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I personally never participated in any airdrop as there are voices around that ALL airdrops are ponzi schemes!

Whats your thought about this "statement"?

Can some1 give deeper insight and background info about the airdrop principle and why some people telling its a ponzi scheme or MLM technique?


We (Licensium Team) where thinking months back on airdrop but decided to go the ico way!



Thx in advance!

What do you mean airdrops are ponzi schemes? They are just what the term confines: airdrops. Byteball is an airdrop, is it a ponzi scheme? I don't think so. Even if generally airdrops are a weak way to distribute coins, if the project is solid like Byteball, I don't see why would you accuse it of being a ponzi only because the distribution method are airdrops. IT needs further explanation to me.

Ponzis usually involve some sort of guaranteed return or something scammy, and I dont think Byteball is scammy.

DON´T GET ME WRONG! I DON´T ACCUSE!

I want to know more about airdrops and why some people telling its ponzi scheme!

I don't think airdrops are ponzi-schemes but they are premined scams.


People are trusting the devs that they'll distribute the coins fairly while there are no guarantees at all for that. And cryptos should be absolutely trustless so airdrops (and ICOs) are taking a huge step backwards.

Also, people can buy bitcointalk accounts (legal but discouraged) and participate in airdrops multiple times.

So the "devs" might have 50 sockpuppet accounts they ask coins to. It's basically the next iteration of the "x% premined" scam as it is not that transparent.


There's also the argument that if a dev creates coins/tokens out of thin air for absolutely free (airdrop/ICO), those coins are worthless. The dev is just convincing people they're not worthless as if he would sell rocks lying around telling people they're valuable. With mining at least creating a coin actually costs money which creates a floor price.

Thank you! Appreciate your time and will to educate me!

My thought till now was actually that airdrops are worthless, but again they might be not if a real value stands behind them or good project... yet I do not feel confortable to join airdrops and I cannot tell it why...

I don't know why airdrops should be considered ponzy schemes or scams. Maybe I'm getting it wrong, but aren't they just free money? I consider BCH as an airdrop, and I enjoyed it. I also participate in byteball aridrops, and I like them as well. There is no risk for me, I can just sell the coins if I don't believe in the project, so I don't know how I can be scammed with these. Maybe I'm not seeing the big picture here, I don't know.

Yes well, is there are big picture behind it?

That is the reason why I opened that thread. Because as said Im not feeling comfortable to join airdops, but I lack on knowledge about airdrops and possible risk it might contain. Like joining possible scam and being part of distributing possible scam... I duno...as said  Im not comfortable with it. Would like to know more about it. Some deeper insights....

Im not saying all airdrops are scam as I dont know it... but want to know more about it..

You receiving coins from an airdrop is not the scam. The scam is the airdrop itself. Is it really shared to the investors fair. Or is 10% going to investors and 90% to the developers. You can't verify it. But it comes with trust, if you trust a coin/team than you will trust an airdrop, else you wouldn't invest your money in it

A ponzi scheme is where new investor funds are used to pay older investments. Eventually such a scheme will fail. Airdrops do not require investment and therefore cannot be considered ponzi.

AirDrops can't be "ponzi" schemes unless they are not an airdrop. Giveaways are not allowed here in bitcointalk anyway so ad spam isn't something that would bother you here. Nevertheless, if they aren't asking for money they can't be a ponzi. ICO's on the other hand, it depends on what they offer. Some like Centra are outright offering rewards to premium users with funds of others.

Well participating in airdrop might push the coins acceptance, and price on some way, no?  So you actually do not invest in participating with money but you do distribute the coin, project on some way, no? So if a project or coin is possible scam, so you might be a part of that scam, no? Airdrop seems to me not transparent... duno, just a feeling as said. As more I learn as more I might change my feeling about airdrops, tho

"All airdrops are ponzi schemes?"

No, I don't think so. It's just a way to distribute coins. Of course there are some scams that use airdrops to create publicity and get investment. But equally there are plenty of legitimate airdrops - what about OMG airdrop to ETH holders? And a Stellar Lumens airdrop a while ago too, there are plenty of examples of genuine projects running airdrops.

This is a silly statement. Personally, I know many successful airdrops where the altcoins went on to become very successful. Currently, the DeepOnion airdrop is a good example of a successful airdrop which is clearly not a ponzi.

I think ponzi schemes are different. I believe the coins who wants you to refer to another participants to get more coins would come close to being ponzi scheme (but not exactly). Free airdrop is just airdrop to raise awareness about the project and hoping that from beginning you have a follower of the projects compared to building a loyal followers from scratch. With amount of ICOs and projects we have right now, airdrop makes more sense.

That´s an interesting thought! Thx

It's essentially a way for a coin to immediately "create" a market from thin air. They give everyone a piece, find an exchange to list the coin, most of them also have the community develop parts of the project.

Free money, an instantly created market and community built around it. Sounds too good to be true and it probably is, but might as well gather them in your free time, nothing to lose right? Some of them end up paying off in the end you just either have to get in on the first couple of rounds, or get lucky with a couple of them by holding everything you accumulate.

Well and I gave you my opinion. How can it be a ponzi scheme? By definition a ponzi scheme is when the founder generates returns to old investors by payments made by new ones. You can't enter a ponzi scheme for free. If I enter a project through an airdop, I get coins for free, and I can just sell them right away. If I'm doing that, how can I be generating profits for the old investors? If I'm just selling and getting the free cash, I will probably just decrease the price of the coin. Normally that's what happens to byteball after every airdrop. Those who don't realy believe the project just sell their coins and the price drops a bit.

If you said that you are suspicious about some airdrops and you are afraid of installing their wallet in order to receive the coins etc, then I might understand your question, but you only talked about ponzi and MLM, and I don't see how that could make any sense, from the definition and mechanics of these types of strategies.

Air cast is a freebie. And freebies are not superfluous. But, you can get on viruses if you download a purse.

There are some projects that already did a fair distribution but remember there si a lot of the airdrop with premined to dump it into the market such as deep shitty scam onion with its 90% pre mined coin goes to the developers. What a crap.

In my opinion, no.
If you feel an airdrop is a ponzi then you'd have to feel the same about regular distribution through mining with cpu or gpu power. Airdrop is pretty fair if you ask me.

people use air drops for all different reasons so definitely not all airdrops are ponzi schemes.
Some use it to reward their user base or some as advertisement, etc.

Scheme of Ponzi - Eng. Ponzi Scheme, is an investment scheme that provides the income of earlier investors at the expense of funds received from later investors. Initially, it may look legitimate, but the Ponzi scheme usually collapses as soon as the inflow of funds from new investors becomes insufficient to make payments to the old. In some cases, the Ponzi Scheme scheme is initially used without malicious intent, but in order to make a profit with the fulfillment of all obligations to investors.

Not a trully scam, but they are weird programs, i dont understand the real purpose of an altcoin that uses an airdrop in order to make publicity of it. Anyway, this is a good nickname for them, since they are only signature campaigns payed in their tokens, only that they say that it is an airdrop, and that you are getting it "free" but it is not like that.. But yes, maybe some of them are good ones, but the others are pure bs.

The purpose is to grow a big community that get's involved, it's not difficult to understand? So you think it's better to have a coin instamined by a few "lucky" people or companies with huge hash power?

Airdrop can't be ponzi scheme, is another way of distributing coin which also help in marketing of the coin. Some Airdrop is to create awareness as well

it's not a ponzi scheme, but the way it gets distributed among people is kinda weird. But yeah, it's pretty fair and I approve.

You can't understand that the air dropped is a Ponzi scheme. After all, airdrop doesn't really cheat your money. It's just an air drop for propaganda. There is no real investment in the air drop. Instead, it is part of the source of funding. So don't generalize.

I got the point of growing community! If its a "real" airdrop, so no activity like signature caring so on is required then its seems legit. And I never said that I´m for none transparent pre-mining....

"people" are not telling airdrops are Ponzi scheme, you are! your topic is saying it. otherwise you would have asked whether they are or not with a "question mark" at the end!

in any case, having an airdrop doesn't make something a Ponzi scheme. having no usage and being absolute crap makes them a Ponzi scheme. and they usually don't do any airdrops. they just release some ICO.

Many airdrops are not scam. Don't accuse beacuse you've joined an airdrop that will obviously scam people who are joiing on it. Many people get some funds because of airdrops. My friend got $600 just becaus eof airdrops.

The investment thing will be shown once the coin is been added on exchange and dev of that coin will do some manipulation and trap those people who bought when he hype his coins and many airdrop coins do this activity but we can't actually call all of them are scam since there are other coins who are doing a good run on these days.

At first i want to say that all airdrops is not a ponzi schemes. First time we know about ponzi schemes and what is ponzi schemes ? Ponzi Scheme is money movement system as like recycle system . when some member give a some money and those money got a new member that means old member got money and new member invest money .

So it clearly defines an investment is opposite to airdrop which is no money from your own pocket will be invested so definitely airdrops are not related to ponzi schemes its just a free giveaways from devs its just an act of generosity nothing else. 

Whats the best way to make an airdrop as transparent and fair as possible?

So airdrop is giving FREE money and other members might invest afterwards... and so on... hmmm, still not sure about it

Technically, all of the Altcoins that are doing the airdrops now a days are trying to get more people to purchase what they are distributing to all the partnered Bitcoin Exchanges. They will sell their coins once they get a huge amount of money from project.

Airdrop and Ponzi are miles apart! Airdrop create a community of loyal people who are committed to the purpose and ideals behind the coin airdropped! If those ideas behind airdrop are realized, such coin could become Billion Dollar cap. A case in point  is that of ebtc. I learnt 8000 people got  21million coin with Dev having 0.2% of total coin! That is a good example of fair distribution!

Some people say Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. When some people do not understand an economic system, they say it is a ponzi scheme.

It is in economy like the Godwin point in politics.

Well I started to seriously discuss it with the team to maybe make an airdrop for our projects after reading all the response to this thread here... Maybe its a good idea to strengthen the community... I just do not want to make this step until I´m convinced its the right thing to do and its not a scam sign or ponzi scheme...

There are lot of them popping up lately. I think we might need another section dedicated just for Airdrops. I haven't personally participated in any of them due to no future development.

My friend got $600 becaus just aof airdrop

Airdrops are a brilliant way to build a network.

You could call it a "reverse ICO model".

The only way a token/coin takes off is if you have enough users.

By GIVING AWAY tokens, holders have the option of using it without investing any money upfront.

If they use it, and like it... a certain percentage will continue using it and become core users.

Best run Airdrop I've seen so far is in my SIG.

Well if you need to care a signature I wouldn't call it airdrop m8

That´s what 80% in this thread are saying...  Airdrop is FREE   caring a signature is a service and maybe called bounty!

there was an airdrop for decred, but decred is really a good coin, so not all the airdrops are ponzi schemes

Apparently that is what NEM did. They try to deny it, but when it is pointed out that they refused to even use Facebook verified accounts, they just claim that verifications were done but don’t provide any independently verifiable objective proof.

And Byteball airdropped to exchanges who held so much BTC, so guess for yourself if any kickbacks were involved.

EOS runs a year long ICO “no rights token sale” ostensibly so they can buy said “tokens” from themselves.

Much better they did not try to hide the centralization of the money supply and the control over the ledger, e.g. Byteball’s 21 witnesses are thus elected and controlled by these whales (and thus receive all the transaction fee income).


Seems I had a debate with them some months ago on BCT and it was analysed how their system is really designed for the whales to control and milk.

Y’all are so gullible.

you are wrong, airdrop does not have a triangle scheme. not ponzi as you say, you should check first before you comment, I think need insight and knowledge ..

Since the beginning there was filtering mechanisms preventing this from happening. And it was further improved:

Your argument is not only faulty but also wrong because we have seen several airdrops that have gone to be a mainstream currency and create a space for itself despite coming late. A perfect example I can think of now is GByte which was an airdrop and gained the confidence of the community and now I read where an ICO is accepting it as a means of payment along side will BTC, and ETH. To make assumption without any fault, there is need for proper understanding of what the project is all about.

I never said that! I ask why people saying that airdrops are ponzi schemes. You probably misread it! Thank you for your understanding!

It is not my argument. I ask why some people saying that all airdrops are bonzi schemes. Please pay attention and not let me look like I attacked airdrops. I don´t . I ask to learn!!!

Thank you!

Why are people saying bitcoin and other coins are ponzi's? These things always start out with a small group of people whether you mine or airdrop or do an ico. Arguably they are all "ponzi's".

Nobody reads the OP anymore? That's the problem with signature campaigns.

Sadly but true! Thanks for pointing that out!

Yeah man, that's another thing for mods and signature managers to keep an eye on.

These days it's all about the post count. It's creating mindless zombies.

Airdrops are free, ICOs usually require investment. It may not be the most original method
of distribution, but there's certainly nothing wrong with it, other than the fact that you will
tend to get the same recipients as every other airdrop.

ICO is way more "ponzi"-like than airdrops, provided the airdrops are free.

All ponzi schemes require some sort of investment in order to get return on your investment. And this system works as long as cash is flowing in the system new users are investing and old users getting paid. BUT in case of airdrops there is no need to invest its basically free money so you can't just compare it with ponzi scheme.

When it comes to cryptos, it's all about transparency and fair distribution. An ICO can be a ponzi scheme, and airdrop can be a ponzi scheme, even a PoW coin can be a ponzi scheme, when the coin is instamined.

There are airdroped coins with terrible distribution, like NEM and Clams. And there are coins with a distribution much better designed, like Byteball. And some people forget that Decred also had an airdrop phase.

I doubt the fit the technical definition of a ponzi which is paying out old investors with funds provided by new investors. Whether they are a good way to distribute coins is of course debatable - but ponzi I would say no.

Oh come on. Well I’m glad you linked to that because I read it in the past and couldn’t find it again.

Afaics, that filtering rule is easily subverted. And most of the exchanges’ BTC are presumably in deeper storage any way, so the filtering rule will not help.

Besides, wasn’t that rule added far too late after the most economically significant air drops were already completed.

For such an important issue, where is the comprehensive document which explains all the filtering methods employed in sufficient, holistic detail and the timing that each was employed and the complete accounting of air drops and dates. We should not have to go searching in a very long project thread to try to dig out the details which are buried in posts.

Also we know for a fact they did not filter out Iconomi’s ill gotten, illegal security issued ICO hoard, because Iconomi wrote a Medium blog post about how they got 9.766% of the initial Byteball money supply (https://medium.com/iconominet/iconomi-acquires-9-766-of-byteball-initial-distribution-free-of-charge-cd9c4a5d49ac).

“if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”

(but really we’re just-us working together to build a better world, not scamming)

I guess what irritates me is pretending something is more egalitarian than it really is. I have no problem with admitting that egalitarianism is impossible, so why not be transparent about it. Why make these SJW-like lies to ourselves pretending what isn’t.

I suggest you read it again. The filtering is to prevent customers from linking the exchange addresses, not the exchange itself from linking it. If you see, linking by signature is still allowed.

Exchanges, ICONOMI and other ICOs own the private keys for these addresses, which makes them, from a protocol perspective, owners of these coins.
 
I'm not saying it's perfect, but I also don't see these exchanges linking their cold storages by signature. Even if they are there, again, from a protocol perspective, we can not blame them. In crypto, that's what we're signing for.

Air drops is a viral Marketing strategy. Apparently it works b/c everybody seems to be talking about it.

Thank you again!

That you telling cannot be said too often! I agree that there should be more awareness about it!

Your assumption is very wrong, why are you picking recent airdrop project, I was told NEM was airdropped and made some people millionaire and recently Cosma will be on the platform and raised significant amount of fund. I believe you are mixing some things up here

What kind of stupid question is this ? Do you even know what a ponzi scheme is ?
Airdrop has nothing to do with it...

That 's statement will irritated airdrop hunters, I never be interested in airdrop, it waste time, I better small amount of ICO and make profit after the token listed in the market. That,s better than waiting of hunting for airdrop.

I do not agree with you. All airdrops are not Ponzi Schemes. A couple of months ago I have joined Timereum and some Airdrop. I have earned so much from those airdrops. I like to join airdrop. But who is giving condition to install wallet I always avoid them. Because wallet installation is very risky.

How can you say that all airdrops are ponzi scheme. Ponzi is that, where a person or company generate returns for old members by getting new people into the system and no guarantee of anything and no real earning source. in airdrop, you got free coins without putting a single penny out of pocket and no money transaction happen.

Well I for my part only ask why some people telling that all airdrops are ponzi schemes, to understand airdrops better. I did not make any statement, i made a question!

I don't understand why people called airdrop Ponzi Scheme as it was given us free Coins and no money has been given by us & no money rotation then how can some people always screaming   airdrop as a ponzi scheme. For example tell me most of the people got BCH as free can anyone tell me is it ponzi? No its not pozi, ponzi is that where we all invest money & only some people got back their money that is called ponzi.

He's out of his mind I think.
Airdrop now is a trend and I can say many of us are earning here with this free coins.
Maybe he always don't get free coins like he's too late when there's new airdop. ;D

Let me reiterate your question, do you mean "Are all projects that uses airdrop strategy are usually into ponzi scheme?"
If that is correct, my answer would be NO. Airdrop is just a free way to distribute token/coins (A non complex way than an ICO) and that's it. I can say that , a project can only be categorized as a ponzi or on another word "scam" if itself doesn't have real products or services that it can offer to the public. In short, there must be a development not some BS promises.

*There's too much salt on this thread, stay strong OP*

No not at all! I have joined Airdrops and have received a good amount of coin. If you do a thing for the Airdrop and not receive it that maybe a ponzi. But not all. Ive been for your Airdrop Licensium :D I like your team actually I joined your facebook bounty. You research first before you do and thats good :D

Afaics, you have not addressed my main point, which is @tonych claiming he only got 1% which obfuscates whether exchanges (who were holding other people’s BTC) were giving kickbacks to @tonych.

We can’t prove nor disprove. I prefer transparency than pretending he was so humble, when in fact maybe he was a fox.

My point is about transparency. And about not issuing illegal securities and then not providing all the material facts for the insiders.

If indeed @tonych was given kickbacks, then this could violate laws about securities or consumer protection laws about proper disclosure.

These tokens which have non-transparent issuance problems are not going to be reliable when the nation-states start using their laws to attack cryptocurrency.

what is this philosophy mumbo jumbo.  An airdrop can't be a ponzi scheme.  If you don't put in any money, how can it be a scam ?  scam you for what, the non existant money that you put in the project ?  Airdrops are nice, just another way of distributing coin other than POW or POS.  An ICO, on the other hand, is what we call a 100% premine paid with bitcoin.  Now if that isnt a scam, I dont know what is.  But having said that, there are ICO's that use funds appropriately and actually do things with the money, but those are rare.

Airdrop no relation with scam. In fact, airdrop means we accept. We don't invest anything in it, meaning absolutely no money we throw at them. Airdrop is an including marketing strategy for me.

Well there airdrop as instrument is no scam, I agree with you! ( That is what this thread learned me). The question is can it be abused for scam?

As long as your coins are on a wallet or address of yours and you don't invest additional money they can't scam you.

But if they ask you to install some wallet of theirs for staking or some other reasons you should be careful. This software could be the scam and infect you computer.

Thank you for the tip! Much appreciated!

This is what i was also thinking. Do antivirus detect such programs? I have a software downloaded lately for staking an airdrop coin. I run at first to receive the airdrop and then moved it in a Virtual Machine to lock access to my resources. I should've run it solely at virtual machine.

Well I would avoid installing wallets of nay kind (except the major ones)  and if then only on VM with separate internet connection id you have the possibility.

I think just avoid the Airdrops those who want us to download the wallet because most of them are the scam. If they ask for MEW address then it is good to share because you won't find Virus in it. So be careful while dealing with these Airdrops.

Yes they are ponzi schemes. They made token out of thin air and hope to find somebody that dumb enough to buy from the market. That's free money for them. Zero cost, full profit.
Most of these airdrops also collect e-mails and sell it to spam services. That's why you get millions of spam ICO mails every day.

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I don't think all airdrops are ponzi schemes because my friend had join a airdrop and not got scheme,you can get free coin for free for joining airdrop ,maybe ICO are scheme but not all, thats why you need to choose wisely , so you don't regret it.

Same here i dont easily download any files or wallets that they do require specially on airdrops.This is why i do pass on those kind of airdrops because it is actually a risky thing to do yet you wont know that some of them do have accompanied with malware or virus inside which would really compromise your important informations from your pc once you have already downloaded it.

I never download airdrop wallets when i still not check virustotal. I see the feedback of the members atleast full member that have downloaded before. I don't believe what people say about what they do.

Once my antivirus or windows defender would block such file then I wont really proceed on downloading that thing.Same as yours I do only download a thing if there are lots of people who testifies that the file is safe or just a false alert.Im not seeing on the rank on those people who do said such thing but mostly I do see on how many do testify that it is clean then that's the time I would decide to download.Airdrops are not totally Ponzi schemes unless if you do see their system on how they do distribute their coins and as long you didn't invest on it then I think it should be fine.

Thank you for clarifying this!

Virustotal I can also highly recommend!

You should really put this thing on your mind which we should really need to have safety measures before downloading anything in the cloud.One mistake then you will surely compromise your safety regarding on your valuable information which is stored on your pc.If you do value your coins and security then doing this thing wont really cost a leg. Always scan and do safety measures as possible we can to lessen the risk on losing money.

I agree and I think that would need a own thread to give some advice about security!

no airdrops are not ponzi or sccams because they are actually giving out free tokens or coins but most of them are just shitcoin and shit token without any reasonable value on the markets yet airdrops are legit compared to ico's becauuse most ico  these days are scam and would not pay you even if they promise. but overall you need to do some research first in order to save your self from falling in to wrong hands.

Not all airDrops are ponzi Schemes there are lots of airDrop running around. AirDrop are giveaway coins, free coins it is worth participating on it, because its free money and even if it is not success its ok because it doesn't waste your effort cause its effortles.

It is really very necessary to be careful with just downloading anything most especially if it has to do with wallets.

If it is not a web wallet or they aren't an ERC20 token making use of ethereum wallet like you said, then the best thing is just to stay away from it as plague even if they seem promising or legit cause it is a whole lot of risk to take as far as I am concerned.

Sometimes I just usually trust my instincts even more than my antivirus. Although, just like you said, if you can get a certain confirmation of the safety of the wallet, then it might still be a go. Might because it is still not worth the risk of mistakenly installing something I am not guaranteed anything most especially when I have a multi currency desktop wallet on my PC.