As requested by popular demand my review of the coin app by XYO. Partnered with XYO Foundation the coin app mines geolocation and you earn rewards in the form of coins which can be transferred later to XYO and other cryptos. Spoiler alert: My account was suspended – lol more on this later.
Unfortunately, the coin app is hard to recommend from my personal experience for the past 32 days. I love the idea, the technology, the rewards, crypto and the ability to earn rewards by just walking, running, travelling and moving around. I’ll list some of the PROS and CONS and for full disclosure, I already own XYO tokens ($200 AUD).
My SentinelX NFC – Purchase for the Review
Early June 2021 I purchased a free SentinelX NFC. Just pay shipping – which was around $24.00AUD. 10 days later I noticed my credit card was charged $40.00AUD for a PRO membership. I’m thinking I ticked the free membership option but didn’t realise the free started straight away and you didn’t need the SentinelX NFC to start mining. So I contacted customer services and a refund was given promptly.
SentinelX NFC Shipping Issues – Never Received it.
6 weeks later, still no SentinelX NFC. I contacted customer service and they mentioned there was no tracking. (For almost $18.00US you get no tracking of the card to Australia). I received the following message. “We are shipping this package via Deutsche Post. As a result, this kind of order does not have a specific tracking number”. I waited two more weeks to contact them and told me the tracking showed the package was lost in the post. What the? I thought there was no tracking! So they resent it for free. Which I still haven’t received. Update: I received a full refund for the Sentinel from Coin App.
Purchased the PRO Account – Another Headache
I ended up purchasing the PRO account for the review which was yet another issue for me. I purchased the subscription directly from Google Play. It ended up working out to be $56.00AUD per month. That’s expensive! Compared to the coin website for $34.95USD (Around $49.00AUD). So I did the math and cancelled the Google play account hoping to repurchase the PRO account directly from the coin website to save money.
This is where I had issues – for some reason my secondary phone where I wanted to use the coin app didn’t recognise the Google Play purchase. My backup phones were showing BASIC account and my main phone was showing the PRO account. I ended up fixing this issue by adding my Google account to all the phones I wanted to use. Coin App Support Article.
⚠️ Warning on Using the Coin App on Your Main Phone
You earn the most coin when it runs in the foreground. Which means it is visible to you. Sure you can run it in background mode and earn 10X coin, but you don’t earn as much as you would in foreground mode. Running it in foreground mode has its issues.
• Battery drain – lots of it. You basically need to keep it charged all the time. Not good for the battery life.
• When it’s in foreground mode you accidentally place it in your pocket, you ended up pocket dialling everyone in your contacts. There is no way to lock the screen from use.
• If you switch to use Google Maps, etc., you are no longer mining in the foreground, switched to background. You cant use your phone if using the foreground mining.
• Screen is always on – burnt pixels. This is a big one! I chose to install it on an old Samsung S8 phone. Not my primary phone. After 1 week, since the screen was always on, I had LCD issues with brightness. The screen would flicker, burnt pixels on the corner and high temperatures on the screen.
Coin App XYO – Function Review
These are my personal finding; a lot of people seem to enjoy the app and make decent coins. But my findings have been the opposite. Let me know if you have the same issues or need more information.
The Surveys – I’m sick of doing the surveys and getting through almost 70% to 80% wasting 15 to 20 minutes only to then find that you’re not eligible or not suitable for the survey. You get 0 reward when this happens. I only ended doing around 5 surveys.
Ad Clicks – These are good ways to earn coins quickly. Watch an AD for 30 seconds get around 10 – 20 coins on the PRO account. Usual ads about crypto and online gaming.
Auto Collect / Geo Mine – Good feature that auto collects tokens when moving around. The only thing I hated was it would turn off randomly and you would forget it’s off. So you could drive 100 KM and earn nothing.
Geo Drop – Good idea but I never used it. Good to send coins to another person. No real use for advertising.
Geo Claim – I still don’t understand this feature. You add coins to a region and then you get a share of the coins mined. I never got more than 10 to 20 coins per week for my 15 coin investment.
Product Scans/Store Visits – This was never an option for me in Australia. Maybe not available here.
Background Rewards – I never really earned much when the phone was in background mode. Maybe around 30 coins every 3 hours or so. Even though it shows 10X for background.
Power-Ups – For every tile, you mine, your power-up slowly increases over 7 days. Then you get a bonus. I liked this feature but didn’t really get a chance to test it properly.
Validating big win – This was addictive and almost OCD. As soon as you see it you click on it and try to verify big wins. However, you only received between 0.1 and 1 coin. It was never worth the time.
Home Base – This was activated a few times on my account, but I never understood the reasons for it or how it was calculated. I earned around 5 coins every hour from my home base.
Withdrawal – I was only able to withdraw 10,000 coins. It doesn’t mention it anywhere but after the first withdrawal, the limit changes to 100,000 due to gas limit charges on the network. You end up paying 1000 coins for gas for each withdrawal thereafter.
My Coin App Test in Real Life
I placed my phone in a friend’s courier/freight truck that does around 1000 KM’s per day travelling from Adelaide to Melbourne. Melbourne to Sydney. I was earning around 7000 coins per day. Didn’t spend much time survey or clicking ads, just let it run in the foreground on our internet service while they drove 24/7. Getting access to my phone was made remotely when I needed to check on the app. I was earning around 7000 coins on the PRO plan. Is that a lot compared to what you earn? Let me know!
My Coin App Account got Suspended – WTF!
Yep – received an email your account has been suspended – the decision is final with a link to their terms and conditions point to “Using invalid or expired subscription credentials”. Even though I bought it from Google Play and I have a receipt, somehow they think I have a dogy account. Maybe because I installed it on another phone or that I cancelled my Google play subscription which ends at the end of August. Either way, I’m glad it happened so I can give you the full review and how quickly they can close your account with an automated reply. Just be aware, they can shut your account down with 100K coins for no real reason. I will probably never see these coins again. Before you ask – Yes I only used it on one phone at a time. Never the PRO account on multiple devices. *Update: I got a full refund from my credit card company for my PRO account.
My Pros – It’s a short list
• Coin App interface is excellent. App navigation is easy.
• Coin App Customer Service is on point. Fast response and excellent customer service.
My Cons – It’s a long list
• The app captures virtually nothing – just GPS signal. No WiFi or comm towers. Just sends the coordinates to a server. Fairly useless information even in eCommerce.
• Drains your battery in the foreground. This is where you make the most coin.
• Can damage your phone if screen time is on all day. (Use an old phone, leave brightness to low – not your main phone)
• If you earn too much, they can cancel your account without warning. Go figure?
• Selling SentinelX to validate the data – Validating what? “Mesh of IoT devices?” – I don’t think so. It’s just clever marketing to pay $20.00 in shipping to fund more coins on a product that probably costs around $4.00 to make.
• The business model – Selling membership to pay for the coins to give back to the Pro and Plus members. Cheaper just to buy XYO tokens from an exchange.
My Conclusion
Is it a scam? I don’t think it’s a scam. I think XYO is a valid token and may have uses in the future. Unfortunately, it’s hard to recommend the Coin App when you get your account suspended within 30 days of a PRO subscription. For me, that points to something else going on in the background and a complete lack of trust in the business model and the company.
If you really want the XYO token in your crypto wallet, then instead of buying the PRO membership for $55.00 AUD, just buy the token directly from an exchange.
Buy Your Own XYO Tokens
Right now, for AUD $55.00 you can get around 13000 XYO tokens. (That’s equivalent to over 120,000 coins in the coin app). Instead of spending all day using the internet, powering your phone and destroying your screens for fewer tokens.
Yes, it’s a fun way to get tokens for free while moving. But is it really free when you end up paying for memberships that send roughly the same amount back into your account?
I did have fun using it, but overall, I’m struggling to figure what the real main use of this XYO Coin App is. If I get my account back, (which I doubt) I’ll update the article with further testing scenarios.
Let me know if you require more information. Also, check out the Duino-Coin project. I will do a review on this as it seems a very interesting project for the Raspberry Pi.
- Current XYO Token price on Coin Market Cap
- Spaceship Voyager – Investing App for Beginners
I love your reviews 👍. So agree with it. Just buy the coins, it works out to be cheaper. I’m holding 100K XYO from kucoin. I cancelled my PRO, just not worth it for the time and effort.
Nice one – hopefully one day the price will skyrocket!
I was thinking the very same thing. I just bought XYO, it was so cheap. But for me to coin that amount would take around 2 months. Just not worth it. I think I will skip the PRO account as well, did you get a refund for the suspended account?
No refund yet! Funny Google asked me to contact Coin App, Coin App asked me to contact Google… ha ha. I contacted my credit card company for a chargeback.
Great review – You’ve answered some of my questions – thanks. I thought the same thing too. Easier just to buy the coins than waste time mining for a month. Shame about your account, hope you get a refund.
Hey – thank you. Yes, I got a refund. Chargeback from my credit card – no issue. Never heard back from Coin.
The Coin App is a total scam. Beware. I was hodling over 200,000 coins and my account was suspended too. No reason was given. Luckily I sold all my coins made a small profit before the price started crashing this week.
Sorry disappointing to hear that. Yeah, what’s with the price fall? Down 30%. Lucky you got out early.
Two days ago, I ordered the “free” Sentinel X card for $12.95 USD also. Was not given any option regarding signing up for pro at the same time and nothing mentioned about it in the terms of service or privacy statement. This morning, my debit card notified me of a new charge of $35.95 USD. I immediately called the phone number provided with the charge on my account and was informed by an automated message that there is no phone support what so ever and that I must contact billing support through their support website. I filled out the report requesting a refund and received an automated response email saying billing department wasn’t available on the weekends.
After reading your review, I will be disconnecting and canceling this account as soon as I get refunded for the shipping and the pro account charge that I did not authorize.
Thanks for your detailed review. I should’ve read this before I tried the app out. Damn click bait on Facebook. Lesson learned.
Sorry to hear about that. I finally got my full refund. Keep all your emails if you need to do a chargeback.