Finally, from my own experience - others don't necessarily want to make $4,000. Friends around me heard that they could earn 4,000 yuan, and half of them would be willing to try it immediately, because this is much higher than the subsidy of Uber Eats or Quanlian PX Pay. But there are also the other half of the people who usually care about the blockchain, but would rather share half of my bonus and ask me to help him earn some money and then exchange it for him.

Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty

The Internet makes "information transfer" borderless, and the blockchain makes "asset transfer" borderless. Adhering to the pure reading method of learning the blockchain is like insisting on learning how to surf the Internet by reading a book, but it is a common phenomenon at present.

In the past, many people worried that they did not know how to operate wallets or exchanges and would accidentally lose money. But now that someone is willing to hand out cryptocurrency for free, it might be a good time to try. It's hard for someone who has never touched the Internet to understand from the book how Google can search hundreds of millions of pieces of information in a second. It is difficult for those who have not been exposed to Bitcoin to fully understand new concepts such as Libra or decentralized lending.

At this time, I look back at the learning platforms of the two exchanges. I think that even if the content of Binance Academy is well illustrated, it is only suitable for use as a dictionary. Coinbase Earn focuses on learning by doing. Installing wallets, starting transactions, and starting transfers is the most suitable way to learn blockchain.

If you've been thinking about playing with cryptocurrencies lately, this is a great place to start. You are also welcome to enter Coinbase Earn from the referral link below, the first three people can earn me a $10 introductory reward: https://coinbase.com/earn/oxt/invite/znjmh4v0