Buoyed by XRP court ruling, Sweat Economy goes live in the US

The app will let US users earn tokens by walking and trade them on centralized exchanges

article-image

dennizn/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

The move-to-earn company behind Sweatcoin is bringing its Sweat Wallet on-chain in the US.

American Sweatcoin users are now able to move their SWEAT tokens into the Sweat Wallet app and trade the currency on secondary markets. Sweat Economy’s co-founder said the move came after the company’s legal advisors said SWEAT is safe from being labeled as a security by US regulators.

Sweatcoin takes phone data to count users’ steps, allowing every 1000 steps to be redeemed for one SWEAT. The tokens are currently worth around a cent and are tradeable on Bybit, KuCoin, and OKX, among other exchanges. Users can also earn SWEAT by playing Sweatcoin’s NFT game and staking their SWEAT in “Growth Jars.”

Sweatcoin was founded in 2014 but didn’t go on-chain until last year, when the company, now called Sweat Economy, launched its SWEAT token on the NEAR protocol. The 2022 launch didn’t bring SWEAT to America, however. 

This was because “paranoid” lawyers advised the company against ongoing uncertainty about the legal status of crypto in the US, according to Oleg Fomenko, the Sweat Foundation’s co-founder.

But after Ripple scored a partial court win in its long-running legal fight with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company and its lawyers became “100%” certain that SWEAT is not a security. 

A federal court ruled in July that while Ripple’s [XRP] sales to institutions constituted securities offerings, its programmatic sales did not. The case is ongoing. 

Move-to-earn apps have caught flack in the past for their allegedly unsustainable economic models, but Fomenko said that Sweat’s economic structure isn’t based on “ponzinomics.” Sweat, Fomenko argued, spent eight years building out its business before creating a token.

At the time of writing, Sweat Wallet is the #8 financial app on the app store

The US “needs this,” Fomenko added. “Because let’s face it: we [don’t have] an extremely fit population.”


Don’t miss the next big story – join our free daily newsletter.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Hilton Metropole | 225 Edgware Rd, London

MON - WED, MARCH 18 - 20, 2024

Crypto’s premier institutional conference returns to London in March 2024. The DAS: London Experience:  Attend expert-led panel discussions and fireside chats  Hear the latest developments regarding the crypto and digital asset regulatory environment directly from policymakers and experts   Grow your network […]

Salt Lake City, UT

WED - FRI, OCTOBER 9 - 11, 2024

Pack your bags, anon — we’re heading west! Join us in the beautiful Salt Lake City for the third installment of Permissionless. Come for the alpha, stay for the fresh air. Permissionless III promises unforgettable panels, killer networking opportunities, and mountains […]

recent research

logo.jpeg

Research

Akash is a general-purpose compute platform with GPUs, storage, LLM training or inference, and validator hosting through its two-sided marketplace.

article-image

The SEC could allow half a dozen or more such funds to launch at once, Ark Invest CEO says

article-image

2023 saw a decline in a16z crypto funding, but the behemoth VC firm teased what it’s excited for next year

article-image

“Iran Unchained” launched a new version of its grant platform to make donations to activists easier

article-image

The stablecoin marks the first time a regulated European bank has made a euro-pegged stablecoin available on a crypto exchange

article-image

Build it and they will come, perhaps, but making crypto easier to use is turning out to be just as important

article-image

Amid moves by Itau Unibanco and Nubank, the country could serve as “a proof of concept” for TradFi-crypto integrations, industry research exec says