Airdrops, in principle, are free cryptocurrencies distributed by projects seeking to introduce themselves to the cryptocurrency community. But can you really get those digital coins for free nowadays?
Cryptocurrencies for free? Is it true that we get them for free?
Yes, but we will most likely spend a significant amount of time looking for such projects. Sending small amounts of crypto/tokens to wallets built on the chain of this digital coin was a common practice in the early days of the crypto industry. Small amounts of different digital coins can appear on the wallets of portfolio owners who support the ERC20 token format.
While the mechanism has evolved, marketers have found that many people are willing to perform simple tasks in return for "free cryptocurrencies." So we can confidently assume that current airdrops (also known as smartdrops) are a way of exchanging digital assets for time and effort spent on basic social media activities like tweeting, liking, and commenting. Another benefit is that airdrops do not require us to spend digital assets or fiat currencies; the only risk we take is our own time, which has the potential to pay us back.
How can I safely receive airdrops?
To start, keep in mind the basic safety rules when searching for free cryptocurrencies. It's not worth betting that the digital coins we earn now will be worth a lot in the future. If, when airdropping, we receive a message stating that the project needs our private key or other confidential data for verification, we may be certain that it is a scam.
The same goes for projects that ask us to give them some BTC/ETH - after all, we're the ones who are supposed to get free cryptos for doing their tasks, aren't we? It's also necessary to note not to use the stock exchange address as the portfolio address for which we want to acquire digital assets; otherwise, the stock exchange will take over our digital coins. The address to which you have a private key should be provided. If the project is based on ETH, for example, the myEtherWallet wallet is a good and easy solution.
Is it worth to collect airdrops?
Is it really worth your time to do something that would only yield the desired results? If we are just getting started with cryptocurrencies, it may be a more interesting option than risking our own money. It could also be a good diversification strategy, particularly during a bear market. Don't get your hopes up that we'll make a fortune this way - most of the projects that organize airdrops will turn out to be untrustworthy, and we'll never see our digital coins. However, there is a chance that digital assets acquired by airdrops would be valuable at some point in the future.
Airdrops aren't the only choice.
Participating in partner schemes is another way to make money by spending your time. Permanent affiliate services are offered by crypto exchanges such as BitBay, Binance, and BitMEX to their customers, where we can receive a portion of the commissions from referrals.
I wrote an article about airdrops recently too. They're great! Coinbase app had or has some nice incentives in free crypto that kind of acquainted me with free crypto... Signing up is the way to go on things that, well, we don't know where these new tokens and cryptocurrencies will be in 1, 2, 3 years. Livepeer was one such drop. Now it has potential to disrupt Youtube, Twitch, virtually anything that needs encoding - even Netflix.