Some Internet users are dedicating their time trying to apply to cryptocurrency airdrops, bounties, giveaways, and contests. As with all other internet activities, this one is useful for those regions of the world, where living costs and wages are low.
But it comes with lots of disappointments and most of the time is a waste.
New cryptocurrency projects need marketing exposure and often find bounties or airdrops that will increase their visibility to the public. Usually, the reason behind a bounty is for a project to attract investors during ICO (or any other term used instead of pre-sales today).
Back in 2017, I accidentally stumbled upon a bounty article while browsing the BTC forum bitcointalk. As a beginner in crypto and the process of ICOs, I didn’t pay attention. Although that one and even more bounties I checked have actually paid thousands of dollars in tokens to each bounty hunter. This was in 2017, though with a raging bull market for what was called then “altcoins”.
I’ve searched more and tested bounties and airdrops in 2018, but during the lengthy bear market, the results were poor. Most of the projects in bounties and airdrops either were scams or failed to attract investors and didn’t distribute any tokens.
I always had in mind the discussions and research I did earlier and was sure that during a bull run, this activity could be fruitful.
And it was better, since I tried bounties and airdrops again in 2020-2021, although not even close to the 2017 results. The cryptocurrency industry had changed and social media bounties or airdrops didn’t offer the same profitable opportunities as the ICO days.
Since 2020, the market has exploded because of DeFi and NFTs. These projects didn’t need bitcointalk (and this was a step forward). They never opened an ANN thread and bypassed this website that was used by BTC maximalists to harm cryptocurrencies other than BTC.
Airdrops
Airdrops are a waste of time at a rate of 99%, unless, those behind the project are known community members and have a clear plan to support the tokens. I'm not recommending hunting airdrops, 99% will not pay and will waste your time. Those projects that will distribute a token, will not be worth it either.
There have been exceptions though, and there have been tokens that their airdrop distribution reached thousands of dollars. Although this is rare and possibly the distribution was handled with care on who will receive it. I've seen some DeFi airdrops handed out to top Twitter influencers only, and no other was accepted.
The airdrops by community tokens in the SmartBCH network today are probably those that are more worthy of our time, and this is the reason thousands of hunters applied and rushed in telegram channels and Twitter.
ARG, $CATS, Knuth, and a few more, had a clear structure for their airdrops, were honest, and probably SmartBCH projects are the only ones delivering their promises lately.
While I don't recommend hunting for airdrops, there can be some projects that offer tokens worth $20 or even more. Most of them will have claims of bit rewards but will fail to deliver.
Some DEXs like Uniswap have distributed lucrative airdrops to their users. These were often not announced but reached the value of thousands of dollars. The requirements for each of these airdrops differ, and while Uniswap rewarded everyone that had at least one transaction before the time of the airdrop, other websites demanded high volumes in trades.
Bounties
In 2017, there were not many cryptocurrency-related services that could offer the ground for marketing exposure in terms of social media campaigns. Bitcointalk had a section it is calling altcoins that allows new project discussions and also have this marketplace which usually is infested with scammers.
With whales using bitcointalk, upcoming cryptocurrency projects counted on their support, and signature campaigns are trending. If you wonder why too many gambling sites are trending in the signature campaigns of bitcointalk, this is because whales often thrown their BTC at them and get exploited. Some people don't deserve to win the lottery, and eventually, they waste their fortune in nonsense.
Crypto bounties can also have the form of asking for selected professionals in the field. It could be about the creation of a whitepaper, a website, artwork, etc. It can also take the form of writing an article on blogging websites or can require a more technical aspect, such as bug bounties that ask for programmers to test platforms, find bugs, and get rewarded for this.
At the beginning of 2021, I took part in one signature campaign in that forum, and it indeed paid quite well. I am not using bitcointalk since then though. I don't find the content there to be helpful, it is mostly BTC maximalists manipulating other members. However, the tokens I received were worth $1250-1500. And the work I had to put in was just 20 comments per week, for two months. An easy task, taking just five or ten minutes daily from my time.
But, I haven't found another similar bounty, the rest were weak and maybe will pay $40 in tokens after a few months. Moreover, when it comes to signatures, bitcointalk has a very closed system for ranks, making ranking up impossible to anyone without having friends to help. You will need your posts and comments to receive 100 merits to reach full member status, which is usually the accepted rank for this type of campaign.
I've taken part previously in social media campaign bounties (LinkedIn, Twitter, I don't have Facebook) and I received tokens from half of these projects, but the outcome was not meeting the ICO days. It was between $10-$50 but there had been projects that had potential and their price went 10-20 times higher later. There is a risk when holding though, that price can also dive by 90%.
Social Media Bounties
What you will certainly need is profiles on social media with thousands of followers. The more followers, the better your rewards will be. And this is not what social media platforms want, they will probably ban accounts that try to bypass the rules to gain followers artificially.
But here is the part where bounties fail and eventually lead to the downfall of the project as well.
Most bounties do not care for the quality of social media posts and do not examine the accounts. There are plenty of services offering boosts in Twitter followers for a couple of dollars. There are also shill services that cost higher and users interact with the post, always with a positive approach towards the account owner.
Influencers with higher numbers of real followers will never take part in bitcointalk bounties, they will receive requests in dm and some even have another person handling this part.
In Conclusion
There is a big problem with these bounties for all projects though. Most of them have a very high chance of failing. By most, this number probably reaches 99%. For this reason, I don't expect bitcointalk to keep supporting its website by just the tens of thousands of bounty hunters which have become the only reason for most of its audience to stay there.
It still has a strong user-base of BTC maximalists, but this is mostly devs and people trying to get connected with others for personal gains.
The main problem with the structure of bounties is that bounty managers will get paid according to their rules in USDT, ETH, BTC, or another cryptocurrency they can easily liquidate, rather than the token of the project they promote. Yet, the bounty hunters have no guarantees they will receive payment.
It is boring and depressive work. In the ICO days, I verified it was paying a lot, but in DeFi/NFT days the projects have moved away from this kind of bounties and eventually, they will stop being used.
Bitcointalk and Altcoinstalk are two forums where one can find bounties. What is important is the bounty manager, since each one has differences and it is always better to prefer joining bounties by experienced managers.
Although, I don't recommend becoming a bounty or airdrop hunter anymore, (due to fierce competition, and low profitability), to those interested, here is the telegram link that notifies about all the latest bounties listed at three cryptocurrency forums.
One final piece of advice: when participating in these activities is to do everything correctly according to the rules set by the project. Not following the rules is another reason for the reward not to be distributed.
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Lead Image from: Unsplash, by ben o'bro (modified)
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It's always a waste of time for me unless it's from a reputable source like top exchanges or websites. If it is new and unknown usually when I join it fails. Lol.