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People often say airdrops is free money, I’ve heard someone say he doesn’t like doing something he didn’t invest his money in and it’s a total waste of time. Sometimes you might invest on something and still lose and there are also people who have made it big from these airdrops that are said to be free

Airdrop is not absolutely free, it's a reward for carrying out instructions and task as assigned and  helping the developers test their project.

They're literally paying you with their token at launch for helping them to test it before launch.

you must always activate your mining and perform tasks.
So if you just sign up & do nothing then don't expect any reward.
Your reward is determined by the level of your commitment to task and quest with patience and consistency.
You also get to invest little funds in some of it and pay gas fees so definitely it’s not free 🙂.

In the crypto space how you work is how you gain 💯.

There is never free money in all these Crypto worlds.
You just have to work for it though sometimes some don’t get to launch due to one reason or the other and some fraudulent people also use this means to steal and deprive people of their hard earned funds.

So it’s adviced to use a different wallet for your airdrops and store your funds in a different wallet, Never use same wallet with all your funds to do airdrops to avoid tears. (VERY IMPORTANT)

The older guys in this space can add their thoughts.

I think this topic is fit for altcoin discussion board https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0.

You are right crypto airdrops is not free money. Because different types of tasks have to be completed in different airdrops. And in altcoin mining, various types of work have to be done constantly. There is no reward for just signing up. In some cases we have to spend our own money for fees, level up or earn more coins.

I totally agree with you. The income from airdrops comes from human effort. That is, rewards are given after completing various tasks. That means it is never free. But many people consider airdrop as free money. Many times investment has to be made to get a reward from airdrop.

I am fine with either ways.

Airdrop is not free money because in return they are using people to create awareness on the internet, and there is more, they use airdroppers to check stability of their projects and find new bugs, Airdrops are fun to be honest.

Airdrops are free money and that's why we have too many spammers and farmers in this niche this day, I have been into airdrop far too long to understand that crypto airdrops are most of the time not worth it, many will pay far too less amount and some won't even give out a penny.
Most airdrop task are not worth it, for example..

Notcoin fans only tab the miners every minutes of everyday to make large amount of money, for doing what again? Tabbing, there is no finding bugs or reffering people or doing testnets.

Either ways I am fine with both, and today its good to see that Airdrops are back again compare to the last bear market.

So basically, you are getting your reward for using your time for their projects for whichever tasks that they're giving to everybody and it's true, you are helping them with the promotion. But to say that there has been never a free crypto, you're wrong. There are cryptos that are for free, giveaways are for free if you join them just like what you'll see in the games and rounds. But I bet that you'll count the joining process as something that you have done as a task and the same goes for faucets, although they're not going to pay you that much but they're free cryptos.

I've always argued this, especially to those who think "airdrops are good to be true because free money". It simply isn't! And add the fact that a lot of people still think that airdrops is still the spam-the-projects-telegram-link-on-social-media thing people did back in 2017. It's far different today — the airdrop model is actually better now.

I haven't looked into any airdrops in the recent past years, the last time I know that people made money from airdrop is UNISWAP which isn't typical airdrop like task→rewards.

But as you said it needs time which also has value, so it ain't free money like people claim.

Yes its not actually free which other people think about. Since there are some project that you need to spend some time to do some task to earn points and there's also need to spend some fees to mint something. So for people thinking about airdrop is easy and they don't need to spend something then they should think more about from this. That's why lots of scammers are now joining airdrops since they make people think about they are doing it for free and nothing to lose while the fact is they are making the wallet of the devs fat without them knowing for doing those things mentioned. Airdrop is not free people need to know about that and they should be aware on the risk since there are so many hackings happening that's why critical thinking is important here.

Certainly we can actually Invest our resources in different ways such as funds, times and knowledges all on the goal of profiting.
So when participated in an airdrops and gets rewarded, it doesn't seem free fund but rewards after certain tasks were execute which is basically instructed by project team.
Indeed there're free modes crypto rewards can be obtained which is on promo or free giveaway without performing a tasks. It could be a reward for registering on a site or enrolling for one of the game and rounds just as saide.

Crypto airdrops are frere money if you come across the right one, though you may have the responsibility of performing some particular task for them to be able to use as a means of offering you their rewards after a successful completion of each stage, once you now compare the reward received and the efforts given to have deserved for that, you will see that its something we can completely assume to be a free money.

Airdrops are meant basically for those set of people that are not financially buoyant and they seeks easy access to earning profits in the space, it do take time since it's airdrop but definitely go through. Crypto airdrops are free money but we should always stick to our plans when it comes to earning profits. I know it's definitely going to be rough for us in the space but we ought to go through difficult before we finally fetch our streams.

Yes, welcoming bonus as such are rewards as well by not doing that much tasks. Compared to the airdrops that people that does nowadays, there's not that a lot to ask for the users and they'd just distribute it. So, this is common for the casinos to give bonuses and as you patronize them and also if you're going to notice it, in the games and rounds is one perfect example of it. With casinos like bc.game, you'd see them that are having a lot of giveaways so, that's real free money out there that they give if ever you win their contests.  ;)

Airdrops are not free money because there’s nothing like free money in cryptocurrency, you must have to do some work to get paid for your efforts, even if what they pay is not valuable but it’s definitely not a place you get free money. Some people prefer to do airdrops than investing in some coins or even go for a pre-market buy because they can’t stand losing their money when they can just perform some tasks and get paid for their efforts. It is all base on your believe about them, but airdrop is not a free money institute in cryptocurrency.


If you’re the one that involves yourself in airdrop, you have to be smart because most of those projects end up to be scammed and you don’t get paid for your efforts but rather they’ll devise a means to steal from you if you’re not smart enough, through wallet connection, they can easily have access to your account through that method. One of the rules of airdrop is to not pay any money until you’re sure to claim your rewards for your effort.

Yes you are right people think airdrops are free but that is not true. You might need to spend time doing tasks to earn points and I think the time more valuable thing which you are giving to any airdrop and sometimes you need to pay fees. Scammers trick people by promising free rewards but really they are making money from them. Airdrops can be risky and hackers might steal your money. It is important to be careful and think critically before joining airdrop. If we are aware of risks and take precautions we can make smart decisions and avoid getting scammed. Airdrops might not be free but with caution you can protect yourself. And I think safety and security is more important thing while joining an airdrop.

before airdrop where given just by putting you're information, in a spreadsheet this was 2016 until mid 2019, airdrops today where organized, specially legit, its not a free money since you are doing testing, doing a fake transactions to their system, that means you are being paid for testing.
this should be in alt section though.

There is no free lunch as always. You will have to pay cost one way or another. Even they don't require you to spend anything, you will still need to pay on chain transaction fee for claiming airdropped tokens.

There are other hidden risk factors after claiming airdrops.

Will you sell those tokens and move one to completely forget about that project/
Will you stay with it, return and spend your money to buy for speculation or investment in the project?

Airdrops are kind of marketing, to expose to potential investors and with bad projects, people who engage with these projects are victims of scammers.

There are other risk factors beyond money, capital, it's security. Sometimes you will interact with scam projects and your devices can be infected, wallets can be compromised and you will lose money by hacks.

Airdrop is free money, the problem is that nowadays what they call "airdrop" is not actually airdrop. It is payment for your work. Otherwise early days what they called "airdrop" had only one requirement, to give them your address so that they can have a destination to send your free coins!

The idea behind airdrop was also not to receive free money, it used to be to get some coins from a new cryptocurrency project so that you can test it without needing to spend time mining it or buying it. There were bitcoin giveaways which could be called airdrops in early days as well like this 5 free bitcoin per claim (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183.0).

Nowadays the goal of an airdrop is so that the owner of that premined shitcoin to "hire" others to advertise that shitcoin so that it can get pumped which would help the owner dump and make money.
There is no project, no innovation, no testing a new system, etc. there is only pump and dump. :(

They have dominant tokens in tokenomics of those projects and they can dump their tokens to exit their projects. Vesting schedule won't help investors to avoid dumps and when a big team start to dump, others will follow. Panic will be everywhere and price will fall very quickly and the most affected people will be small investors, speculators and traders who believe in promises of those project teams and keep holding their tokens.

With pumps, they won't enjoy best prices because they are not market makers and don't know what is best price to take profit. With dumps, they are very last people who panic and sell to get biggest losses.

Ah, that might also be the reason why some people say they work for bounties and airdrops.
that's not a problem, they want to profit from what they can do. Projects that launch airdrop campaigns are actually not free. they pay for what you do. no matter how big it gets, but it clearly requires quite a lot of time-consuming effort.
some people who don't have enough time might not do it, but some who are active and consistent with airdrops might get results from some random selected projects.

Group behind it don't want to call it a work or at least micro job, since people will expect to receive fiat or popular coin. That cost them some money, while giving their own coin/token cost them almost nothing.

Those were great! But this model simply is not viable today as people will just be farming using multiple wallets. Obviously we don't want AML/KYC to prevent sybils.

Not entirely; like 50% of the decent airdrops today don't even have a referral/affiliate program, so no one really needs to post about it.


There are still a crap ton of experimentation happening(good and of course, bad ones). Saying that there is none is like the boomers saying no one is using bitcoin.

They were like the real free money before and that's the ICO days, almost every airdrop at that time were have given a value and they're released in the market successfully.

So, it's the devs and as well as the airdrop hunters have made a lot of money at that time. But as time passes by, it's no longer the same and this time, you have to work for your the airdrop you have joined.

As explained by pooya, airdrop is still free but you have to work on it and that's how you claim that free money so you can say that it's not basically free money if there's a labor for it.

From what I understand pooya87 said airdrops used to be free money back then when things were more legit and addresses were just requested for the coins/token to be moved to but now it's not longer considered free money because one have to do some task to get rewarded with this coins. now airdrops are moreime making adverts to get paid.

I'm not really convinced with this 50% because sincerely from what I'm seeing in the space now, the pump and dump with this said strategies which pooya87 is talking about is much more than the said 50% (the ones that requires referrals) if you said 30% are decent without referrals, it would be more convincing.


Exactly, they always use the word "absolutely free" to cover the hidden agenda and consequently most of the people interested in airdrops are naive people so once they hear free it brings them more than even when they are aware of the task or micro jobs as you called it.

Nothing is available online for free. But yes there are some shit tokens that often come to our wallet for free. They may come to the wallet to increase their holder or as a phishing attack.
Crypto airdrop is not free. One is eligible for airdrop only after completing certain tasks. And in mining game you have to work with a lot of time.

Yes, before it was like that. That was the time when every day there's a new ICO that's coming in the market.

That's the labor that I am saying so you're trading your time for the tasks and you'll get paid with the tokens that you'll never know if they'll have some value.

Fortunately many of them have shown some good money as this bull run has started. After that, maybe in the last quarter of next year to 2026, many won't be as effective as they are anymore.

That's how they market and paying tokens out of thin air when it's uncertain if they'll have some value or not.

maybe because they think that it is a fairly easy task so they think that the money from the airdrop is free money. even though if you think logically it is not free money because the participants are required to do various tasks given to them and then they can get rewards after the campaign period is over. even though it is an easy task, it does not make the airdrop free money, it is still money from the work we do to promote the project.

Not all airdrops requires you to do any task. There are airdrops that are given to gain wild adoption. Several times I have received airdrops for just holding my coins in a particular wallet. Yes there are airdrops that requires people to perform some tasks, but I just want to let you know that some airdrops are totally free and what you got for free, is a free money. Just imagine you are holding your own coin and someone sent you money for using a particular wallet to hold your asset, for me that's free. Even if I pay any transaction fees as you have mentioned, provided the benefit is more than the expenditure it's still a good one. Moreover what you pay as transaction fees is just a little fraction of what you got as airdrops.

Yea, it's actually true, their is no free money in the crypto industry, because for you to be eligible to earn an airdrop from any crypto project, you must have put in a lot of work according to the task that was given, so it's very true that it's not free, because you will definitely spend a whole lot of data and time in putting in the works for you to be eligible.

So am saying this because their was a time in the past, I think it was early last year that I did a few airdrop task and I was expecting a reward afterwards, but I was totally disappointed when the coin was launch, nothing was airdroped to any of the airdrop participants,  so when I think of the kind of effort I put in  without getting anything in return,  I stop wasting my time in doing anything airdrop, because most of these developers are not reliable as they claim.

After the trend of the play to earn, next is the NFT and now we are most likely seeing airdrop projects, it can be free money because an airdrop is equivalent to the token you will receive on the tasks you've done, this kind of projects still need a DYOR to not waste your time and effort not all projects is worth profitable. Basically you didn't make an invest of money but you invested commitment, now it will become payoff if you got a trusted project.

It can be moved to altcoin discussion but its already two day since the post was made. I think this thread real motive is to educate newbies that's why OP posted in this board. And I really agree about the topic which is Airdrop is not free because you work for it and Devs uses our resources for their projects.

But there are some airdrops that you didn't do anything and all of the sudden you can claim an airdrop by just clicking claim button. I mean you didn't expect the airdrop because of the thing you did before on that platform.

You're probably thinking bigger than 50% because what you're seeing are likely to not be the 'decent' ones. Take it from me who is actually very active in the crypto space(not just Bitcoin) and actually runs a curated airdrop database(paldo.io). Don't have a generalized opinion based on the Telegram referral links you see here and on social media.

As they say, there is no free lunch, which means that whatever you get in this world requires you to give something in return whether it's your time, some effort, money, or anything else that has some value. Some people might not understand this, but time is more valuable than money because money can be earned anytime, but the time that goes by doesn't come back, this is the reason why every wise person would say that no one should waste their time on useless things because the would regret it in the future.

Anyway, coming back to the topic, some people actually consider something free if they are not paying or using any money for it, which means that if you are doing a specific thing such as completing a task or something, you are not spending any money, so it's free, but in reality, it's not free because you are using your time and efforts for it.

Maybe you are right on this aspect. But since it is still called as airdrop means the norm has been adapted already. We work, or do something to get it unlike what pooyah said that giving them literally an address for the rewards and nothing more. For me the term free airdrop can still be valid for tokens we didnt pay for or we dont spend anything to get it.

But if there's money involve or certain task that need to achieve on daily basis so that you can rise up your score to get something huge for them then its not actually free. But as long as the dev is not telling something misleading and say all is free but if we check its really not then we can figure out that this is a waste of time. Airdrop term is famous used by a lot of project and people got used to this word. But there are certain changes happening and part of it is you need to do some task for them so that they can make sure that you are really supporting their project and will not just came out of nowhere then ask some share for their project.

Well it depends on one to absorbed the description. If the task is quite simple and cant be considered as work just like doing a simple posting for signature campaign. It doesnt really much a hassle then its still free for me.

Like the one Ive tried like the notcoin, tap tap Id get some airdrop there but didnt spend money but only tapping on device to mine, for me its not a work but just a free time hobby to grind.

This is one of the truly important tips. Using the main wallet to connect to any websites or platforms and signing transactions may pose a serious threat of losing the assets contained in the wallet. The airdrop field, although some may see it as fruitful with the money that can be achieved by completing tasks or interacting and performing various activities and transactions on projects that have their own blockchain and ecosystem, which is likely to reward early users in the end, but it carries significant risk and relies on luck. There are no guarantees, and anyone who ventures into the field should have the knowledge and be aware of everything he is doing, follow a research-based approach, and have a moderate amount of capital for fees, transactions, spending on bridges, purchasing NFTs, and conducting trading volume and the like.

If you posted this one a few years ago where people are advertising different projects in different social media platforms, you might get a different response from us because there's a thing called "bounty hunting" at that time where people are just doing their weekly tasks and in exchange, they're being paid through tokens. It's not basically an airdrop, but it's free at least since you didn't invest any money, but you invested time though.

Nowadays, airdrops are very different already. Most of them are requiring investors to invest at least a certain amount of money in order for you to get the tokens. Nowadays, most of the airdrops that are being launched isn't free anymore because you need to invest money in order to get "free" tokens. Well, there are still some who airdrops that are being launched without any investment coming from investors, but they're very rare.

What we consider as "FREE" is something that we are getting in return without investing any money right? While it's true, you still need to exert some effort by doing some tasks. Overall, while most of the airdrops require us investors to invest money in order to get free tokens, there are still some who are giving the tokens basically for free, but you need to do some tasks that are boring. :D

Someone who handles a social media account and gets paid will you say the person makes free money?, the time invested and the knowledge to perform tasks plus the internet which is paid for. All this put together you can’t say it’s free but I know some airdrops pay for just wait listing but they’re rare. Most are task driven; Time plus efforts can’t be NOTHING

I also really agree with your understanding like this because now some people still think that Crypto Airdrops are free because they don't ask for money directly when they want to join or participate as a participant. So that is what makes them not realize that most Airdrops actually take up very valuable capital from all participants, namely TIME. Because time is a very valuable capital and cannot even be repeated once it has been passed and the same goes for the internet network which is actually not free even though some people can use it through a cafe, but that person also has to order a drink or meal at that place which in the end will also incur costs in the form of money.

Apart from that, energy from the mind to carry out more tasks is also needed which must also be considered as capital after time and internet costs because smartphones no matter how sophisticated they are also need a certain provider when they want to use an internet network at a better speed. So the assumption that Airdrop is free because you don't ask for money directly is a very wrong assumption in my opinion, so it makes me also agree more with what you said regarding any Airdrop.

Airdrops are not free even if you don't invest your money but you spend all your time on uncertain airdrops, while people say time is money so think again about it, so you have to risk your time to do the sometimes complicated airdrop tasks.

Sometimes you have to pay for transactions, mint NFTs to meet the criteria, risk your money in liquidity, borrow and many more, I joined several airdrops until now the reality is that nothing is completely free except quester/social tasks.

I'd say it's pretty careless to join an airdrop using the same wallet where you keep your assets, try to keep it different if possible with a new wallet many people recommend to join a new airdrop.
With the same wallet it can be hit by a phishing drain that can disappear at any time because we never know when a bad day will happen.

I, for one believe that anything that takes your time/effort isn't free, quite a lot of people do not consider their time to be valuable, so if you give them a little task to fulfil, of which you pay them after, they think it is free money. I hardly participate in airdrops, so i do not have a strong experience of it, that being said, if you are basically going to post your address only, and receive coins, then that is free money.

On the other hand, if you are going to perform a task, no matter how small it is, then it isn't free. These days some airdrops even require KYC verification in order to participate, which is quite risky, and i would not advise anyone to do.

Normally this is exactly what Airdrop means, although some people think cryptocurrency is all about investment or trading that will earn you money. They think all these airdrops are scams that they won’t pay off one day, which means they are misunderstanding the whole thing. If you observe during bounty days in this forum, some of the bounty is like this, although some of them were not paying, but almost every bounty we’re paying people for helping them advertise and test their site, which is what you just explained now.

 Furthermore, for the people who claim to believe that Airdrop is a scam, I can call this ignorance. He didn’t know anything about Airdrop, and that is why he said that you can’t blame him for that, but if you can explain it to them in an understandable way, it will be good. 

Calling money obtained from airdrops as free money should be based on individual views because someone must do a certain task before they receive the reward. In my view, I do not consider airdrops as free money because of the time I have invested in them. I see free money as something given to someone without any tasks.

The truth is that not only investments can result in losses, but also airdrops. I just imagine how someone will invest their time in some airdrop, but in the end, it will be a scam project. I have participated in many airdrops, but only a few have rewarded me. So, at the end of the day, when I calculate the time I invested in those airdrops, if I had used it to do something else, it would have fetched more than the reward I received. Many people have made money from airdrops, but for me, I have not been that lucky. Therefore, I believe in working in other ways to make money so I can invest in Bitcoin than wasting much my times in airdrop at end I may not be lucky.

Lots of people now think performing airdrop tasks is free money, but we should know that the project teams are just looking for people who will make advertisements for them, so if you decide to participate in the airdrop, then you are promoting the project. As long as your time is put into something before you are paid, then it’s no longer free. Most people think that since they just performed a simple task by pressing their phone, it’s free money since it doesn’t require any labor force or they didn’t invest any amount in it before they were paid. But seriously, airdrops are not free money, you worked for it. That’s why I do say that there is no free money in the crypto space, but some people do think airdrops are free, but to me they are not.