Image: Wikimedia/Bjørn Giesenbauer
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The much-anticipated Auroracoin airdrop made 31.8 AUR available for each citizen of the country to claim, the first step in an experiment to launch a cryptocurrency "designed to break the shackles of the fiat currency financial system in Iceland," as the altcoin's creator Baldur Friggjar Óðinsson wrote.With Auroracoin currently trading around $12 (the price has held steady so far since the coin went live), that's the equivalent of about $380 in Icelanders' pockets, which is a decent amount of money to get for nothing. If people redeem their coins.There's the rub. For all the buzz about Auroracoin—the market cap climbed to $1 billion earlier this month, launching it to the third most popular cryptocurrency in the world—the airdrop itself was somewhat anticlimactic.The site crash may be a good sign that Icelanders are interested in the experiment, or at least going to make the effort to collect their share of the electronic loot and wait it out. Some already have, according to reports on cryptocurrency forums, and the Auroracoin subreddit and Twitter accounts.http://t.co/RpRdFMX1lg is down due to heavy traffic. Icelanders are claiming at https://t.co/fAlBqxKp7X.
— auroracoin (@auroracoinIS) March 25, 2014
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But there are still a handful of commenters claiming the altcoin is nothing more than a pump and dump scam. Some Icelandic redditors posted screenshots of their transaction confirmation to prove they claimed their coins, and naysayers fired back claiming the images had been photoshopped or staged by the developer.The Airdrop is progressing much quicker than I had imagined. 2,600 people have claimed in less than 12 hours.
— auroracoin (@auroracoinIS) March 25, 2014
As far as the long-term impact of last night's airdrop, that's also ripe for speculation. Some commenters hailed Óðinsson as a revolutionary and said Auroracoin would go down in the history books. Throughout the month, the value of AUR skyrocketed as the idealist notion of a sovereign altcoin that can overcome the limitations of the government and central banks took hold.But for the experiment to actually be a success, it has to clear the hurdle that all digital coins are facing: getting people to actually adopt them as currency."GullMoli" from IRC Freenode #Auroracoin has just received his first confirmation for its 38.1 AUR from the #airdrop! pic.twitter.com/kqLfLLEVV9
— iLoveBitcoin.fr (@bitcoinmars) March 25, 2014
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