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August 2022 Update: I am no longer recommending Coin Hunt World
Well, you know what they say about things that are too good to be true! After over a year of playing Coin Hunt World during which I cashed out over $800, I am no longer recommending this game. Why? Well, in short after a series of nerfs to in-game payouts it is no longer possible to earn anywhere close to the $100/month that I made for a few glorious months after starting this game in July of 2021.
Since the article below was last updated, several changes were made to the game which have reduced my earnings rate. Game-generated blue vault rewards (previously 10 cents) were reduced 80%, to a pathetic two cents. Green vaults were reduced from $1 per day, to $1 every other day, a 50% reduction. Already elusive yellow vaults were reduced from $10 every week, to $10 every other week, a 50% reduction.
Coming in September 2022 will be an additional 33% cut in crypto payouts across the board. Also, players will no longer be able to build their own vaults using in-game resources, but rather they will have to make In-App Purchases of “crystal keys” to build vaults. All previously built users’ vaults will be deleted at some point. Essentially you’re going to have to pay money out of pocket to make back a couple bucks per day, an amount which will likely continue to decrease as the developers have completely failed at monetizing this game with businesses and advertisers.
Coin Hunt World was great while it lasted, but its heyday for earnings has passed. The amount earned for the time investment has simply fallen too low, and when players have to pay out of pocket to make any progress in the game the math will soon get far worse.
My original article from August 5, 2021 is preserved below.
Anyone who has followed my blog and early retirement plan for a bit would know that I’m not too keen on cryptocurrencies as an investment. While I’m a huge fan of stock market index funds, I view crypto as incredibly speculative. I don’t think that it has a place in the portfolio of any serious investor, beyond maybe 1–2% that they’re prepared to lose in exchange for a high-risk gamble.
If I’m offered free cryptocurrency for playing a game though, with no strings attached? Sign me up! I’ll gladly take a few bucks per day of free crypto to play around with, or sell for beer money. The above featured image is actually my earnings for the past month that I have been playing this game. As you can see I have earned 0.00123065 Bitcoin (currently worth $49.28 USD) and 0.0216094 Ethereum (currently worth $51.31). This comes to just over $100 after a month of playing, and I’m sure that I could earn a bit more going forward since I spent several days cluelessly floundering around while trying to learn the game. I’ll also share some tips and a “quick start guide” to help you avoid early mistakes that I made so you can maximize your earnings as soon as possible.
Beyond the monetary rewards, we’ve been having fun playing the game’s trivia while traveling around town doing our normal errands. My girlfriend mans both of our phones while I drive — safety first!
First, click HERE to download Coin Hunt World for Android! iOS users read below!
Coin Hunt World is a geolocation game similar to Pokémon Go. Players must travel to real-world locations using the GPS on their device to play the game. In short, players gather keys to open vaults scattered around the map, and are then presented with a trivia question. Answering correctly will reward the player with free cryptocurrency.
Android users can simply follow the link above to download the game from the Google Play Store. iOS users will first need to install Test Flight (as the app is still in beta) by clicking here, and then clicking the link above. Follow the instructions in the game to create your account.
Once you’re in, you should see something like this:
That blue guy is your “cubie” character which represents your GPS position and you might have a few game objects visible around you on the map, which I’ll explain in a bit. Now that you’re set up in the game, I’d like to ask you to please use my referral link, which will very shortly earn you (and me) at least $2 in additional crypto for being referred to the game! Just click the link on your phone, and choose “open with Coin Hunt World” if your phone prompts you.
Overview of basic game objects on the map
So the rest of the guide makes sense, here’s a crash course to know what the heck you’re looking at in the game! Game objects always respawn in the same position at varying intervals.
 | Key Booth: collect a free blue key from this location. Key booths respawn daily at 8:00 AM EST. Keys will tend to be your limiting resource in the game, so grab these when you see them! |
 | Key Forge: Once you have collected a key from a key booth, it will turn into a key forge until the key respawns. Players can forge higher rarity keys here by combining 10 of the next lowest rarity key. |
 | Vault: Players open vaults with a key of matching color to be presented with a trivia question. If answered correctly, the player will be rewarded with free cryptocurrency in varying amounts depending on the vault color/rarity. Vaults also respawn at different rates depending on their color/rarity. More on the differences shortly. |
 | User Vault: Similar to the game-generated vaults, but taller and with a cubie on top of them! These vaults were placed in your area by other players. Each player can place up to 10 user vaults. Currently only blue user vaults can be constructed. User vaults have more resin and paint rewards than regular vaults, though the same amount of crypto. They return 5% of keys used on each user vault to their owner! |
 | CubieCrane: Yellow vaults begin their life as CubieCranes. Players in the area must collectively fill the crane with 1,000,000 resin to begin construction of the yellow vault. Yellow vaults are generally only found in highly populated cities. |
 | Print Shop: Not super important to early progression. Here you can use blueprints and other in-game resources to craft new “cubies” which change the appearance of your character in the game. Every Target, Walmart, and Canadian Tire store should have a print shop. |
Vault and key color/tier list
As I mentioned above, different vault colors have different rarities and rewards. Each higher tier vault contains 10x more crypto than the next lowest rarity.
Conversely, you can convert keys at a key forge in the same 10:1 ratio and color tier pattern. 10 blue keys can be combined to make 1 green key. 10 green keys can be combined into one yellow key, and so on.
Blue vaults respawn at 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM EST. Green vaults respawn at 8:00 AM EST. Yellow vaults respawn at 8:00 AM EST on Monday.
Blue vaults are the most common and you should have several within quick walking/driving distance of your home. You should have several greens in town, but you’ll have to do some exploring. Currently, yellow vaults are pretty much only found in major cities so you may have none anywhere near your home like me.
Update: On August 27, 2021, changes were made to the vault payout rewards, called the dynamic trivia system. Previously, payouts were the same across the board regardless of how long you took to answer, meaning players who Googled the answers were given the same rewards as those who actually knew it. The new system aims to penalize the “Googlers” by reducing rewards the longer you take to answer, while those who actually know the trivia answer will receive the full reward. Players are now given a few seconds to first read the question. Once the answers appear, a selection within 3 seconds will count as “Perfect” and give the full reward. The next segment to get a “Great” answer last 7 seconds and will give a 70% reward. The final segment lasts 15 seconds and only gives a 40% reward.
Note that all players start by default in “Chill Mode” where rewards are 50% across the board, but you get the same reward regardless of when you answer during the 25 second timer. I highly recommend immediately turning this off and opting into the dynamic trivia by turning on “Hunter Mode” in your game settings. Simple math would indicate that unless you’re really bad at trivia and nearly always take over 10 seconds to answer, your rewards will be much higher on average in “Hunter Mode” with the dynamic rewards.
Some players have complained about the dynamic trivia update being a huge nerf to game rewards. Personally I think this is just the people who heavily relied on Google being punished as intended. I’m still earning about 90% of what I was before this update, and I’m no trivia wizard. I did take a bigger hit for a few days when it first launched, mostly getting used to the new trivia categories and question styles that they added at the same time. Overall I think it’s a good compromise to reward skill if it makes the game more sustainable in the long-term.
Quick start guide: maximize your earnings ASAP!
The following steps are aimed at optimizing the early setup of the game and maximizing your Coin Hunt World earnings as soon as possible. You get to learn from the early mistakes that I made before I learned more about the game.
Goal #1: Set up your Headquarters
You may be tempted to get out there, find some keys, and open every vault you can get your hands on, especially if you find a green vault which contains a whole dollar of crypto! But actually, your top goal should be to set up your headquarters. This costs one green key. So find some key booths, and once you have 10 blue keys, forge a green key! Recall that the used key booths turn into key forges, so just click on the gray diamond to forge your green key. Set it aside for when you get home.
The reason is, once your headquarters is up and running, you will receive a free Mystery Box every 8 hours (8:00 AM, 4:00 PM, and midnight EST). Mystery Boxes can contain 2, 3, or 6 blue keys, 1000 resin, a green key, or 5000 resin, in descending order of likelihood. Basically, the green key you “invest” in your HQ will immediately begin paying dividends in the form of other keys forever, so it’s a better use of a green key than opening a green vault.
Note that if you have not yet used a referral link after creating your account, now is the last chance to do so before you set up your HQ. Once the headquarters is built, if you used a referral link you will earn 2 green presents, containing at least $2 worth of crypto. Click here to use my referral link to ensure you get your bonus rewards!
As for where to set up your HQ, your home is probably a good bet. Wherever will enable you to collect the most Mystery Boxes possible. Note that Mystery Boxes do not stack and you can only store one at a time, so if you don’t log in during the 8 hour window for each box, you’ll miss out on it. Try to get at least two of the three daily Mystery Boxes. Once you’ve got your green key and you’re in the physical spot you’d like your HQ to be, simply click the green house icon in the upper left:
Nice! If you used my referral link before building your HQ, your bonus gifts and crypto should be waiting in the mailroom of your HQ.
Goal #2: Begin charting out in-game points of interest in your area to develop optimal routes
First, check out the community-created and sustained Coin Hunt Map to see if other players have taken the time to mark down any objects in your area! If it’s blank that’s okay, that just means nobody in your area has bothered to contribute to the map. There’s probably still plenty of stuff in your area, but you’ll have to discover it on your own!
When exploring your area, your primary objective should be to find green vault locations. Even though the rewards are the same as if you used your 10 blue keys to open 10 blue vaults instead of forging them into a green key, traveling to and opening one vault is much quicker which will boost your earnings per time spent playing. Green vaults represent the bulk of my total earnings in the game.
Take a peek to see if there’s any yellow vaults or CubieCranes in your area. This list is not all-inclusive but contains all the yellow vaults/CubieCrane locations that the community has crowd-sourced. At this time, most yellow vaults have not been built yet and are still in the CubieCrane phase. Cranes are not very useful to you as a beginning player — they need 1 million resin to activate, accepted in batches of 10k. Your resin will be better spent on your own progression, as I will explain in the next section.
In my experience, blue vaults and key booths are best to hit when on the way to higher rarity vaults. Once you’ve found your local green vaults, see what blue vaults and keys can be collected when en-route (or only slightly out of the way) to the green vaults.
Obviously, if you’re driving, hitting a few vaults on the way to other errands minimizes wasted gas and time. For example, adding 5–6 minutes onto our trip to the grocery store will allow us to hit 2 green vaults, 8 blue vaults, and 7 key booths. That’s nearly $3 in free crypto per person for a few minutes!
2–3 times per week we will go out and drive around for 45 minutes or so just to play Coin Hunt World. Since I have a hybrid it makes the math tilt in our favor; we each end up making about $5 for spending 50 cents total in gas. I guess we’re making less than minimum wage, but it’s fun too! I’m jealous of people who live in cities and have stuff within walking distance.
Goal #3: Begin constructing user vaults
At this point you’ve probably noticed that you are sometimes rewarded with an orange resource known as resin when opening vaults or Mystery Boxes. Resin is used for building and crafting activities in the game, such as constructing user vaults, crafting new cubie avatars, and filling CubieCranes. Building a user vault costs 10k resin and one green key.
Each player with a headquarters can build up to 10 user vaults. Currently only blue user vaults can be built. User vaults reward their owner by returning 1 out of every 20 keys used on them. Visitors to the vault are similarly rewarded in the form of increased paint and resin rewards.
As such, you’ll want to balance your user vault placement between two objectives: somewhere with high traffic where you think other players will use them (generating you keys), and somewhere that you can regularly hit them (generating yourself more crypto and resources to further your progression).
Before you head out to place a user vault, make sure you have unlocked a user vault slot in your HQ using a green key. Once you’ve found a good location, press the vault icon in the upper left to plant a flag at that location. You’ll have to take a picture of the spot to submit to the developers as to why it’s a good spot, so put it somewhere interesting like a business, restaurant, park, or historic site! Note that user vaults must be 50 meters (164 feet) from a key booth or you will not be able to place it. User vaults must also be 100 meters (328 feet) from any other user vaults or game-generated vaults. If it’s too close to another user vault you will get an error, and if it’s too close to a game-generated blue vault, that vault will be deleted and replaced with your user vault.
If your vault is approved, you’ll receive a message in-game. When you return to the spot, you’ll find your flag has been replaced by a CubieDozer. You’ll need to fuel it with 10k resin to begin construction of your vault, which will finish in one hour.
I’d recommend getting 3–4 user vaults set up before using your resin for other things. User vaults will drop more resin than regular vaults, so you’ll be able to unlock each user vault slightly faster than the last one if you are hitting your own vaults regularly.
Goal #4: Refer your friends!
If you’ve found this article valuable, I’ve already asked that you please use my referral code before you build your headquarters! You and I will both get 2 green presents, containing at least $2 worth of crypto.
There’s an additional bonus as a referrer, which is when a player who you refer opens each tier of vault for the first time, you will receive that same color key for free! This can be huge if you recruit a long-term player who ends up opening a yellow, red, and maybe even a purple vault at some point.
Once your HQ is up and operational, you can in turn refer your friends and family to the game by clicking your avatar in the bottom left, going to “friends,” then “invite players” and send them the link. Only players who have not yet built their headquarters are eligible to be referred.
Goal #5: Unlock Uphold to transfer crypto out of the game
Currently, Uphold is the only exchange supported to withdraw your crypto. You will need to register an account with Uphold. You will then need to spend 10k resin to unlock the withdrawal option and link your Uphold account. Hence why I recommended building 3–4 user vaults first: investing your resin in user vaults helps you to earn resin more quickly, and the first 10k is the hardest to get. Unlocking Uphold right away would slow down your progression towards maximizing your earnings. On the other hand, I don’t think it makes sense to wait until you have all 10 user vaults to unlock Uphold, as you’d probably have a fair bit of crypto sitting in the game at that point, which would suck to lose if the game disappeared overnight.
Once you’ve connected your Uphold account, withdrawals to the exchange occur automatically each Tuesday. From there you have several options:
- Keep your crypto on the Uphold exchange. Generally the crypto community seems to be distrustful of exchanges due to the history of hacks and theft in this space. Crypto or money stored on Uphold is not insured by the FDIC or any other regulatory body.
- Transfer the crypto to a private wallet which you control. Not recommended due to high fees, for example a transaction on the Ethereum network currently costs $9, and a transaction on the Bitcoin network currently costs $2.50. Uphold charges an additional $2.99 fee to transact on the BTC/ETH networks. So as you can see, if you’re making $25 a week from this game, you’d be losing most of it to transaction fees if you wanted to do semi-regular transfers into your private wallet.
- Sell the crypto on Uphold. Withdraw the cash to your bank account. Free beer money!
- Sell the crypto on Uphold. Withdraw the cash, and re-deposit it in a more trusted exchange like Coinbase Pro to re-buy the crypto, if you want to hold onto it as a free ticket to a speculative investment while avoiding hefty network transaction fees.
I haven’t unlocked Uphold yet; I just got my 4th user vault so this is my next goal. Once I do, I’ll probably do some mixture of options 3 and 4 above. It’s fun to participate in the crypto space when it’s not your own hard-earned money at risk, but at the same time the entire space seems massively overvalued so I wouldn’t want to lose everything that I’ve earned from the game.
August 17, 2021 Update: I finally unlocked Uphold and received my first withdrawal of about $175 in a mix of BTC and ETH. So now I can personally vouch for this game being legitimate.
Goal #6: Start doing buddy quests!
If you add friends in-game, at most once per week you can get a “buddy quest” which will reward you with a yellow key. Recall that yellow vaults contain $10 worth of crypto! A random vault (usually within 3 miles of your HQ) will turn into a see-saw, emanating red pings across the map which you can follow to track it down. You and your buddy must both visit your respective see-saws at the same time to complete the quest. You have one week!
You can only ever do one buddy quest with the same person, so it’s in your best interest to add a lot of friends. If you run out of real-world friends to invite to the game, check out the official Discord group (linked at the bottom of this article). There’s no chat function in Coin Hunt World, so Discord makes it easy to coordinate completing a buddy quest with other players.
Goal #7: Print a new cubie!
Printing a new cubie at a print shop is purely cosmetic to change your avatar. It uses a blueprint, resin, paint, and occasionally other special event resources. There’s really much better uses for your resin as a beginner player which will increase your earnings, so don’t go crazy printing cubies.
Frequently Asked Questions
Once you’ve followed the above quick start guide, you’ll be well on your way to earning a couple bucks from this game whenever you venture outside. At this point, you may have a couple questions. I know I was curious about some things.
Is this game a scam?
Nope, not yet at least! Users who have unlocked the Uphold withdrawal have reported receiving all of the crypto that they’ve earned in Coin Hunt World with no issues.
Obviously this could change overnight if the developers run into financial issues or the game unexpectedly shuts down. For that reason I recommend unlocking the Uphold withdrawal once you have 3–4 user vaults, as you’ll probably have around $100 by that point which most people would be sad to lose. Once you’ve got withdrawals set up, they’ll occur automatically each week, so you’ll only be risking at most a week’s worth of earnings if the game ends up crashing and burning.
How do they make money?
Currently, the game is in a “loss leader” stage while they attempt to attract a user base. As one of the developers is the co-founder of Bittrex (a large cryptocurrency exchange) they probably have pretty deep pockets to bankroll the game for a bit. Especially since the player count is still low at the time of writing this article. The Coin Hunt World team plans to try and make revenue in 3 ways to sustain the game as is grows:
- Selling exclusive cosmetics for your cubie avatar.
- Charging cryptocurrency teams who would like to use the game to distribute their token projects.
- Corporate sponsorships from brick-and-mortar stores that could benefit from the foot traffic generated by the game.
It’s anyone’s guess as to whether they will succeed in their business plan, but I’m content to play the game for however long it’s around as long as my earnings remain healthy.
Will rewards go down in the future?
The developers have admitted that rewards could be “adjusted” in the future. This probably depends on whether their business plan is successful. We don’t have enough information about their financials or timetable to speculate. For now, earnings are great and I’m very happy recommending Coin Hunt World. If the rewards end up changing, I will update this article.
Additional Resources
I covered most everything you need to know to optimize your earnings as soon as possible and start earning $100+ monthly in free crypto from Coin Hunt World. There’s a few nuances if you care for things such as climbing the leaderboard, and the game is still in development and being updated, so to learn more and stay up to date with the latest news, check out:
Coin Hunt World on Medium, where the developers publish articles and news about the game.
To get in touch with the community, ask questions, and find buddies, join the Coin Hunt World Discord.
Happy hunting!