I do not know enough about them to be able to give you good answers.
But the policy question of whether to bother collecting or donating any free Stellar seems obvious to me; this opportunity is monetarily zero risk and takes minimal time. Even if one has lots of reasons to avoid jumping into actively managing a portfolio of cryptocurrencies, this policy decision is extremely one-sided, which is why I'm posting it.
Someone who puts zero probability on 'cashing out' the Stellar in future for themself should still donate because there is a reasonable probability that MIRI will be able to make use of them. (In fact, such a person should just donate all their Stellar, but I'm not sure how many people really would be that confident that they wouldn't cash out themself.)
A depressing number of people on Facebook, where I've seen the MIRI FB post link Shared, have posted in the comments ranting their two cents about cryptocurrencies and why cryptocurrency sucks and Ripple sucks and Stellar is doomed and bla bla bla. All these complaints share the property of being irrelevant to the policy decision of whether to actually follow up on this specific opportunity.
I'm not saying this is necessarily what you're doing, but if you are, cut it out, and if not, be aware of how it comes across, and that regardless of intention, it can derail and discourage others from bothering. I'm not trying to be hostile, but I am upset, because it seems like a predictable consequence of your comment (regardless of intent) is that people hastily pattern-match this post to 'Haha cryptocurrencies haha pyramid scheme' and close the tab feeling cynically good about themself rather than just doing the damn thing. So long as your comment is at the top of this thread and reads as it does, I think it is doing more harm than good, though hopefully this comment will serve to mitigate that effect.
CRYPTOCURRENCIES ARE HARD MODE
True. At worst, this is a waste of a small amount of time and electricity.
::signs up, sends all the Stellar he can::
I still think the most useful digital currency is the Magic Online Event Ticket. ;)
Edit: This post is obsoleted by this post; please see that one instead.
MIRI are currently holding a donation-matching challenge, until Friday 15th August. You can donate and track its progress by going to the Donations page.
Also, to quote the MIRI Facebook page:
Registering for Stellar requires just a username and password, no e-mail or verification required. To get the free Stellar, you have to have Facebook Platform turned on (see the first setting on this page) and allow the Stellar App to temporarily integrate with your account. Send 1000 STR to 'miri' or their address (gHhshpzDcfRsie2qxjjHqrsTRe3JSCaUeN), and you will get back the 1000 STR. Once you receive back the 1000 STR, you can then remove the Stellar app like any other in your Facebook settings.
Edit: The promotion seems to have been reduced. See these two comments.
Edit2: The promotion seems more-or-less gone now; consider the part of this post about Stellar irrelevant.
I did this and it took me maybe three minutes (including time to take notes). The Stellar website is self-explanatory. If you encounter difficulties at any point in the process, or if I've forgotten some part of the process, feel free to comment on this post to that effect.
To track follow-up on threads like this: If you donate because of this thread, please indicate that in this comment (you can do so anonymously there if you prefer), and feel free to state that you have donated as a reply to that comment.
(If you're thinking free cryptocurrency is too good to be true, and wondering what the founders get out of it: My understanding is the reason this works is that early investment in a cryptocurrency bolsters it, so that giving away some for free at the start is actually a smart thing to do at first for the founders. No gimmicks or tricks about it asking for card details or anything dodgy like that.)