If you owned Bitcoin at the time of the UTXO snapshot on December 1st 2019, you have the right to claim your free HEX.
- To feeclaim HEX, you don’t do anything with your Bitcoin.
- You don’t need to still have any Bitcoin in the address with which you claim.
- Only the amount recorded in the snapshot counts.
- There’s no minimum amount.
- By freeclaiming you don’t expose private keys in any way.
- Bitcoin held in custody, such as on exchanges or in custody wallets, cannot freeclaim.
- Multisig addresses can’t claim (mostly only exchanges use multisig).
- Freeclaiming is possible until November 18th 2020.
- The initial freeclaim amount was 10,000 HEX per BTC.
- However, the freeclaim rate bleeds out 2% a week.
- Bitcoin whales holding more than 1,000 BTC in address get a 50-75% malus.
- 90% of your freeclaimed HEX is auto-staked for a minimum of 350 days.
- 10% of your freeclaimed HEX remains liquid to be used as you wish.
- The auto-staked HEX assures all freeclaimers also get the BigPayDay reward (BPD) added to their staking interests (with BPD, all unclaimable HEX is distributed as interest).
- Using a referral link gives you a 10% bonus.
- Speed bonus for early freeclaiming gives 20% extra on 1st launch day, but reduces daily down to 0% on the day 351.
Procedure
All you need to do, is prove that you are the owner of the address that held Bitcoin at the snapshot by cryptographically signing a simple message with any wallet that has this function. The message contains the Ethereum address you want to use for HEX. As a Bitcoin owner you ought to learn how to sign messages, so take this opportunity to learn this basic skill, if you haven’t already.
The signing procedure depends on the wallet you use. Most of the better Bitcoin wallets support this function: Electrum, Coinomi, Bitcoin Core, Mycelium, Bither, Bitcoin Knots, Armory, Trezor, Ledger Nano S, and KeepKey. Search their functions for the signing option. For example, in Electrum you can find the »Sign/verify message« function under Menu|Tools.
Before anything else, if you don’t already use the Metamask wallet web browser extension, install it (you can also find it in browser’s extensions shopping list). Metamask is a wallet for Ethereum network that allows easy interaction with smart contracts’ internet frontends. Metamask is a cryptocurrency wallet, so make sure to use it only on a safe device, clear of any malware. You also need to have a small amount of ETH in the wallet, as this is the currency used for paying fees in the Ethereum network. Also, note that you need to store your seed phrase and/or private key in a safe place, as this is the key for accessing your HEX coins and stakes.
Once the extension is installed, click on a referral link from the same browser to assure the 10% bonus. Clicking a referral link creates a cookie in your browser and the bonus will thus remain active for all your future claims. The link also brings you to the official HEX smart contract frontend at go.hex.win. Go to the »Claim« section.
Once you are in the Claim section of the frontend, you first need to unlock your Metamask so it can connect with the website. Next step is identifying all your Bitcoin addresses that are captured in the UTXO snapshot. To do this, you need to go to your Bitcoin wallet and find the list of your public addresses (for example, in Electrum, you go to »Addresses«).
Most Bitcoin wallets use a new address for every transaction, so there can be many. You enter each of these addresses into the »Bitcoin Address« text box of the frontend which will then inform you which addresses are contained in the snapshot. The ones that are not will give you an »No UTXO was found for this address!« Insist with the others until you identify a claimable address. You claim it by clicking »Claim this address« which gives you a message you need to cryptographically sign with your Bitcoin wallet. You just copy the message, go to the sign function in your Bitcoin wallet, paste the message into the text box, then paste also the address in the corresponding box, click »Sign« to generate signature, copy that signature, and paste it into the »Signature« text box of the HEX frontend.
After you do this, you need to chose the lenght of the auto-stake portion of your HEX. The defoult is the minimum of 350 days, but longer stakes give you more shares and will accrue more interest. After clicking »Submit claim« and paying the network fee with Metamask, you are done. The remaining 10% freeclaimed HEX remains liquid and you can either stake that too, or hold it, or sell.
Small or late freeclaims
You may think that you don’t get much HEX by freeclaiming, which may be the case, if you only had little BTC, or if you are claiming late. However, consider that at least 90% of that HEX will be staked for at least 350 days. During this time, the stake will accrue interest and BPD, which can multiply the amount of your principal (depends on other staker’s behaviour).
In addition, staking rewards are distributed based on a share system. The share price by which you get shares upon staking HEX keeps going up each time a stake with the highest up to date return on investment completes. This is designed to prevent compounding of interest by periodic restaking. Yet, this measure that prevents you from gaming the contract, can be used to compound staking time. Thus, not only do longer stakes get bonus shares (up to 200% at 10 years), but your shares remain constant even over the shares’ deflationary future. This means that several years long stakes, that were created during the launch period when shares were cheapest, will accrue huge amounts of rewards further out in time. For this reason, consider staking for longer time the lower your freeclaimed amounts are. In case HEX achieves adoption, even small amounts can result in large returns. In case it does not achieve adoption, you lose nothing.
Freeclaiming impact
The more BTC freeclaims, the higher the BPD reward gets, as it is multiplied with critical mass and virality bonuses. Critical mass bonus depends on the amount of BTC while virality depends on number of addresses freeclaiming. Therefore, the more Bitcoin owners freeclaim, the more HEX they get at end of their stake.
In addition, all HEX that bleeds out due to late freeclaiming is distributed by the contract in a daily collective auction. This causes a supply hyperinflation that is only attenuated by Bitcoin freeclaims. The more HEX that it is freeclaimed, the less of it is auctioned resulting in a lower hyperinflation. This may result in a faster price appreciation of HEX.
Whale privacy
If you have the fortune of owning a large amount of Bitcoins, you may be concerned about privacy. Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains are both public and your claim will be publicly visible, just like any transaction with Bitcoin or Ethereum is public. The freeclaim traces the ownership of your BTC address with the ownership of the Ethereum address used. If you want to avoid this cross-traceability, consider creating a fresh Ethereum address to use for the HEX claim. Also, if you have several BTC addresses with large holdings, you may want to claim each with a fresh Ethereum address, so that nobody figures out that all those BTC addresses belong to the same owner. These measures solve the privacy issue.
By @Benzenoid
Disclaimer: None of the above is meant to be a financial advice. Never rely on a single source of information and do your own research before any investment. Don’t trust, verify!
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