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LINKS FOR ADDITIONAL READING FOR THIS VIDEO & ALL INFO IN TEXT DOWN BELOW

Airdrops: https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/initial-coin-offering-airdrops/

ICOs & Airdrops: https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/03/07/blockchain-startups-forgoing-icos-give-away-free-coins-airdrops/

Find Airdrop Listings: https://coinairdrops.com/

Burning Tokens: https://www.forbes.com/sites/eidoo/2017/11/29/token-burning-and-other-crypto-jargon-simplified/#ba2da2754c4b

Why projects choose to go this route:
One major reason why projects decide to do airdrops is the free marketing they can produce.
Imagine you’ve just discovered some new kind of tokens in your wallet, you have no idea what the tokens are, how much they’re worth, what they’re used for and so on. So naturally, you get online and use your DuckDuckGo browser (because you’re not a fool for Google anymore, amiright?) and you search it. Now imagine if these tokens were airdropped to thousands of addresses. It might be enough to get some attention going, maybe even go viral.

Now imagine after you’ve searched it you mention it to your other friends who are into cryptocurrency. Suddenly you’ve multiplied the number of people who have now heard of the token, and now they could go and search it out on the web also. Just like that, there’s a buzz going about this new token.
I’ve got to add that this is without a doubt the best kind of airdrop. You get free tokens just because you happen to hold the right kind of cryptocurrency in the right type of wallet. I’ll get into wallets in a bit. This isn’t the situation that’s too good to be true, it’s actually a pretty good situation to be in!

Then there are some projects who design their airdrops so that if you jump through certain hoops they’ll reward you with “free” tokens. Keep in mind that some of these hoops definitely compromise your privacy and often times make you out to be one of those shills that people love so much.
These are the projects that use airdrops for the benefit of free, more organic seeming marketing.
Sometimes they just ask for your email, sometimes they ask for your first and last name, sometimes they ask that you post about their project (if you have enough followers to qualify) sometimes they ask you to like, or retweet a post. Sometimes they require a certain amount of referrals to their telegram channel or other social media accounts. Sometimes they ask you to give them access to your friend lists on Facebook.
This is when I’m going to suggest that you tread lightly. Think about what they are asking of you, and why that is so valuable to them. Most of the time what you get in return pales in comparison to the value that you’ve provided them.

On a lighter, more positive note, projects may also choose to go the route of airdrops in order to encourage a wider distribution of their tokens in order to avoid heavy hands from controlling the price.

One more tip:
if you receive an airdrop, wait until those tokens hit some exchanges. That’s when you’ll see what the volume is like and the true market value of the token which you recieved for free.

Lastly and most importantly, this is how you spot an airdrop scam:
#1 If they will ask you to send them cryptocurrency first.
#2 If they ask you to send them your private keys/seed phrase

If you ever come across an airdrop that requires you to do either of these, do not participate and if you want to help others out, spread the word that it’s a scam.

source

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41 COMMENTS

  2. Hi Heidi, I’ve got some tokens in my ether wallet and tried to transfer them to an exchange. Got these from an ICO. I JUST CANT SEEM TO DO IT?! ANY HELP, IDEAS? Thanks young lady!

  8. new token value = free but airdrop creators reserve 10,000,000 tokens for themselves, company gives airdrops to "old" token holders, holders spread the word about project. utility and function of new token spreads, token gets listed on exchange, price goes up even a few cents (lets just say .10) now new token creators have .1 * 10,000,000 value raised for project or $1,000,000 – if you spend 100,000 on the project (I have no idea how much it might cost but that sounds like a good starting number) you just got 10x gains on your investment – should encourage good projects because money involved in creating and marketing project but payoff is much better and project can thrive with free excitement over project. (good selling point for eos is that it is cheaper to distribute tokens)

  9. I bought extra PRL to get a 1-for-1 match of free SHL coins. I missed my one chance to sell my "extra" PRL. And, PRL has since tanked. But, I have a lot of confidence it will come back since it's price will be tied to storage price and competitor storage price is about 20x. Even if the price settles at 25% of major competitors, that should still be a pretty nice price. PRL is down a lot and at a really good price right now. I think it's a pretty solid project. But, perhaps I just bought in too high and fell for the "airdrop" scheme. ??

  10. I think NEO based projects are a great quality, as they have to pay a substantial amount to join the chain. And the ONT airdropped was the best one for me so far, didn't have to do anything and got a great value out of it. Same goes for MCT, but not sure about the value or the project yet.

  11. I thought MCT's airdrop was awesome! All you needed to do was hold Nep5's in wallets (as I did), and they dropped 1,000 MCT for just holding 1 Nep 5 vs. other airdrops from unmentioned projects that said you need to join 3 of their channels post this and that, and be in line on the day of the airdrop…. oh if you weren't there you got shafted after jumping thru all their other hoops. I registered my complaint about this on their Telegram only to be greeted with 'sorry loser'! Total jerks! I told them great way to turn good PR into PR disaster….of course that garnered me further derision from their Community Manager…. MCT asked for nothing and flat out just airdropped. They have a lively discord group now where their admins are facilitating OTC trades for MCT for Neo, and in my case I swapped some airdropped MCT for GALA tokens…. that I am using in the Crypto Galaxy Beta game mining free GALA, which in itself is an airdrop of sorts, where you just need to download the game and play for free GALA tokens.

  13. Airdrops are the way around the regulations of ICOs. I wanted to invest in POLY and they only supplied via airdrops so free money. I have a few small amounts in MEW that maybe useful one day. There are a few airdrops for EOS holders coming soon, but you have to hold 100 or more and have a registered ETH address to get them. If you hold EOS on Binance you may miss out.

  14. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that many airdrops aren't worth it in cases where you have to do some kind of work in order to become eligible for the airdrops. The payouts seem so insignificant that you might as well just buy your own tokens if you believe in the project.

  15. DeepOnion uses airdrops and seems to rely heavily on the holders doing the advertising for them – in (possible?) exchange for some coin. Plus, their own forum seems completely sanitized of even slight criticism of the coin. If DeepOnion is legit then they're going about it the wrong way, as it smells scammy as hell to me.

  16. I think it's a brilliant way to circumvent any pressure the SEC can put on the crypto world. It might not solve the amount of scams but it rejuvenates the level of innovation crypto needs for mass adoption.

  18. I think airdrops are the new ICO's. Good way to distribute tokens, get widespread adoption, and avoid potential regulator issues. Think radar, radar detector, laser, laser detector, scrambler, etc. The eternal fight for freedom.

  19. I got loopring (LRC) which seems to be doing good. its still just sitting in my wallet but hey its worth a few bucks now. I never looked into it so IDK how great of a token it is

  24. Thoughts on airdrops: They are a novel form of distribution, akin to a 'free sample' of food at a supermarket (assuming no signup is required). However many are simply coins being randomly distributed and named similar to 'scamwebsite dot com coin'.

    Quality vs Shallow: I'd say that as a majority of cryptocurrencies are reliant on hype-marketing, a vast majority are shallow. It also demonstrates that the coins are massively pre-mined, which isn't beneficial.

    Beneficial or not: Probably the only beneficial drop would have been CLAMS, given to those who held bitcoin in the early days. However, 99% of people didn't qualify for that. Perhaps an airdrop may lead to the discovery of a beneficial program, however it's unlikely given the amount of database tech (rather than blockchain tech) that's being peddled at the moment.

  26. agreed i was never one for ICOs, and Airdrops, many were just something i avoid, i rather wait till a project goes on main market and gets real numbers i can look at before i invest, anyways good video and information sincerely JR of Exciting World Cryptos

  28. Good post loved the duck duck dig on google. Re: airdrops, it’s indeed clear they are paying for your attention and to get you to do their marketing. However I’ve seen a fairly wide variance in the token reward value in terms of potential usd as well as what you need to do. Personally I would tend to avoid airdrops that make you post on Facebook or Retweet. Ones that where you might only need to join their telegram channel for instance seem harmless enough. I think Pigzbe is a good project doing airdrops and only require the person join their telegram chat room as one example. One thing to consider though is the value of ones time to find and register for an airdrop. It might be better time spent researching a really good coin joining their ico or buying and hodl than chasing airdrop coins – time will tell. I remember when you could get 5 bitcoin for free when ppl were trying to increase adoption so in this space one just needs to constantly use your best judgement and be a bit systematic, define some criteria or boundaries before getting involved in every free airdrop. One last bit, airdrops seem to be today trend for those trying to avoid the legalities of an ICO. ICOs raise money but they also raise attention and create distribution which is what you want to stabilize the network. Airdrops can help that way as well, so while it’s mainly marketing, blockchain is also about building out that decentralization and airdrops can help with that to some degree.

  31. I don't know, I see airdrops as I good way to promote your company. It's like those carts that give away free cans of Coca Cola: it's a promotion. People that never tried Coca Cola (really?) will be more willingly buying cans after they tried em for free.

  35. Many cryptocurrency companies are using airdrops to gain the benefits of network effects. Remember how a few years ago Internet companies would chase user growth before profits? They understood they needed a large network of users before there was any chance of making money. Facebook is the largest example of this, but there are many others. The EOS developer network will be relying heavily on airdrops to reach the critical mass of users required to make their products valuable.

    You ask if we ever benefited from an airdrop. I got a lot (well, for me a lot) of Bitcoin Cash when they did an airdrop to all Bitcoin holders. I immediately sold it for more Bitcoin.

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