Grind Coins explained: the free way to use Pledro

Every Pledro account starts on Grind Coins, and today every Pledro account stays on them, because the whole beta runs on Grind. They are the answer to the reasonable question "why would I risk money on an app I have never used?"

What are Grind Coins?

A free currency you enter challenges with. You get them for having an account. You cannot buy them, you cannot sell them, they do not convert into pounds, and no amount of them is worth anything outside the app.

They are also not points. Pledro has three separate things people sometimes run together, and they do different jobs:

• Grind Coins are what you enter a challenge with.
• XP is what levels your account up as you train. It is not spendable and it is not a currency.
• Team Points score contribution inside team competitions.

Only the first is an entry currency.

What is a Grind challenge actually for?

Learning the loop with nothing on the line but your own word — and then discovering that your own word turns out to be enough.

The mechanics are identical to a real-money challenge. You enter, the entry joins the reward fund, you train on your own wearable, the activity is verified server-side, and when the window closes the entries of the people who did not complete are split evenly among the people who did. You see the receipt, the standings, the whole thing.

A lower barrier to entry, and exactly the same barrier to proof.

That sentence is the design, and it is worth being blunt about it. Grind is not a demo mode with the checks turned off. Hand-entered workouts are rejected on Grind. Implausible data is held for review on Grind. You become a completer on Grind only when your activity passes verification, exactly as you would with money involved.

Why is verification the same when there is no money?

Because verification is not about protecting money. It is about the result meaning something.

A challenge where somebody can type in a 10km they did not run is a challenge where finishing tells you nothing about yourself and less about anybody else. The standings would be fiction, the reward would be shared with people who did not do the work, and the only person genuinely worse off would be the one who actually got up and ran.

So the rule is universal: nothing counts until a wearable verifies it, whatever the entry was worth.

Is there a fee on Grind?

No. Grind Coins are not money, so there is nothing for Pledro to take. The entire amount left behind by people who did not complete goes back to the people who did.

Which means Pledro's revenue from challenges today is exactly zero — the whole beta is free, and that is not a promotion, it is what happens when the only currency in circulation is one nobody can buy.

Who can use Grind?

Anybody with an account, and accounts start at 16. Grind is also the only currency available to anybody under 18, and it will stay that way: real-money entries are 18+, UK only, and are not live yet.

Free-entry challenges exist as well, so there is a version of the loop that costs nothing even in Grind.

What happens when real money arrives?

Grind does not go anywhere. It stays free, it stays unpurchasable, and it stays the way every new account begins — so you can run the full loop, see a real receipt, and decide for yourself before a pound is involved.

Real-money entries will be 18+, UK, verified accounts only, held by an authorised partner rather than by us, and they are pending authorisation. We are not giving a date for something that depends on other people's decisions.

18+ for real-money entries · UK · Your limits, your rules · real-money entries are coming, pending authorisation