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Opinions

Crypto Scams: How do you spot and avoid them?

You are probably thinking about investing in Crypto but are hesitant because of the unending scams. From the recent “Dumanis” coin scam where Ugandans lost over 2.7 million dollars, one is left wondering whether Crypto is actually a worthwhile investment. The good news is that it is and we are here to help you with a guide on how to stop the scams and avoid them.

With the fact that Crypto currencies are not regulated in Uganda and the crypto craze is increasing rapidly morreso with rising companies such as Binance, Bybit and Yellowcard. Crypto-assets continue to gain the attention of investors which has become a target for scammers who are looking to make some easy profits by exploiting individuals who want to make money quickly.

Types of Crypto Scams and how to avoid them.

  1. Crypto products that offer enviable and larger than life returns

Fraudsters usually promise exceedingly high returns which are not backed by fundamentals. This often goes unnoticed by many who move into crypto to make quick money. Scammers tend to make promises and sometimes tap into the crypto space by using the anonymity of the internet to their advantage. These scammers usually imitate government individuals and celebrities, creating fake videos featuring celebrities like Floyd Mayweather, Zari the boss lady, and so many more to lure you into buying in.

Note: “The best way to spot an impostor account is to evaluate the returns you’re going to get. If a crypto offer sounds too good to be true, that’s the only red flag you need as it can be deceit.” – Shashi Jha, Head of Legal and Compliance at WazirX

  1. Cloning Websites

Cloning websites are usually copied and “modified” websites of a popular one. It is however easy to spot a cloning website as they do not have a lock icon in the URL bar. They also usually divert from the website when it comes to payment. Make sure to double check the website you are directed to when it comes to crypto currencies. That will save you a lot of money and crypto scams. 

  1. Network Marketing or Pyramid Selling

You know you are Ugandan if you have been part of a pyramid and network marketing selling scheme. These are popular among individuals who want to make quick money. Network Marketing is a controversial marketing strategy for the sale of products or services where the revenue is derived from a non-salaried workforce selling the company’s products or services, while the earnings of the participants are derived from a pyramid-shaped or binary compensation commission system. 

The network marketing scheme usually works this way: Those who bought in early usually  recruit new “members” and the more people who buy crypto, the higher the prices become, and the thicker the original owners’ digital wallets get.

The thought of making easy money, especially after seeing others make money, triggers people to stop typical reasoning and invest into these ponzi schemes blindly.

In order to avoid these, you need to understand how transactions take place and how they are formed. Learn how crypto currencies work and ensure you do not get involved in transactions that you cannot understand. If you do not understand the transactions, always consult an expert

How to check whether a crypto project is genuine or not?

It is important to google or do your own research (DYOR) about the core team building and dealing with a certain crypto currency, this, you will find on the website of that particular project. You can move a step further and check out their linkedin profiles. This can save you from jumping onto the “trending” cryptos and coins.

Next, you need to spend time on the official website of the project. If the website only talks about buying their crypto token and how it will gain 100x over the next few days, that is a no go area.

Lastly, you can scroll through the social media channels of the project. All crypto projects are active on some social media platforms. If the Twitter profile looks dead or contains a few posts over the past few months, that should be a red flag. These can help increase the chances of you not losing money to the increasing crypto scams.

With the rise in the popularity of crypto currencies, it is important you have this guide attached to your hip to help you spot crypto scams and how you can save your investments and avoid them.

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Business

Kenya Football Mogul Reportedly Defrauds KES 16 Billion ($140 Million) in Investor Funds in a Crypto Scheme

Ricardo Badoer, the owner of Wazito FC, a fast-rising soccer team, is accused of defrauding investors through a crypto scheme.

A local magazine states that the businessman has withheld 16 billion dollars in investor payments via his cryptocurrency, Aidos Kuneen. According to current FX exchange rates, this equates to $141.6 million.

According to a source reported by a local daily, the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies may have contributed to huge losses for Badoer, a scenario that has been felt at the football club with which he is affiliated.

The popular football team has struggled to pay player salaries and other obligations, a problem that has previously afflicted several Kenyan teams.

However, according to a source for the local daily, not only the team, but also investors in the Aidos Kuneen cryptocurrency, are bearing the brunt of the wrath.

With fresh suspicions that Badoer is terrified of a bank run, the investors have been barred from making withdrawals.

The Aidos Kuneen cryptocurrency, which has predominantly Japanese clients, claims to allow users to spend their tokens freely without worry of being monitored or corrupted.

Furthermore, “even if its design differs from Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies, Aidos still keeps the essential ideals of openness, decentralization, and better privacy,” according to the company’s website.

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Business

How Digital Art and NFTs are changing the Nature of Ownership

The way we consume media has fundamentally changed in the previous decade. Physical ownership has given place to digital streaming services that enable access to music, movies, and literature libraries 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Paintings, sculptures, and photography have mostly withstood these shifts to date. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the advent of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), appears to be changing that as well as putting art at the vanguard of a consumer revolution.

“The pandemic has practically brought ‘art’ into the Internet,” Ulvi Kasimov, founder of the ART domain registry and a member of the Observer’s 2020 Arts Power 50 list, said. “In favor of digital works, NFTs, and shared access, formerly held desires for possession of a physical cultural object have vanished.” He added.

“There is a desire to produce digital experiences that genuinely feel less transient,” Shane Lavalette and Ashlyn Davis Burns, co-founders of Assembly gallery, agency, and creative studio, highlighted. “Hence the blockchain as ‘permanence’ and the notion of provenance in the digital domain.” They added that they will undoubtedly witness more digitally native art at NFTs, as well as artists working on projects that respond to NFTs and blockchain as a medium in and of itself, this is already occurring.
According to Kasimov, there is a generational shift at work, with younger art aficionados placing a higher value on “impressions and experiences” than on material items.

Whereas the shift from a culture of ownership to a culture of streaming has already occurred in visual arts such as film and television, it is only now beginning to be felt in the art world, thanks to the introduction of NFTs—cryptographically unique tokens that can be linked to digital content like artwork and music. For the first time, it is feasible to verify ownership of a digital artwork, as well as the existence of digital art with demonstrable scarcity.

From analog to digital to Web 3

“We’re transitioning from an analog to a Web 3 world,” Joe Kennedy, Co-founder and Director of Contemporary Art Gallery Unit London, emphasized. “Communication will fundamentally change, provenance will fundamentally change, aesthetics will fundamentally change.” “Many societal values will shift as a result of this generational shift.”

As the world of fine art has been flipped on its head by the introduction of non-fungible tokens. Unit London is one of a handful of galleries that have sponsored exhibitions of NFTs in recent months. Beeple, a digital artist, made headlines earlier this year when he sold an NFT of his work for $69 million, instantly making him the third-most valuable living artist. Mainstays of the traditional art world, such as auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s, have flocked to embrace NFTs since then.

House of Fine Art, London, is another gallery that will be moving into the NFT premises. “The only way art NFTs are going to keep expanding and people are going to keep buying, and collectors from the traditional space are going to move in, is if the top galleries are involved,” Head of Digital, Jake Elias.

Galleries, on the other hand, will need to consider how NFTs are altering the art industry. According to Lavalette and Davis Burns, the NFT environment encourages decentralization and a democratic culture. They explained, “There is inevitably a rejection of institutions and gatekeepers in this.” “This is a healthy rejection, since it opens up new options for artists to add value to their work in other ways, such as through community. Artists are finding success in developing audiences for their work without the use of galleries, museums, or other traditional venues, while also forging stronger direct relationships with collectors.”

Pioneers in the digital realm

That’s where digital trailblazers like.ART are making their mark. With less to lose, Kasimov believes the potential for gain is even greater. “Change frequently happens from the bottom up, with artists and the creative class in general: constructing the infrastructure of digital consumption,” he explained, citing individual artists’ daily sales records for NFT works.

ART is positioned to serve as a link between the traditional world of galleries, museums, and auction houses, as well as individual artists interested in participating in the cultural transformation ushered in by NFTs. It gives customers a one-stop shop for low-cost domain name registration and free website creation, as well as easy, direct access to blockchain platforms like the Ethereum Naming Service and NFT minting services, which are both important in the new sharing culture.

“ART allows the worldwide art community to participate in the digital and shared consumption revolution by lowering the obstacles,” Kasimov added. In the face of climate change, that movement could usher in a new way of thinking about consumption—a culture shift that we need to embrace. “Humanity produces to meet consuming need,” Kasimov added, calling government commitments to cut output a “false choice.” “It’s impossible to discuss changes in production without also discussing changes in consumption, or in other words, changes in how we live. This is challenging since our materialistic culture is the foundation of modern consuming; we live in a “culture of consumption.”

“It’ll be intriguing to observe whether—or when—the art community’s common culture spills over into other consumption modes and has a genuine impact on the world’s attitude to environmental challenges,” he said.

As NFTs gain traction in the art world and make their presence felt, that sharing culture will only grow and change. “There’s a lot of interest in space right now, and I think it’s going to become a mainstream aspect of culture,” Kennedy said. “I truly believe that the stars of the art world in the next ten years will be artists who use smart contract mechanics to guide their practice and create either generative or thoughtful digital work—both of which will have a significant cultural impact. Because it speaks directly to the current change we’re witnessing.”

ART is a next-generation domain registration service that allows artists to create a website address, pair it with a crypto wallet identity, develop a website, and generate digital twins and NFTs with digital certificates of authenticity that store provenance on blockchain.

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Amber Group Technology

Amber Group Named a Winner of Deloitte’s 2021 Hong Kong Technology Fast Leader Award

Hong Kong, 16 December, 2021 — Amber Group is pleased to announce that it has been awarded the “Technology Fast Leader” in the 2021 Deloitte Hong Kong Technology Fast Program. The award ceremony took place in Hong Kong on December 15, 2021. Amber Group is one of the three winners that received the technology leadership awards for its rapid growth, entrepreneurial spirit, and bold innovation.

Deloitte established this award as a subproject of Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50/500 Program in Silicon Valley, initially introduced in 1995, which takes place simultaneously every year in more than 30 countries including the US, UK, Germany, Japan, and China. With its extensive coverage in tech companies and Deloitte’s stringent evaluation system, the program is seen as a benchmark for fast-growing global companies. Contenders for this annual award encompass some of the fastest growing and most innovative companies worldwide, including Tencent, Alibaba, Jingdong, Baidu, Bytedance, Mare Medical, SMIC, WuXi AppTec, and Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Tesla.

Amber Group has displayed a torrid growth trajectory over the last four years since its inception and is now widely considered a global market leader in all things crypto with a specialty focus in pricing, trading, and distribution of cryptocurrency products. The company currently has over $4 billion in assets on its platform and to date has cumulatively traded over $1 trillion across all products and categories.

Tiantian Kullander, Co-Founder of Amber Group, credits the company’s achievements over the last three years to its continued investment in next-generation technology coupled with world-class talent. Kullander said: “We are honored to be selected by Deloitte as the 2021 Hong Kong Technology Fast Leader. Awards like this encourage and foster innovation, and as an innovative digital assets provider, we aim to serve our clients with institutional-grade tools and provide a streamlined crypto finance experience. There are a lot of exciting things happening right now, we recently announced our partnership with Mastercard, and just this week unveiled WhaleFin, our latest digital asset platform. We are proud of what we have achieved in such a short time and will continue to create more impact in the local economy, bridging Hong Kong with the rest of the world.”

About Amber Group

Amber Group is a leading digital asset platform operating globally with offices in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The firm provides a full range of digital asset services spanning investing, financing, and trading. Amber is backed by prominent investors including Paradigm, Dragonfly, Pantera, Polychain, Sequoia, and Tiger Global.

For more information, please visit www.ambergroup.io, or contact them at pr@ambergroup.io.

Categories
Technology

WhatsApp launches crypto payments pilot powered by Meta’s Digital Wallet

WhatsApp, a unit of Meta, tech giant formerly known as Facebook,  is launching a new pilot powered by Novi, Meta’s digital wallet, allowing some people in the U.S. to send and receive money from within a chat using cryptocurrency. The payments can be sent and received using Pax Dollars (USDP), a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar issued by Paxos, Novi’s incoming head Stephane Kasriel and WhatsApp’s Will Cathcart announced on Twitter.

In a tweet posted on 9th December, Stephen Kasriel explained, “We often hear that people use WhatsApp to coordinate sending money to loved ones, and Novi enables people to do that securely, instantly and with no fees. Payments will appear directly in people’s chat.”
“We’re still very early in the Novi pilot journey, so we made the decision to test this new entry point in one country to start and will look to extend it once we’ve heard from people what they think of this new experience.” He added.



The payments tool is available as a new attachment option in WhatsApp, and there is no limit to how many transactions may be done through the messaging service. Users can include payments in messages by hitting the “+” icon and selecting “Payment” from the menu–”without ever leaving a WhatsApp chat”–in the same way they can with images. Novi wallet is meant for quick and fee-free money transfers, with payments done in USDP, a stablecoin created by blockchain trust business Paxos and pegged to the US dollar.

Last month, code found in a WhatsApp version under development pointed to integration with Novi as well as a digital payment system. It was unclear at the time if the beta coding would become part of WhatsApp or if the version being tested would become part of WhatsApp Pay in the U.S.

The initial plan was to develop a cryptocurrency called Libra which was supposed to be linked to a Facebook digital wallet dubbed Calibra. However, when Facebook rebranded as Meta on October 28th, the digital wallet was also renamed Novi from Calibra. Its cryptocurrency Libra was rebranded as Diem, and the Libra Association was renamed Diem Association.

The earlier launch was met with stiff opposition from the US lawmakers, who wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg to discontinue the digital wallet project. Despite the hostilities, Novi was launched and was available for download on Apple and Google’s app stores. Diem, responded to the letter by claiming that the legislators may have misinterpreted “the link between Diem and Facebook” and that it Facebook was an independent organization.

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Business

Coinbase strikes a promo deal with NBA player Kevin Durant

A leader in the NBA forming an alliance with a leader in the Cryptocurrency world is strategic and marketing geniusness. With over 19 million followers, Kevin Durant has bagged the deal to be the new face of Coinbase. With this deal comes the responsibility of promoting the company on all his major business platforms.

In return, the company will provide digital ad content to Kevin Durant’s website boardroom and will also deliver support to all his major youth programs. 

Coinbase is scouring the world of sports for characteristics that will help the company raise its profile. Coinbase had already struck a commercial sponsorship contract with several NBA teams.

Coinbase’s partnership with Durant aims to bring in more users to the exchange. Coinbase’s worth has skyrocketed since it went public in April, with the crypto exchange now valued at over $86 million.

Durant’s venture into Cryptocurrency is one of many notable sports collaborations in the nascent cryptocurrency market. Kevin Durant’s manager, Rich Kleiman, said, “Kevin does very, very few brand partnerships and that was by purpose.” 

Coinbase’s “new model of brand partner” will be connected with Durant’s major business platforms as part of the arrangement, he added, in order to attract customers to join Coinbase as investors. The partnership’s details have yet to be released, but it’s worth noting that Durant’s business, 35 Ventures, previously invested in Coinbase’s $100 million investment round.

Helping crypto attract new audiences via sponsorship deals.

To acquire mainstream exposure and attract new users, cryptocurrency companies have spent millions of dollars striking relationships with major sports brands.

Crypto.com had previously announced ties with the Los Angeles NBA arena, as well as Formula 1 and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. The Golden State Warriors, another top American basketball club, have also signed on with another crypto exchange, FTX.

Coinbase has also been exploring sports alliances in order to bolster its status as a major cryptocurrency exchange. It recently announced sponsorship partnerships with Evil Geniuses and Team Liquid, two esports teams.

Categories
Opinions

Bitcoin could hit $100K in 2022

2022 could come with better things than a COVID free Uganda and open economy. Bloomberg senior commodity strategist, Mick McGlon, predicts bitcoin could finally hit the $100K dollar mark due to deflationary pressures of the digital currency. Even though many experts doubt this, Mick McGlon argues that peaking commodities and the declining yield on the Treasury long bond could point to risks of reviving deflationary forces in 2022, hence positive ramifications on Bitcoin.

Analysts bear risk that the next U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) information in visible form progress will show a significant 6.7% period-in contact-period increase. According to McGlone, this becoming more intense inflationary trend gives bear a chain of cause and effect on merchandise prices and equities. However, this swelling rate of commodity prices will help push the financial worth of BTC and match play to new extreme happiness. “$100,000 Bitcoin, $50 Oil, $2,000 Gold.

However much Bitcoin was predicted to reach the $100,000 mark in 2021, it failed. Investors expected the currency to hit the mark after it reached its new $68k ATH in early November. The market however saw a great setback which saw the coin drop to lows of $42,000 going back to its current price of $48,379. If this prediction doesn’t get you to invest in BitCoin, we don’t know what will.

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Business

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s Founder picks 4 out of 7000 African applicants to Head his Bitcoin Fund

In February, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s Founder and former Chief Executive announced a Bitcoin Trust (BTrust) fund in collaboration with rapper Jay-Z worth over 24 Million USD for development in Africa and India. BTrust is a fund with 500 BTC capital base worth $24,426,230, when pegged to late Monday’s market price $48,815.35, and will be managed by four Africans, without oversight from Dorsey or Jay Z.

In a statement shared on Twitter on Wednesday, Dec. 15, Dorsey revealed the identities of the BTrust board, three of whom are Nigerians; Abubakar Nur Khalil, Obi Nwosu, Ojoma Ochai, and South African, Carla Kirk-Cohen. Dorsey described the four individuals as “inspirational”, noting that it would now be their collective responsibility to map out the operating principles that will define how the Bitcoin Trust Fund would be administered. In his tweet he also announced that the four will work towards defining the operating principles as they think about how to best distribute the 500 BTC towards development efforts.

Dorsey had called for application into the board of the fund and received over 7,000 application but the three Nigerian youths and a South African stood out. The youth will now be involved in deciding who among the applicants from Nigeria and India deserves to benefit.

Meet the 4 BTrust board members

Obi Nwosu is the Co-founder of Coinfloor, a serd-level cryptocurrency startup, which has raised $300,000 in funding round. 

Ojoma Ochai is the Managing Partner at CcHUBCreative (Co-Creation Hub), a technology innovation workspace, accelerating startup growth in Nigeria and selected part in Africa – CcHUB has raised $5.5 million to aid its operation.

Abubakar Nur Khalil is a bitcoin core contributor, and had received $50,000 in BTC for his work on Bitcoin wallet software from Human Rights Foundation (HRF) in May 2021. Khalil is also the CTO of Recursive Capital, an early-stage crypto VC fund, supporting founders building critical web 3.0 infrastructure.
Carla Kirk-Cohen is a  South African software engineer who previously worked for Luno, one of the largest crypto exchanges in Africa. She currently works for Lightning Labs, according to information available on her LinkedIn page.

Categories
Coins

What is USDT?

Cryptocurrency holdings might be problematic for investors. Many of them are extremely volatile. According to critics of cryptocurrencies, such as China’s main payment institutions, their price volatility makes them unsuitable for use as genuine currencies because their value fluctuates rapidly, making it difficult to agree on a price.

With Tether (USDT), users can navigate the crypto industry without being exposed to unpredictable prices.

What exactly is Tether?

Tether is a type of cryptocurrency known as a stablecoin. Stablecoins are designed to be linked to a specific currency, such as the US dollar in the case of Tether’s flagship USDT cryptocurrency. Stablecoins also track traditional fiat currencies, like the Dollar, the Euro, or the Japanese yen, which are held in a designated bank account. In a nutshell, Tether is meant to work as follows; whenever a user deposits a US dollar to Tether’s account, Tether Inc, the company behind Tether the stablecoin mints one Tether in return.

Tether says that each token is backed by a dollar stored in its reserves and that the token’s value is maintained by bots buying and selling anytime the dollar’s value varies, making it a stablecoin with a price pegged to USD $1.00.

Who created Tether?
Tether Limited created the cryptocurrency under the name “Realcoin” towards the end of 2014, before rebranding it as Tether. The company’s headquarters are in Hong Kong, although it is based in the British Virgin Islands, a country notorious for its lenient laws. It shares most of its management team with the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, including its CEO, chief strategy officer, and general counsel.

Tether tokens, which were developed by the crypto exchange BitFinex, are the native tokens of the Tether network and trade under the USDT symbol. As of October 2021, USDT is the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, worth more than $68 billion. 


What you can do with Tether and how it works
Tether is widely accepted on most crypto exchanges and can be used to easily purchase cryptocurrencies. It is frequently used by traders and investors as a way to maintain a stable store of value while still holding a position in the market.

It is also a popular asset for the exchanges themselves. Tether trading pairs are a common way to denominate prices in fiat currency, which most people can more readily understand. As many exchanges find it impossible to set up a fiat bank account, some have resorted to holding their funds in Tether tokens.

Tether is stable, widely accepted and popular. It is backed by fiat currency, that means holders aren’t subjected to the same high levels of volatility found in other cryptocurrencies. Additionally, it gives users easy access to the market, without exposure to wild price fluctuations and many exchanges use it as a trading pair. It is built on a concept known as the Omni layer. This is a meta-protocol that built on top of the Bitcoin, that lets projects to create and trade their own currencies. In the summer of 2017, Tether coins were first issued on the Omni software layer for the Litecoin network.

Tethers based on Ethereum that follow the ERC-20 standard are also available.

Tether – Bitcoin arguments
The fear is that Tether, which has a market capitalization of nearly $60 billion, artificially inflates the price of Bitcoin. In 2018, academics John M. Griffin and Amin Shams claimed that Tether could be created “independent of investor demand,” suggesting that Tether’s production schedule was only consistent with a coin that was partially backed by reserves rather than completely backed.

“The actual story here is that cash now makes up less than 3% of Tether’s reserves,” Amy Castor, a writer who covers Tether issues, stated. Accusing Tether of “printing money out of thin air,” Castor added that, “The reckoning will come when people try to cash out of bitcoin, and it dawns on them there is no real money in the system to support withdrawals, because the markets were based on funny money.”

There is also a common counter-argument levelled against Tether’s critics that Tether’s printing schedule is entirely uncorrelated to Bitcoin’s price. In fact, new Tethers have been minted both amidst Bitcoin bull runs and price crashes—as outlined in an April 2021 paper from UC Berkeley.

The Future

Tether has shown to be a beneficial tool for the cryptocurrency industry, with investors flocking to buy in downturns as a hedge against market declines. It is still very popular, with tokens changing hands multiple times every day. As a result, Tether has become a valuable source of liquidity for the market, helping to keep prices constant.

Tether’s future will be determined by its ability to maintain market confidence; if its detractors are correct, a loss of confidence might lead to the collapse of many cryptocurrency exchanges that rely on it to store value.

Categories
Coins

What are Crypto Airdrops?


Not to be confused with Apple’s AirDrop feature, a crypto airdrop is a marketing tactic in which developers of a certain blockchain project send users tokens or NFTs for free. The allure here is that it is free, and the aim is for developers to promote their project before it officially launches.

Airdrops are a marketing tool used by cryptocurrency projects to encourage people to use their platform. As part of an initial sale or as an incentive for promoting the brand, new projects may airdrop cryptocurrency into your wallet.

Airdrops are a method of obtaining digital currency without having to purchase it. Here is a deep dive into what exactly they are and how they work.

There are several situations where one might decide to initiate an airdrop, but the effect is always the same. The crypto investor receives some amount of coins or cryptocurrency tokens, often for free or for executing a simple task. In some cases, you may also have to identify yourself through the know your customer (KYC) verification to participate in an airdrop program.

Crypto airdrops might be a reward for signing up for a newsletter, following the project’s social media pages, or another way to bring attention to the brand and attract more people to the platform.

Platforms can also decide to airdrop governance tokens. In addition to their monetary value, governance tokens give holders voting rights and let them influence significant decisions regarding the project.


Types of Crypto airdrops

Although their main purpose is to incentivize users, crypto projects may give away free crypto in a variety of conditions.

The following are the most common airdrops you’ll see:

  1. Standard airdrop
    A standard cryptocurrency airdrop transfers an amount of native coin or token into existing wallets as a marketing strategy. It’s usually to promote the brand and encourage more people to adopt the asset, often during their initial coin offering. Standard airdrops require participants first to sign up using their name and email address. Doing so will automatically set up an alert to notify them when the airdrop takes place and also gives them instant entry into the virtual event.
  2. Bounty airdrop
    Marketing a new project needs manpower, and bounty airdrops are a great way to construct a community. This airdrop requires users to complete specific tasks, such as promoting the project on Twitter by using specific hashtags, in order to be eligible.

These activities could include:

  • Sharing a post about the blockchain project on Twitter or other social media platforms
  • Signing up for the project’s email newsletter
  • Joining a forum to discuss and participate in the project

It takes a bit more work to get a free token through a bounty airdrop as opposed to a standard airdrop, but the activities usually aren’t demanding.

  1. Exclusive airdrop
    As the name indicates, an exclusive airdrop is reserved for the VIP group, a selected community members who have proven their loyalty through consistent engagement with the platform. Such members might be the most active in discussions, developers actually contributing to the project, or others. Eligibility criteria varies from project to project. 
  1. Holder airdrop

In a competitive business like blockchain, it’s critical to let potential clients know you exist. Holder airdrops are a method of distributing tokens to other token holders. Users who have EOS tokens, for example, would be able to get the new tokens in an EOS-based airdrop, and the quantity they receive would depend on how many EOS tokens they have. This allows emerging projects to break through the clutter and reach out to an existing user base.

  1. Hard Fork Airdrops

When a blockchain is hard forked, it creates a new branch in the chain. This can involve creating a new token to distinguish between the two co-existing chains. During a hard fork, holders of the original coins are automatically airdropped tokens for the new chain.

How do they work?
Different startups have different ways to launch airdrops, but there are a few standard practices. First and foremost, users interested in receiving a specific token or NFT have to own a wallet to store the airdropped item. Users are typically required to join, follow, and share the project’s social media channels, along with engaging with community groups on platforms like Discord and Telegram. Airdrops typically have a registration window with limited spots for participants to sign up and join before a specific deadline. However, airdrops can occur more than once depending on reception, so missing out the first time around isn’t always terminal. 

Crypto airdrops can be a great way to add to your crypto portfolio without having to buy any assets using fiat currency.

Some ways to track down crypto airdrops are:

  • Performing regular searches online for crypto airdrop opportunities
  • Following airdrop aggregators and signing up for their exclusive airdrops
  • Signing up for new platforms to take advantage of any standard airdrops they offer
  • Monitoring up-and-coming projects to prepare for bounty airdrops

Taking advantage of an upcoming airdrop is mostly a matter of keeping up with developments and jumping on opportunities as they arise.
When it comes to taxation, the tax amount is decided by the token’s fair market price at the time of airdrop. This is significant for people who hold cryptocurrency in their wallet. Just by holding these coins, you could be liable to pay taxes for keeping that income. If you dispose of your airdropped asset, you may also need to pay short-term or long-term capital gains on any increase in its value during your holding period.

Now I know the next important question for you is, are they worth it?

Besides being a highly effective marketing strategy, airdrops also pretty much guarantee widespread distribution. Many cryptocurrency or NFT projects are built on or are a hard fork of an existing blockchain, such as Ethereum and Bitcoin. Holder airdrops are popular because many in the crypto space already own ETH or BTC (or other cryptos related to the project), and it guarantees a wide distribution model.

Crypto airdrops could be a way to bolster your crypto portfolio without having to buy digital assets. They could also help you get on the ground floor of a new platform.

However, airdropped assets could just as easily be worth nothing. You could spend time looking for and claiming airdrop opportunities, only for the price of the airdropped coin to drop before you have a chance to sell. Even worse, there’s the risk of giving money or sensitive information to a fraudulent platform. Airdrop scams are becoming more sophisticated and hard to spot, even for seasoned crypto enthusiasts. It’s more likely that airdrops are worth pursuing if you’re a crypto enthusiast who enjoys keeping up with new developments, and actively manages your portfolio on a frequent basis.

Crypto airdrops can be lucrative, but it all depends on the projects that are providing them. Weighing the possible advantage against the eligibility conditions is a sensible method. Before putting your faith in any undertaking, it’s critical to undertake your own extensive study.

Find some airdrops here