What Are Airdrops? Guide to free money

In the vast world of cryptocurrencies and ICO projects, you most likely have heard the word “airdrop” bounce around quite a bit, but what exactly does it mean?

Airdrops basically mean giving away cryptocurrencies for free or for simple tasks. That’s right, blockchain projects are giving away their coins for free. They do this in order to gain exposure and to entice investors to learn about their platform, and ultimately invest in their projects.

Many of these ICO coins will gain value, while others may never catch on, but as long as they are free and you won’t have to share any sensitive information, you should not worry. It only takes a minute or two and you won’t lose anything. But wouldn’t it be a pleasant surprise to find out a year later that your free coins have grown tenfold?

What’s the catch? You have to do a few things. It varies from project to project, but most require you only to sign up and either create a wallet hosted on that platform, or give them your ERC-20 Wallet’s public address.

If you are asked to do anything else, the typical qualifications consist of posting on social media, signing up for a newsletter, downloading a wallet to store your free tokens in, and quick simple things of that nature. In some instances, you are required to purchase coins on your own (from an exchange), then hold them in your wallet, receiving multiple airdrops over a period of time.

A recent example of this is Bitcore. It just finished emptying out its reverse wallet, by sending registered users 8% of their total holdings per week… and they did this for 6 months (until their reserve wallet was empty)!

These are not bounties, which require you to get other people to sign up - that is entirely different. These free token giveaways are meant to be quick and easy to collect and hold onto for the future. Many of these projects are in their infancy and not yet listed on exchanges, do not have working products, or large followings. So keep your expectations reasonable.

These projects conduct these airdrops to increase their following and to spread the word about their project, increase the circulating supply and stimulate the trading volume. But, where did they get such a crazy idea? One successful project tried this a long time ago; you might have heard of them: Bitcoin. Can you imagine if you had gotten free Bitcoin from a giveaway or a faucet back when they had to beg people to take them?

Other successful projects who have had airdrops:

• OmiseGo (OMG)
• Bitcore (BTX)
• Stellar Lumens (XLM)
• IOSToken (IOST)
• And many more…

Sometimes these airdrops are not only for promotion, but for additional purpose as well. EOS recently distributed an airdrop of equal amounts of eosDAC, which will represent governance capabilities on their new blockchain. Oyster recently performed a similar airdrop, giving holders of the Pearl (PRL) coin, equal amounts of Shell (SHL) which will be used as a utility token across their platform.

As the overall crypto market grows, it is expected that every coin that hangs in the game to increase in value. So beat back any skepticism, and start signing up. And on a final note, NEVER give out your wallet’s private keys. Anyone, even an airdrop, which claims they need it, is a scammer trying to steal your coins.