Cryptocurrencies and Airdrop’s
After being an airdrop hunter for approximately two years, I want to share my journey and conclusions, quoting facts!
I have started to pay attention to the cryptocurrency industry at the beginning of 2017. After an in deep research, I decided to start mining Litecoin (LTC). Until the mining equipment arrived from China(Bitmain Co.) and set it up it was the end of December 2017 and I had learned a lot about Cryptocurrencies. That was my first contact with the world of Crypto.
Surfing in the Web, I noticed an ad, saying that I get 250 Polymath valued at 1$ each token, just for participating in their airdrop. I bite. I didn’t know what an airdrop is, but I want to give it a try for 250$.
An airdrop is a distribution of a cryptocurrency token or coin, usually for free, to numerous wallet addresses. Airdrops are primarily implemented as a way of gaining attention and new followers, resulting in a larger user-base and a wider disbursement of coins.(wikipedia definition)
So it started. The procedure to take part was really straight forward. If I remember right, you should pass KYC (Know Your Customer) too, to be eligible for the airdrop. That was a little confusing. The time I spent doing all the necessary things was less than an hour.
On 31 January, I opened MyEtherWallet and I saw that I was the owner of 250 Polymath tokens. Nice! The value of the token started at 0.72 Euros and after 15 days it rises at 1.3 Euros. Not bad for spending one hour from your home and making 325 Euros.
I want more…..
… and so the party began…
I was hunting for airdrops. I subscribed to web pages dedicated to promoting airdrops. The more I was searching the more relevant ads I received. I started clicking the ads, explore more and more airdrops, visiting sites like airdropalert.com and kingalert.io every single day.
What you do every single day for a while, will become a habit or even worse an addiction.So in my daily routine, there were 2 to 3 or even 4 hours of my time, that I spend filling all the required information or taking tasks to be eligible, for the best airdrops I chose.
The nature of my job forces me to travel many times outside of the country I live in.Even the days that I was traveling across Europe, when I was still in an area with WiFi I was hunting airdrops. I had put a huge amount of effort to stay with my decision. Every day and a new opportunity for a coin.
So, it was going on, until the first quarter of 2019. I had a plan, collecting the more alter-coins I could so that one day I will have a portfolio of hundreds of coins. Maybe I will be rich too….
From the beginning of the journey, I decided to record all the airdrops I have participated, in a text file, so that I can track later if they delivering what they have promised, Free Coins!
After the first txt file become more than 7 pages (on every page, in every second line there is the URL and the number of coins I should receive), I created a second txt file that reached 5 pages with alt-coins.
Considering that each page has approximately 13 airdrops I had participated in over 156 airdrops in a period of a year and something.
RESULTS
If you were a careful reader, you must be noticed that I claimed that for a Year + 2 or 3 months I tried to participate every single day in an airdrop (more or less, I did it). I also said that I had participated in over 156 airdrops. So, how can this be true?
I mean, if I did it for 420 days, spending an average of 2 hours/day, I should have participated in far away more airdrops. But the truth is that every airdrop isn’t so straight forward like my first. (Polymath)
To participate in the airdrops, you need some tools. You should have a twitter, Facebook, telegram, Reddit, Bitcointalk account. In some cases Instagram and/or Linked account too. Furthermore, you could be asked to download some app or subscribe to web pages (So I became a Medium reader).
Tik -Tak, time is flying away…. You need time to create the accounts and get familiarized with each platform. On other occasions, you should accomplish tasks, daily or weekly. Like, retweet, refer, write a promote article, are common tasks.
When you have one-two projects that you support( with daily or weekly tasks), it is OK. But when the number rises to 7–10 it is a mess. You will forget some tasks or you will be so upset that you will pass on. You see, you must work to pay the bills, you still aren’t a millionaire. You have a life to live….
Eventually, you will lose some requirement and that will cost you your “free” coins.
Furthermore, a lot of startups, and I mean a lot will disappear! You will go to check the URL’s you have saved (all the records in the .txt file) and find out that the URL is broken.
And when the time for distribution comes, some times you don’t take your coins. To claim your tokens you must follow a procedure. Some times you communicate via chat, using telegram. Other times via email. One’s for sure:
‘’you say it in ten seconds, it could take you up to three hours’’.Making all the necessary things doesn’t ensure, that you get the coins. You see on some occasions it is your fault, remember the situation when you have 10 tasks, and you mess it up. It is common that other times, you can’t find the one thing that they are asking you, and you haven’t.
Finally, not all the coins that you have in your wallet have a value, even after a year. A coin, to have a value (price), must be traded in an exchange. The reality shows us, that the majority of the distributed coins aren’t listed in the coinmarketcap jet. (another major tool!)
A lot of airdrops were about coins that you could consume in the exchanges, for having zero fees for your tradings. If the exchange will succeed and get big (like Binance), maybe their coins will be traded, acquiring real value. So hold and wait! (if you aren’t a day trader!)
I want to mention that in the airdrops I have participated in, the estimated value of coins I would receive, was over 30$, reaching even 70$ or 90$, with 50$ be the majority of them.
-So what is the actually money i have make from airdrops?
If I redeem all the coins this moment I will have a total of 190.76 Euro.
And that includes the 250 Polymaths tokens, the price of which has declined and is evaluated at 0.015041 Euro’s per token this moment, given us a total of 3.75 Euro. (I didn’t sell them then).Comparing the actual price with the top price (1.38 Euro’s), it has loose, about 100 times his value.
In the calculations i didn’t include the cryptocurrencies who’s total value is smaller than 0.5 Euro’s.
One of the last airdrops I have received, after waiting for more than 6 months, is Energi. Its current price is at 1.71 euros per token and I am the owner of 100 NRG.
Conclusions
So I spend approximately 820 hours and I have an income of 190 Euros. Divide the hours with the income and you get the astonishing number of 0.226 Euro/hour.
If I live in Asia, or in some other places on this beautiful planet where the daily salary is 1 to 3 dollars, I have done well. Unfortunately, I am living in Europe, where such a salary, is considered ridiculous.
-Em, I a looser?
No. Absolutely No.
When I begone, I had zero cryptocurrencies. Now I have 48 coins, of which, 19 have value (190.76 Euro) and the other 29 maybe will acquire a value, if the project succeeds and survive.
Owning assets with value is one thing, owning and gaining knowledge is another thing.Through the journey of being an airdrop hunter, I have read a lot of whitepapers, studied the way startups grow up and start understanding the underlying technology better.
I saw a lot of opportunities and implications of this amazing technology, that eventually will be implemented in our daily lives, and will become a common task soon!
Furthermore, I have learned new tools and platforms like Reddit, telegram, and coinmarketcap. I did my first trading in an Exchange. I even become a Medium reader!
Finally, something like an advise:
The description is never the same as the one described.Get used to it.That can apply in the cryptocurrency industry as well in Life, generally speaking!
Pieces of evidence
Here I have copy-pasted the entire Balance List from my MyEtherWallet. You will not see Energi tokens, because they were airdropped in the Coinomi wallet. The same is true for 277 Stellar coins, they were deposit to another wallet Blockchain.com.
Here, I wrote down some of the broken links, from the txt file I mentioned before. Just a sample:
- https://pharmz.io/airdrop.php
- https://www.monanex.com 100MNX
- https://sofin.io 50 SOFIN
- https://account.hubtrex.com 100 HUB
- https://cryptokami.com
- https://amicorum.live/ 60 AMI tokens 30$
- https://www.elepig.com/
- www.thecbrproject.com 100 to 130 CBR
- https://payther.co/airdrop 1000 PYT tokens worth approx. $50 during TDE, which will come upon Q4 2018
Final thoughts
Airdrops are a nice way to get involved with the Cryptocurrency Industry. Considering that it is a new technological area, a lot of new startups will rise. For a new company, the use of an Airdrop to gain attention is a really good way of marketing.
The company can inform the people about the goals and values they have. The participants will acquire some tokens-coins. Maybe they will discover that with the use of the provided new technology, their life will be more comfortable.
So they will be plenty of opportunities to collect coins. Some companies will survive and will make a brand. You may have some of these coins. In the future, they may gain value…..
Happy Airdroping !!!
