I am trying to figure out how can I spend etherballs or exchange? Receiving them for free won't add any value to them, no?

There will be no ICO, no crowdsale.  I believe the success of a currency depends on the number of people who own it, in fact Peter R’s research suggests that historical marketcap of Bitcoin follows Metcalfe's law: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=572106.0, i.e. it is proportional to the square of the number of active users.  That’s why I want Byteball to be in the hands of as many people as possible