‘Cash Apples’ is giving away $500,000 to people who click on trees in a web browser

Money grows on (some of these) trees.

Money grows on (some of these) trees.

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Want to make real money just by clicking on virtual trees? Starting today at 1PM PT / 4PM ET, residents of the United States can begin an online hunt for golden apples in a cutesy web game — collect enough of them, and Cash App will send you a certain amount of cash. (The game’s called Cash Apples, and it’s an intriguing ploy (in partnership with MSCHF) to drive Cash App signups, with $500,000 up for grabs over the next five days.

According to the official rules, you can earn a max of $200 per day each of those days between 4PM ET and 8PM ET, for a maximum of $1,000 over the week — so while it sounds like real cash, no individual will strike it rich this way. Also, it sounds like the game won’t just let everyone in: you need to register your phone number on the waitlist. There’s also an alternate entry form, because Cash App has created the game as a sweepstakes.

It reminds me of when gobs of people started clicking virtual bananas because some of them were worth money.

Update, March 9th: We’re seeing a lot of “Unable to connect. Please try again” messages, but eventually got in — only to lose connection right after finding our first golden apple. It claimed we’d earn $2 if we could find three more of them.

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