My friends, here's everything you need to know about crypto airdrops, and I'll tell you how you can easily get some free Internet Computer Protocol as well.
What is an airdrop?
An airdrop is where you get crypto that's just given to you. However, it's not generally given to you for free or without having to do anything, but it does just get dropped into your wallet, often as a function of doing something else. For example, taking a certain action, signing up for an exchange, et cetera.
My honest opinion on airdrops
Now, my opinion on airdrops, what you really need to know about airdrops, is that most of the time, airdrops are not worth your time and effort. You might find that surprising, but I've been in crypto since 2014. I've been profitable in crypto 10 years in a row, and I rarely waste my time with airdrops. Why? Because, first of all, there's a ton of airdrop scams, which is why what I'd tell the average person in crypto is: don't even mess with airdrops unless you can verify that it's a legit project and that you're already using it anyway.
Why? Because airdrops generally are not that easy to get, whatever you need to do in order to get the airdrop. They may not come on time. If you don't immediately sell, often right after the airdrop, things will tank. And assuming you don't get scammed and you only find legitimate airdrops, I often see that it looks like airdrops are consistently exploited. So if you're not out there exploiting airdrops, which I would hope you're not, then it's probably not going to be worth your time to do whatever it takes to get whatever you're going to get out of the airdrop.
The people who win at airdrops are usually exploiting them
For example, most of the airdrops I've seen, the people who got the most in the airdrop were blatantly exploiting it, like swapping NFTs, just wash trading huge amounts of NFTs to get airdrops of the token from the marketplace, and then dumping the token on the marketplace as soon as the airdrop came through. And for all the regular people trying to get airdrops, I would say, if you're not out there exploiting it and you just buy one or two NFTs, by the time you paid gas fees and take all the amount of time and energy you put into it, and then you go and sell it, you've really just wasted your time.
So airdrops, to me, are code to rip people off. It's a marketing keyword. Now, yes, there are legitimate airdrops that you could argue are somewhat fair, but those are rare in crypto. And you generally have to be deep into crypto doing a lot of research, like Joe Parys talks about how he's found some airdrops and was able to make good amounts of money off of them. I have not seen a single airdrop in 10 years in crypto that my first reaction was, wow, that's worth my time.
Why I value my time too much for airdrops
Wealthy people, we have a high regard for our time. And that means I'm very hesitant to waste my time doing something unless it's just fun. You know, I'll play video games because it's fun. I'll make music because it's fun. But if I'm not having fun doing something, I'm very careful with where my time goes — if I'm not having fun or helping other people. And with airdrops, you need to be very careful with connecting your wallet and careful with your time.
Because if you spend five or 10 hours researching an airdrop and trying to get in the right position for it, and you then make $500 off of it, from my point of view, if it's less than $100 an hour, it's not worth my time. Now, you might value your time more than that, and I hope you wouldn't value it less. But you're also taking a risk with airdrops. You could lose all your money, or you could do whatever you think is going to get you the most out of an airdrop, put a ton of time and energy into it, and get almost nothing out of it.
So if you average out all the airdrops, I think back to all the airdrops I could have participated in, and all the tokens that have since gone to zero that I would have had to dump and put on my calendar. If you think about all the airdrops over time, I would have easily just made more money by doing better research and sharing my research with others in content than I would have taking time on the airdrops. So to me, crypto airdrops are one of the nastiest areas in crypto. And there's a lot of nasty areas. But it's an area where people consistently are tricked into wasting their time, tricked into wasting their money, tricked into doing all these transactions to try to get a relatively small amount of crypto.
If you're not a crypto expert, if this isn't what you do full time — and I'm guessing, because you're reading here, maybe you are, and you're doing your own research — I think crypto airdrops are blatantly a waste of time in 99% of cases. If you want the deeper picture of how I separate the real from the fraud, that's exactly the kind of thing I keep digging into across my Money playlist, and it's why I lean toward telling beginners to use the tech before you buy.
The exception: natural airdrops you get just by using something
Where are airdrops not a waste of time? It's if you're just naturally using something and there happens to be an airdrop. For example, there are lots of places on Internet Computer Protocol where you can just naturally use it and you can get free ICP. So I have an OpenChat community. I've given out hundreds of ICP to people posting helpful comments, to people helping others in the chat. Sometimes to people I just like, I just send them free ICP. I've done giveaways, giving away a bunch of ICP. Maybe other people have too.
Now, some people wouldn't consider that necessarily an airdrop. However, in OpenChat, there are airdrops planned for various things like referring people to OpenChat. And if you're just using OpenChat anyway, there may be an airdrop for the token. But this is an example: I'm just using OpenChat normally. I'm not trying to do anything extra to get airdropped any tokens. And if I get some, great. If I don't, I don't care. It makes no difference to me.
So if you can just use something you're using anyway, and then get some free tokens, that's cool. But you don't really need to research that. Airdrop hunting is where you're hunting and looking for something you're not using, and then you're trying to just use it to get something, and then you've wasted your time most of the time.
How to actually get some free ICP from me
So if you want some free ICP, give me video ideas in my OpenChat. Give me helpful information in my OpenChat. And if you hang out on my live streams, I've given people $1,000 to $1,300 worth of ICP in the last month just for hanging out on my live streams. To me, that's better than an airdrop. It's much cooler than an airdrop. It's similar to an airdrop in the sense that if you just enjoy hanging out and watching me — and I've done several videos off of users that have inspired me — then that, to me, is a natural airdrop, a natural way to get some free crypto. Some of the people have gotten 20 ICP, the ones who have been the most helpful in the community, who have been on almost all the live streams answering questions. So to me, that's the ideal scenario. If you've ever wondered what that actually looks like in practice, I once gave away $1,000 of Bitcoin in 30 seconds on ICP using OpenChat, and you're always welcome to join me directly in the community.
I hope this saved you from wasting your time in airdrops and getting tricked into thinking you're just going to get some free crypto and you don't have anything to lose.