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SWEATCOIN: GET PAID TO MOVE

The app where you can earn as you move: welcome to the world of Sweatcoin

Getting paid to walk each day sounds like a dream job, but it’s a reality with Sweatcoin, a free app where your steps convert into currency to spend on cool products and services — anything from high-tech shoes to iPhones, from anti-gravity yoga classes to Apple watches.

Now you can be rewarded not because an arbitrary goal of 10,000 steps has been reached (we’ve all been there with our pedometers!), but you’ve been given a fitness currency to spend, called sweatcoins, that rewards your steps. These sweatcoins can then be used to buy products and services from leading brands — you can even donate to charity.

It’s also a great and motivational way to improve your everyday health, of course: walking helps to build a stronger body, better mental health and to boost the immune system — just like yoga.

And with over 50 million registered users across 51 countries, Sweatcoin is already effecting significant positive change on peoples’ lifestyles, with the British Journal of Sports Medicine finding that Sweatcoin users demonstrated a sustained 20% uplift in their daily step count more than six months after installing the app. Sweatcoin works by connecting to a phone’s health and fitness data and GPS, and tracking a user’s steps.

The app then converts physical movement into sweatcoins that can be used to purchase rewards from its market place or crowdfund and donate to Sweatcoin’s NGO partners, which support environmental, humanitarian and animal preservation causes.

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Launched in 2015 and based in London, the idea started with three entrepreneurs and the simple premise that physical movement, such as steps, should have an economic value.

“There was a time when I was going to the gym and just doing the bare minimum,” says Sweatcoin co-founder and CEO Anton Derlyatka. “I’d lost my motivation. So I know from personal experience how easy it is to lose heart with an exercise regime after a relatively short time. The app is designed to help keep people motivated and that’s even more crucial after two years of the coronavirus pandemic. Not only can people be understandably dispirited but millions have been working from home, sitting all day with little or no physical activity which is really bad for your health. Walking can help offset that negative effect and we’re determined to persuade more people to take it up in 2022.”

Sweatcoin is available for download on your mobile device or discover it for yourself at: sweatco.in

Om Magazine

First published in November 2009, OM Yoga magazine has become the most popular yoga title in the UK. Available from all major supermarkets, independents and newsstands across the UK. Also available on all digital platforms.