?>

Tag: Cryptocurrency

Decentralized Identity Systems and the Future of Marketing

Decentralized Identity Systems and the Future of Marketing

What if SSI evolved into more freedom for Content creators and influencers that resulted in an Ad-free blockchain internet?

Instagram stories have become intercepted with Ad-spam,

it’s a pretty terrible user experience. As Facebook seeks to monetize Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram?—?since Facebook’s flagship app is a dying app; the message is clear. Centralized Ads are polluting the internet. Whatever you believe self-sovereign-identity is, blockchain needs to decentralize identity systems on the internet to ensure consumer privacy, control and freedom.

The Emergence of the Next Web Based on Blockchain

A digital identity that’s accountable to human rights, is that so much to ask? Digital creators and influencers need to have full-rights to their creations just as consumers should have full rights to their data, which they can then barter or sell or trade via tokens with advertising platforms. Facebook and Google’s model is all wrong, it’s the past.

I’m following a lot of crypto projects related to UBI and the decentralized identity systems that reward people better. One of the terms I like the most is called “self-sovereign marketing”, where several startups are looking into creating more fairness in content and referral traffic for influencers in a more transparent way.

Everytime I post on LinkedIn, in the back of my mind I’m wondering why I don’t get paid. On Medium, I can put my articles behind a paywall and make a living wage. Why would I ever post again on Instagram or Twitter without some measurable return on investment? I need social media to work for me. If I have 195,000 followers on LinkedIn, that has to mean something.

Human Rights on the Internet

What people do should matter, and their digital rights not just to privacy, but to empowerment is key for how we build the internet and restart it with blockchain. SSI should not just serve Governments in how they track citizens on centralized blockchains. There must be an aspect of decentralization where the peer-to-peer aspect empowers people globally. Imagine if LinkedIn actually worked that way, and wasn’t just a spin-off of Microsoft? Imagine if Facebook stood for something more than a “family of apps” that is just an advertising machine?

SSI should complement existing advertising and government digital identity systems, just as Bitcoin and over 2,000 digital assets already complements how fiat transactions, investment, trading and assets work. Decentralization is about bringing the internet a new era of freedom, stability and alternatives to what’s not working. Let’s be honest, Google and Facebook should probably be broken up. (We don’t need the inventor of the Internet to tell us that). They are too centralized and have become corrupt.

In a future world of decentralized identity,

consumers will have more rights and advertising and
brands will open up a new era of ethical influencer marketing.

The Sociology of Decentralization

As mistrust of centralized tech companies grows, in proportion the movement towards decentralization syncs with our collective values.

At the same time now you have people like JP Morgan saying they are behind Ethereum. We can only assume the rise of digital assets and a token based economy will herald new options and alternatives for consumers on the next phase of the internet. We can’t stay on Facebook family apps and think it’s okay anymore. Consumers will demand better experiences, just like I as an indie journalist need incentives that motivate me and don’t just exploit me for my creativity.

Decentralization is the Key in How we Transition Past Advertising to the Next WebSelf-sovereign identity platforms need to scale with the future of how the internet will work. Their dApps need to empower consumers where new ecosystems of value can emerge that create more level playing fields.Capitalism without trust and blockchain might have trouble sustaining its value based on the old tricks (like vanity metrics for instance).As Instagram itself becomes saturated with stories that no longer have relevance to our fleeting attention, a new generation of apps will take its place.Many of those will have self-sovereign marketing built into them. This is already happening with many micro-video apps, you just might not be aware of it yet.

Self Sovereign Marketing will scale a new model of advertising

and change the internet forever.SSM will Hardcore Opportunity and Authenticity in the next Era of Social Marketing Advertising just like physical retail, needs to adapt to the values of the new consumer. Decentralization identity systems will augment how consumers participate in the future of advertising. Any blockchain startup that’s pioneering better incentives for these apps is ultimately contributing to the future of self-sovereign identity and self-sovereign marketing, SSI and SSM respectively. One day I’ll do a survey covering the main ones.

In a world of cryptoeconomic freedom, social platforms won’t own our data, we will. We’ll be driven by economic incentives to collaborate and create, in an open-source and permissionless manner where we’ll have unparalleled self-governance to explore our interests and abilities online compared to the enslavement of the internet today. Digital assets are pointing to a new model of how the internet of the future will work.

Article Produced By
Michael K. Spencer

Medium member since Apr 2018

Blockchain Mark Consultant, tech Futurist, prolific writer. WeChat: mikekevinspencer

https://medium.com/futuresin/decentralized-identity-systems-and-the-future-of-marketing-c6e1fde04552

 

 

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Report: Popular ICO Listing Sites Show Massive Inconsistencies in Project Fundraisers

Report: Popular ICO Listing Sites Show Massive Inconsistencies in Project Fundraisers

A Bloomberg report on November 5, 2018, pointed out the vast inconsistencies in the amount of capital raised by Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) raised in 2018, as per data compared on several websites.

Lacking Consistency and Incentives

In an industry that banks on providing transparency and accuracy to every dataset available for public viewing, the verifiable sources of information look bleak. Much of this is attributed to the lack of uniform industry standards available for the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector, while conflicts of interest may come into account to explain the remainder of such instances.

Tokens issuers in 2018 raised $22 billion in 2018 according to CoinSchedule, an ICO listing site, or just $11 billion if data from Autonomous Research is considered. The two figures represent a mammoth difference in the number of funds raised and form a concern for investors, journalists, and academics who look towards researching the cryptocurrency market for making strategic decisions and publishing educational content.

Alex Buelau, the co-founder of CoinSchedule, cites a lack of incentive for information dissemination platforms as a prime reason for listing inconsistent data in the absence of industry-standards. In addition, sites like his make profits based on advertising revenue and sponsored token listings, which may mean displaying inflated fundraisers to attract unassuming investors. For a $200 billion industry banking on a few startups to access information, Buelau’s comments point out a problem larger than the lack of usable applications for cryptocurrencies; the absence of establishing a common truth for dynamic developments in the nascent sector.

The cryptocurrency exchange RubyX, for example, has raised a massive $1.2 billion if CoinSchedule is trusted, a paltry $200 million based on ICO Rating, and is altogether excluded from Autonomous Research due to a lack of “online footprint.” A more extreme instance is of the controversial Venezuelan cryptocurrency Petro, which raised $3.3 billion if President Nicolas Maduro’s statements are to be believed, but only $735 million if ICO Rating and CoinSchedule are assessed.

Elementus’ co-founder Nuria Prunera notes on-chain data must be relied upon to track ICO investments, instead of an online database. But, a major issue with such a method is the inability to capture fiat payments for tokens. Autonomous Research claims it uses 50 trackers to determine token information and manually removes any datasets it deems fraudulent or inflated. However, head of strategy Lex Sokolin ascertains the trackers lose effectiveness over time, especially as the “economics of a database weaken.”

The advent of token “pre-sales,” or making fundraising available to an elite set of investors prior to public offering, also makes ICO data difficult to fully compute. Tokens firms are increasingly offering private deals to venture capitalists, wealthy investors, and crypto hedge funds, without the token’s price, conditions, and lock-in periods available to retail investors.

Meanwhile, crypto-specific funds have been cashing in on similar private deals since inception, which contributes vastly to the disparate funding reports provided by various listing firms. While making huge profits matter to individual investment businesses, it threatens to relegate cryptocurrencies to the very sector it aims to differentiate from: the corrupt world of IPOs, pre-IPO deals, and public misinformation.

Article Produced By
Shaurya Malwa

Shaurya is the Editor at BTCManager. After graduating in business from the University of Wolverhampton, Shaurya ventured straight into the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. He believes decentralizing the world's financial, economic, and political systems is mankind's next giant leap.

https://btcmanager.com/author/shaurya-malwa/

 

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

14 Types of Backlinks: the Good, the Bad, and the Best

14 Types of Backlinks:
the Good, the Bad, and the Best

Acquiring backlinks is an essential part of an effective SEO plan.

Links tell search engines that a site is recognized, trusted, and, therefore, worthy of a top spot on search engine results pages (SERPs). But it’s not just the number of backlinks that appeals to search engines; it’s also the types of backlinks.

Depending on the link type, backlinks have varying levels of influence on search engine rankings and on the results you can see from acquiring them . The rest of this post will look at the different types of backlinks, explain their value, and offer tips for how you can acquire the most valuable and effective backlinks.

3 Factors That Impact Link Value

Before we review a full list of backlink types, it’s important to understand what makes a link valuable. As mentioned above, backlinks are not all created equal. There are a variety of factors that can make backlinks more valuable than others, and there are also some that make a link very bad for SEO. The 3 main factors that impact link value include the following:

1. The Authority of the Linking Site

The most valuable types of backlinks come from quality websites. Links from sites that are recognized as top authoritative resources will send more positive signals to search engines than links from low-quality, lesser-known sites.The most valuable types of backlinks come from quality websites.

To determine the authority of a site (and the value of a link), look at the linking site’s Alexa Rank. The better (i.e., lower) the Alexa Rank of the linking site, the better the link is for SEO. Sites with a low Alexa Rank are more authoritative than sites with a high Alexa Rank. You can check a site’s Alexa Rank using Alexa’s Site Overview tool.

2. Do Follow vs. No Follow Status

When a publisher adds a link to their website, they can use HTML code to set the link as either “do follow” or “no follow.”

  • Do follow links tell search engines to notice and give SEO value to the links.
  • No follow links tell search engines to ignore the links and give them less SEO value.

Because do follow links send better signals to search engines, they are more valuable than no follow links.  You want links to your site to be coded as do follow. However, a no follow backlink can still drive traffic to your website.Because do follow links send better signals to search engines, they are more valuable than no follow links. To know if a link is a do follow or no follow, you can use the NoFollow Simple Chrome extension to easily check the link’s code. Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google LLC, used with permission.

3. On-Site Link Location

Websites are set up in sections, and how valuable a link is may be impacted by the section in which it appears. The most valuable links are placed within the main body content of the site. Links may not receive the same value from search engines when they appear in the header, footer, or sidebar of the page. This is an important factor to keep in mind as you seek to build high-quality backlinks. Look to build links that will be included in the main body content of a site.

The Best Types of Backlinks

Now that you know what makes backlinks valuable, let’s look at a list of the best backlinks for SEO. As you learn how to create backlinks, these are the strategies that will provide the best long-term SEO results.

Editorial Backlinks

The best types of links in SEO come from editorial mentions. An editorial mention is when another website refers and links to your website in a piece of quality content. An editorial backlink may be included as:

  • Citing someone from your company or something from your content as a source of information
  • Referring to your website as a resource for additional information
  • Citing your website as the creator of an infographic
  • Including your website or content in a link roundup
  • Interviewing someone associated with your website

How to Get Editorial Backlinks:

  • Develop a strong content marketing
  • Create high-quality, evergreen content that serves as a go-to resource.
  • Create shareable content that other sites will want to talk about.
  • Publish content that shows your website and brand as a thought leader in your industry so that other sites will want to cite, source, and interview you.

Use Alexa’s Competitor Keyword Matrix to find popular keywords and topics you haven’t written about yet. Consider keyword popularity to find trending topics you can write about on your website.

Guest Blogging Backlinks

Guest blogging is another way to acquire valuable backlinks. When you submit a guest post to a website, you’re often allowed to include an editorial backlink within your content. These types of backlinks are a reliable way to build trust and authority through other influential publications.

How to Get Guest Blogging Backlinks:

Build a list of valuable guest blogging sites and master guest blogging outreach.

Business Profile Backlinks

In most cases, when you create an online profile for a business, you can include a link back to your website. These links on business listings, social media networks, and industry-specific directories show search engines that a website is established and high quality.

How to Get Business Profile Backlinks:

Create profiles on well-known directories or review sites (such as Yellow Pages, Yelp, Foursquare, Capterra, etc.) in your industry. Or consider using a service like Synup or Yext that creates and manages profiles for you.

Webinar Links

Creating a valuable resource on your site often encourages other sites to link back to it. A high-value piece of content that often leads to links is a webinar recording. Other sites frequently link to or even embed other brand’s webinars on their site, leading to both links and brand mentions.

How to Get Webinar Backlinks:

Repurpose your webinars by posting them as recordings on your website so people can visit and link to them. Use blog promotion to attract attention to the webinar recording, and find guest blogging sites that may be interested in using the webinar as resource on their site.

Free Tool Links

Another way to get sites to link back to something valuable on your site is by offering a free tool. A free tool could be a basic tool (like an auto loan calculator) or a scaled down version of a paid tool (like Alexa’s Site Overview and Audience Overlap tools). If the tools are valuable enough, others will link to them in their content. Plus, on free versions of paid tools, you can add call-to-actions to sign up for the full product/service which drives acquisition in addition to awareness.

How to Get Free Tool Backlinks:

Create a simple tool or free version of your paid tool. Use Alexa’s Audience Overlap tool to find sites that have a similar audience who would be interested in using your tool, and use guest blogging outreach to connect with the sites and see if they would like to feature your free tool.

Good Types of Backlinks

There are other types of backlinks that don’t provide as much value as those listed above, but can still support your overall link profile and help boost your SEO.

Acknowledgment Backlinks

An acknowledgment backlink is when a website mentions and links to a website in reference to a relationship or sponsorship. These links typically don’t have much content related to the brand or what they do, and instead, are simple mentions that:

  • Indicate that the brand made a donation
  • Show that someone from the brand is speaking at or sponsoring an event
  • Include a testimonial for the linking website’s brand

How to Get Acknowledgment Backlinks:

Use Alexa’s Competitor Backlink Checker to find backlinks your competitors get traffic from. Identify sites where they acquired acknowledgment backlinks, and look for places in those sites’ content where you can do the same.

Guest Post Bio Backlinks

In some cases, guest blogging sites don’t allow or won’t include a link back to the author’s site within the main body of content. Instead, they allow the author to include a link in the author bio. While not as valuable as a link in the body of the post, bio backlinks can still add value to a website’s link portfolio.

How to Get Guest Bio Backlinks:

Use the same guest posting strategies mentioned above and also perform a backlink analysis on your competitors to see where they have acquired guest post links.

Badge Backlinks

A way to build backlinks by providing value to other sites is through branded badges. A branded badge is an award that a brand creates and gives out to other sites as a status symbol. For example, you could create a list of the top sites or best brands that are published on your site, and then give badges to each brand on the list so that they can show the status on their site. You include a link back to the article on the badge to create the link.

How to Get Badge Backlinks:

Look for a group of sites that you can qualify together and create a badge to identify them. To find similar sites, use Alexa’s Audience Overlap tool to identify groups of sites that share themes and audiences.

Newsworthy Press Release Backlinks

A press release can serve double duty for marketing efforts. It can alert media outlets about your news and also help your website gain backlinks. But it can only build links effectively if executed properly. Only write and distribute press releases when a brand has something newsworthy or interesting to share . This strategy can gain links on the actual press release post as well as on the stories that media outlets write about it.

How to Get Press Release Backlinks:

When your brand has news, write a press release and use a service like PRWeb or Newswire to distribute it to media outlets.

Comment Backlinks

When you comment on a blog post, you are usually allowed to include a link back to your website. This is often abused by spammers and can become a negative link building tool. But if you post genuine comments on high-quality blog posts, there can be some value in sharing links, as it can drive traffic to your site and increase the visibility of your brand.

How to Get Comment Backlinks:

Don’t overdo it with this strategy. Only focus on commenting on relevant, high-quality blogs or forums related to your industry. To find sites relevant to your industry and audience, use Alexa’s Audience Overlap tool to find similar sites your audience uses.

Bad Types of Backlinks

Because high quality backlinks are such an important part of SEO, it’s easy to believe that every link, no matter how valuable, is beneficial. But not all links are valuable. Some links have little to no value, while others can actually negatively impact SEO . As you engage in link building, avoid creating these types of backlinks.

Paid Links

While it can seem like an easy way to acquire links, you should not pay other publishers and websites to link to your site. Google explicitly says that buying or selling links “can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.”

Non-Newsworthy Press Releases

As mentioned above, interesting and newsworthy press releases can help a brand gain attention and links. But it can also appear spammy if a brand repeatedly spreads press releases that aren’t newsworthy and are created for the sole intention of gaining links.

General Business and Article Directory Links

Just as you don’t want to overdo it with press releases, you also don’t want to overreach with directory listings. Stick to the most trustworthy, authoritative, and industry-relevant directories and don’t create profiles on spammy directories just for the purpose of generating links.

Forum Links

Joining dozens of forums for the purpose of posting links back to your site is also bad. Only join high-quality forums where authentic discussions are the primary purpose, not spamming a thread with posts about your content and brand.

Build a Better Backlink Strategy

Links are an essential part of any good SEO strategy. But remember, it’s not just about the quantity of links; it’s also about the quality of the links .There are different types of backlinks that come with varying levels of value and importance. Create your link building plans around acquiring top-tier links that will be the most beneficial to your SEO. To find the best backlinks for SEO, sign up for a free trial of Alexa’s Advanced Plan. You’ll get access to all of the audience, industry, and keyword research tools mentioned in this post that can help you build an effective link building plan.

Article Produced By
Jennifer Yesbeck

Jennifer is Marketing Manager at Alexa. With a knack for syntax and passion for building connections, she drives daily content strategy to bring you the latest and greatest happenings within Alexa and the wide world of web analytics and marketing.

https://blog.alexa.com/types-of-backlinks/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=blog-10-30-18-types-of-backlinks&utm_content=bp-types-of-backlinks&utm_campaign=content-visit

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Six Tips To Make Your Airdrop A Success

Six Tips To Make Your Airdrop A Success

Airdrops are becoming increasingly frequent

and are a common trend in the crypto space. With thousands of tokens currently in existence and a constant stream of more in development, the number of scam airdrops is also on the rise, therefore distinguishing between legitimate and fake airdrops is a big issue for potential airdrop participants.

With the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook data privacy scandal still fresh in people’s minds, there is a heightened awareness around disclosing personal information and data protection — meaning existing mechanics such as Google forms (which require the input of personal details) may discourage potential involvement. Google form airdrops also require significant time and manpower to cross-reference Telegram users with registrants. Enter the progressive airdrop: by enabling live syncing between platforms, this new kind of technology allows companies to bring more value to their communities, as well as monitor participant engagement.

So what can companies do to ensure a smooth and successful airdrop?

  1. Use Telegram

By conducting everything in one place such as messaging app Telegram, it makes life easier for your users who won’t have to struggle with referral links, switching between multiple apps, or losing friends to drawn-out processes. Instead of copying and pasting, the progressive airdrop model (like the one qiibee uses) will automatically detect when you add a new member to your Telegram group. Having everything and everyone on Telegram also helps to build your community and encourages conversation starters.

  1. Live sync across platforms

By implementing technology that enables live syncing between platforms, this back-end development can help resolve logistical issues, thus eliminating any scope for human error during the process and creating a more seamless system — bringing added value to both your users and your Telegram group.

  1. Make it as user-friendly as possible

Consumers know the value of their data, and with ethics and regulation under the spotlight recently, it’s important to take the privacy of your participants into consideration. Airdrop registration should be a simple task with minimal input needed. While existing mechanics like Google forms require the input of personal details, this can be off-putting to some people and discourages potential involvement. To encourage more involvement, keep things on a need-to-know basis.

  1. Reward engagement

Unique to the progressive airdrop model, participants are provided with the opportunity to access more tokens through engagement. Giving control to participants and acknowledging their interactions and milestones is invaluable in building trust. Recognizing achievements with a badge system or leaderboard can motivate participants to be more active in your community channels. This forms a mutually beneficial relationship and further builds loyalty.

  1. Monitor spam

Managing community channels such as Telegram during the airdrop process often means dealing with increased volumes of spam and trolling. This can be detrimental to your credibility and have a negative impact on engaged participants contributing to the conversation. Using anti-spam and anti-abuse policies in conjunction with sentiment detecting and text recognition technology are simple ways of maintaining high-quality discussions.

  1. Utilize social media

Integrating follow features into your airdrop mechanic invites participants to continue the conversation across different channels. Spreading the word on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube about a system like the progressive airdrop not only helps to reach new audiences, but bolsters your own message on social media.

Article Produced By
Gabriele Giancola

Gabriele Giancola, is Co-founder and CEO of blockchain-powered loyalty ecosystem, qiibee. A serial entrepreneur, Gabriele has co-founded multiple companies including gratis-auto.ch, a start-up focused on mobile outdoor advertising, and a mining farm with around 60 miners. Gabriele holds a Masters in Business Management from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

https://www.valuewalk.com/2018/05/crypto-airdrop-guide/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

How One Project is Fighting Fake ICO Reviews Using AI and Blockchain

How One Project is Fighting Fake ICO Reviews Using AI and Blockchain

 Revain, a service for collecting customer reviews,

released a full-scale working 1.0 version of its Ethereum-based platform. As the project team reported to Cointelegraph, the 1.0 version is completely blockchain-based, containing a veri?cation system and artificial intelligence (AI), among many of its other new features. “Users can see all of the reviews written in the blockchain on a special page,” reads the official press release.The Revain platform was launched in order to change the process of collecting reviews from customers, by means of blockchain technology. The service is aimed to help new projects and startups obtain feedback from users. Specifically, the platform was designed for companies that have concluded their crowdfunding or ICO campaign.

Refining the Dashboard

The basic element of the Revain platform is its Dashboard, which allows startup teams to communicate with users and reward them for high-quality reviews. “We have been actively working on creating the Dashboard. There have been ten releases: versions 0.1 to 1.0 with a number of new features added,” the Revain team reported to Cointelegraph. According to Revain’s previous press release, the Dashboard may be helpful for companies in various ways. Firstly, replying to specific reviews is a great tool for managing negative reviews and encouraging positive ones. Secondly, as the Revain team assures its users, a large number of quality reviews about a company will make it stand out among others in a very positive way.  

Revain is using AI to monitor the quality of reviews, with no third parties involved. The AI moderation system will be able to consider the tone of the reviews, as well as filter them based on certain parameters — such as emotion, language style, and social tendencies. “Revain AI ?lters out low-quality reviews and makes quality ones eligible for rewards,” reads the company’s press release. Users are supposed to benefit from writing reviews on the Revain platform. In order to motivate authors to write reviews, companies can reward users with internal tokens called RVNs.

Revain has recently introduced its first premium service for blockchain projects and crypto exchanges which were designed to help them improve their reputation and perception among the crypto community. A premium subscription was the main part of the latest v0.9 release of the Dashboard. Besides the premium subscription, Revain completely redesigned the complimentary email and added the ability to share a specific review. Due to blockchain technology  and Ethereum platform especially, all of the reviews cannot be deleted or changed, says the company’s website. So far, the platform covers a few kinds of reviews: ICOs and crypto exchanges. In addition to these, the company plans to add other sectors at a later.

Article Produced By
Nick Bakursky

https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-one-project-is-fighting-fake-ico-reviews-using-ai-and-blockchain

 

 

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Crypto Airdrops

Crypto Airdrops

This is you complete guide to crypto airdrops,

in the below post we have listed down almost all of the FAQ that you need to answer on the subject.

What is a Cryptocurrency airdrop?

Cryptocurrency airdrop means, quite literally, dropping free crypto coins directly into your wallet. There are no fees, no charges, airdrop coins are simply transferred free of cost to your coin wallet. What is a cryptocurrency wallet? It’s a big topic and I will touch on this later in this post. Not satisfied with the crypto airdrop meaning? Well read on.

How do you get airdrop for free? Even if you are a newbie and just joined in into airdrop cryptocurrency mania you can still easily get free airdrop coins in 2018. The best way to stay updated on the upcoming airdrops is to join our crypto airdrops telegram channel. You can also find upcoming crypto airdrops on reddit as well on facebook. Our Crypto Airdrops List on our website is always updated with the latest and the best coin airdrops of 2018. You should also check our crypto airdrops calendar so that you can apply daily!

Of-course these airdrops are not 100% free, nothing really is in the world, right? Sometimes, there are certain tasks that the one needs to do to get free airdrops. These tasks are called bounties and in same way entitles you earn free eth tokens in airdrops. In our airdrop alerts to our users we send almost all kind of airdrops, except of course the obvious scam crypto coins. In short the idea is to reward early adopters of cryptocoins. These blockchain tech projects reserve a part of their tokens just for the free distribution to their crypto community.

While at other times you already need hold some type of altcoin or even bitcoin to receive airdrop coins. E.g. In two very popular cryptocurrency airdrop holders of bitcoins received free bitcoin cash and holders of Ethereum received free tokens of OmsiGo. To claim airdrop tokens you sometime need to register on project’s airdrop website or join airdrop telegram group. And yes, if the project is asking for ETH address don’t forget to provide one. Now you know what is an airdrop. Right? But wait there is lot more! In my post I have explained how to get free tokens and tracker on the site provides a list of airdrops.

Upcoming Crypto Airdrops

Are Crypto Airdrops safe?

I will say 99.99% yes. To get an airdrop coin all you have to give is some non-personal details and 5 minutes of your time. However, there do are frauds in cryptocurrency airdrops. There are some shady coin project which have no intention to do anything except of-course asking for donations for airdrop tokens. In such case you should always stay alert and avoid these coin projects by miles. Remember the golden rule – never ever share your private keys while applying to a coin airdrop. Reporting such issues is the best way forward as it alerts the whole community of the bad intentions of the developers.

Types of Crypto airdrops

There are a few different types of coin airdrops but for the brevity (and for the profit!) we will focus on Ethereum airdrops or ETH airdrops, in short. That being said, here are a few different kinds of airdrops: Crypto airdrop forks: Cryptocurrency airdrop forks basically means that an existing blockchain tech is forked in two and a new airdrop coin is created. Crypto airdrop forks can be soft or hard fork.

It is a hard fork where the real money is. Over the period of time, both Bitcoin forks and Ethereum forks have made a lot of free coins for their holders. The idea is simple, when a new cryptocoins are created it is distributed free to the community which is already holding the older coin. Ethereum classic was a result of hard-fork and is a great success, Bitcoin Cash too was forked out from Bitcoin and had been a massive value add to the Bitcoin holders. Who doesn’t like to receive free coin airdrop, right?

Ethereum Airdrops or ERC-20 Airdrops: Ethereum is a sort of a gold standard of cryptocurrencies, mainly because it is a fast growing platform with a well established cryptocurrency community. There are many other platforms such as Waves which also do airdrops, but they are rare and in-between. Ethereum not only provides platform to create your own DAPP (distributed app) but also allows you to create your own coin. Yes, anyone, with a wild thought in mind can go ahead and create his own new ether token! That’s the prime reason for a flood of ICOs (and hence ICO airdrops) that we are seeing these days.

Ethereum Airdrops are quite straightforward, at least most of them. The way it works is you apply for a cryptocurrency airdrop for a blockchain tech and receive airdrop coins directly in your Ethereum wallet. Crypto Faucets: While you can contest that faucets are not really cryptocurrency airdrops, they do by definition give away free Cryptocurrencies. They are 100 different faucets right now, but 99.99% of them are spammy and not really worth your time. I personally like free bitcoin (link on the top menu) which has been operating successfully for several years now, and it also doesn’t bombard your with advertisements.

Fun fact:

Free bitcoin was given in some faucets during the very early days. Many of them are crypto millionaires now. You can also call it Bitcoing Airdrop. Sweet, right?

Crypto Airdrops – Should you apply?

Well, for one if you are an absolute beginner in cryptocurrencies, airdrop is the best way to wet your feet. There is zero risk in coin airdrops, as only thing you have to invest is 5 minutes of your time. New altcons are flooding the cryptocurrency market everyday and hence the flood of free airdrops tokens too! There way to many coins for someone to track, so we do the job for you and send our users airdrop alerts.

Since absolutely anyone with little bit of invest can create his own ERC-20 token, there are a lot of shit tokens out there which serve absolutely no purpose. Here on https://airdrops.me we weed out such spammer coins and save you from wasting time. That being said we only remove the obvious low-life fraud crypto tokens and won’t remove anything else as we want you to do as many as coin airdrop possible.

Some of the businesses are actually genuine and not pump-n-dump kind of quick schemes that promoters are looking to make quick bucks on. Seriously, there are so many scams out there, so please do your due diligence, if you really are interested in investing. There are gems in between, and this is what you need to work on. Projects like Hawala tokens and OmsieGo have really made good returns for people who initially applied for their airdrops.

So, how will just a few Crypto projects will make you good money? Are these airdrops really worth your time? The answer totally depends on you… How so? Well, the key to actually striking it big is referrals. Almost every free airdrop comes with an affiliate system, the key is to apply for all these airdrops and then promote them with your affiliate id. Profit!

Why are all these projects giving free Cryptocurrency?

So, now you understood new cryptocoins are given away in airdrop for free. But you still can’t make sense of why these coin projects are giving airdrop free? It may appear that these projects are giving away free Cryptocurrency but it is far from the truth. They are actually paying to do certain crypto bounty tasks, at a bare minimum level they are making you join their telegram group and hence building a telegram community.

There are many other tasks they can ask you to do, e.g. sharing the cryptocurrency airdrops on facebook, follow them on twitter for airdrop alerts, clap them on medium blog etc. Social indicators not only promote their projects but also adds a sort of confidence in their investor when they look at their social media followers. Lastly, but not least, Blockchain tech projects gather email addresses which further help them promote their ICOs … to You! Yes, they know if they bombard you with emails just enough, some of you will actually become their customer and buy their ICO tokens. I, personally, absolutely do not recommend buying an ICO, but you be your own best judge.

How to Apply for ERC-20 Ethereum Airdrops?

At the most basic level the airdrop will ask you for two things:

  1. Ethereum address?—?where it will airdrop the tokens.
  2. Telegram id?—?where you will join their projects

This being said, there are a few different style of airdrops and we will cover them all in a separate blog post! We will show how to apply for each of these Crypto airdrops step by step. Also, note that for your convenience we send you airdrop alerts when you subscribe to our various channels.

You can easily create a ether wallet address by going over to myetherwallet or MIST or metamask wallet. When you create a new crypto wallet you will receive a pair of public and private key. The public key is your ETH address you will need to apply for a coin airdrop while the private is something you will need to do transactions like sending your ETH tokens to some other address. Needless to say, in order to safely apply to coin airdrops you need to keep your private key safe. Never share your private key with a coin airdrop.

How to check your free airdrop balance?

Checking your airdrop token balance is a very simply process. There are two main website I use to check my free tokens balance – ethplorer and etherscan. Go to any of these website and enter your ETH address to know your free tokens balance.Another useful crypto tip is to go to this coinmarketcap.com link. This is where all the new crypto airdrops get listed. This is helpful to check in which crypto exchange your free crypto is listed, what is the current market price and how much is the trade volume. All of this comes handy when you are trying to sell your new cryptocoin.

What to do when you receive an airdrop coin?

Coin airdrop would typically drop your ether tokens right in your mew address. Now, you can either continue to hold these free cryptocurrency tokens or simply transfer to an exchange to sell them at a profit. It takes time for new airdrop coins to get listed on exchanges but when they do you will see a significant price movement. You can sell your airdrop coins if you are sure about its blockchain tech future or if you understand their business, keep on holding these free new cryptocoins. Bookmark this Airdrop alert website to stay on top of the upcoming airdrops of the new cryptocoins. Don’t forget to subscribe to our airdrops crypto alert on twitter, facebook and reddit.

Article Produced By
AirDrops.me

https://airdrops.me/crypto-guide/crypto-airdrops-ultimate-guide/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

The Rise of Cryptocurrency Ponzi Schemes

The Rise of Cryptocurrency Ponzi Schemes

Scammers are making big money off people who want in on the latest digital gold rush but don’t understand how the technology works.

A Bitcoin ATM at a shopping mall in Sydney, Australia

Last month, the technology developer Gnosis sold $12.5 million worth of “GNO,” its in-house digital currency, in 12 minutes. The April 24 sale, intended to fund development of an advanced prediction market, got admiring coverage from Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. On the same day, in an exurb of Mumbai, a company called OneCoin was in the midst of a sales pitch for its own digital currency when financial enforcement officers raided the meeting, jailing 18 OneCoin representatives and ultimately seizing more than $2 million in investor funds. Multiple national authorities have now described OneCoin, which pitched itself as the next Bitcoin, as a Ponzi scheme; by the time of the Mumbai bust, it had already moved at least $350 million in allegedly scammed funds through a payment processor in Germany.

These two projects—one trumpeted as an innovative success, the other targeted as a criminal conspiracy—claimed to be doing essentially the same thing. In the last two months alone, more than two dozen companies building on the “blockchain” technology pioneered by Bitcoin have launched what are known as Initial Coin Offerings to raise operating capital. The hype around blockchain technology is turning ICOs into the next digital gold rush: According to the research firm Smith and Crown, ICOs raised $27.6 million in the first two weeks of May alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unlike IPOs, however, ICOs are catnip for scammers. They are not formally regulated by any financial authority, and exist in an ecosystem with few checks and balances. OneCoin loudly trumpeted its use of blockchain technology, but holes in that claim were visible long before international law enforcement took notice. Whereas Gnosis had experienced engineers, endorsements from known experts, and an operational version of their software, OneCoin was led and promoted by known fraudsters waving fake credentials. According to a respected blockchain engineer who was offered a position as OneCoin’s Chief Technology Officer, OneCoin’s “blockchain” consisted of little more than a glorified Excel spreadsheet and a fugazi portal that displayed demonstrably fake transactions.

And yet, OneCoin attracted hundreds of millions of dollars more than Gnosis. The company seems to have targeted a global category of aspirational investors who noticed the breathless coverage and booming valuations of cryptocurrencies and blockchain companies, but weren’t savvy enough to understand the difference between the real thing and a sham. Left unchecked, this growing crypto-mania could be hugely destructive to one of the most promising technologies of the 21st century.

This danger exists in large part because grasping even the basics of blockchain technology remains daunting for non-specialists. In a nutshell, blockchains link together a global swarm of servers that hosts thousands of copies of the system’s transaction records. Server operators constantly monitor one another’s records, meaning that to steal money or otherwise alter the ledger, a hacker would have to compromise many machines across a vast network in one fell swoop. Even as the global banking system faces relentless cyberattacks, the more than $30 billion in value on Bitcoin’s blockchain has proven essentially immune to hacking.

That level of security has potential uses far beyond digital money. Introduced in July of 2015, a platform called Ethereum pioneered the idea of more complex and interactive applications backed by blockchain tech. Because these systems can’t be altered without the agreement of everyone involved, and maintain incorruptible records of every change, blockchains could eventually streamline sensitive, high-value networks ranging from health records to interbank transfers to remote file storage. Some have called the blockchain “Cloud Computing 3.0.” Using most of these blockchain applications will require owning the digital currencies linked to them—the same digital currencies being sold in all these ICOs. So, for example, to upload your vacation photos to the blockchain cloud-storage service Storj will cost a few Storj tokens. In the long term, demand for services will set the price of each blockchain project’s token.

While a traditional stock is a legal claim backed up by regulators and governments, then, the tokens sold in an ICO are deeply embedded in the blockchain software their sale helps create. Knowledgeable tech investors are excited by this because, along with the open-source nature of much of the software, it means that ICO-funded projects can, like Bitcoin itself, outlast any single founder or legal entity. In a 2016 blog post, Joel Monegro, of the venture capital fund Union Square Ventures, compared owning a blockchain-based asset to owning a piece of digital infrastructure as fundamental as the internet’s TCP/IP protocol.

Almost all groups launching ICOs reiterate some version of this idea to potential buyers, in part as a kind of incantation to ward off financial regulators. The thinking is that, if they are selling part of a platform, rather than stakes in any company, they’re not subject to oversight by bodies like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. But in practice, ICOs are constantly traded across a variety of online marketplaces as buyers breathlessly track their fluctuating prices. In this light, they look an awful lot like speculative investments.

Buyer expectations may matter more to regulators than technical hair-splitting. Todd Kornfeld, a securities specialist at the law firm Pepper Hamilton, finds precedent in the landmark 1946 case SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. Howey, a Florida orange-growing operation, was selling grove plots and accompanying “service contracts” that paid faraway landowners based on the orange harvest’s success. When the SEC closed in, Howey argued they were selling real estate and services, not a security. But the Supreme Court ultimately disagreed, establishing what’s known as the Howey test: In essence, if you give someone else money in the hope that their activities will generate a profit on your behalf, you’ve just bought a security, no matter what the seller calls it.

Knowledgeable observers tend to agree that some form of regulation is inevitable, and that the term ICO itself—so intentionally close to IPO—is a reckless red flag waved in the SEC’s face. The SEC declined to comment on any prospective moves to regulate ICOs, but the Ontario Securities Commission has issued an advisory that “assets that are tracked and traded as part of a distributed ledger may be securities, even if they do not represent shares of a company or ownership of an entity.” According to Kornfeld, even those who believe they are conducting ICOs in complete good faith could face serious repercussions when regulators do act, especially if prosecutors think they’ve made misleading statements. “If [prosecutors] think that you’re really bad,” he says. “They can say, hey, you deserve 20 years in jail.”

While it’s easy to see the lie in OneCoin’s fictional blockchain, entirely sincere claims about such a nascent sector still can strain the limits of mere optimism. Many experts, for instance, believe that Gnosis’s use of the blockchain to aggregate data could become a widespread backbone technology for managing complex systems from traffic to financial markets. But the $12.5 million worth of GNO sold in the Gnosis ICO represented only 5 percent of the tokens created for the project, implying a total market value of nearly $300 million. Most tech startups at similar stages are valued at under $5 million.That astronomical early valuation alone could become bait for an aggressive regulator. Many founders of legitimate blockchain projects have chosen to remain anonymous because of this fear, in turn creating more opportunities for scams.

Much of the money flowing into these offerings is smart, both in that it comes from knowledgeable insiders, and in a more literal sense: Buying into ICOs almost always requires using either Bitcoin or Ethereum tokens (OneCoin, tellingly, accepted payment in standard currency). Jeff Garzik, a longtime Bitcoin developer who now helps organize ICOs through his company Bloq, thinks their momentum is largely driven by recently minted Bitcoin millionaires looking to diversify their gains. Many of these investors are able to do their own due diligence—evaluating a project’s team, examining demo versions of their software, or scrutinizing their blockchain after launch.

But as cryptocurrency becomes more mainstream, ICOs will present greater risks to larger numbers of people. There are few barriers to participation aside from knowing how to conduct a Bitcoin transaction, and the space mostly lacks the robust independent analysis performed by underwriters in the IPO market, which can help tamp down overoptimism. The risk isn’t just to individual investors; many argue that the mania of the late-1990s internet bubble ultimately slowed the entire sector down by making investors skittish for years afterwards. Imagine how much worse things might have been if the whole thing had been entirely unregulated.

Careful regulation, then, could protect blockchain projects from a hugely damaging bust. And the model is genuinely utopian enough to deserve nurturing. Cryptographic tokens effectively make all of a platform’s users part-owners. Anyone selling goods for Bitcoin, for example, has had a chance to benefit from its huge price boost over the past year, while Facebook and Google users have not shared in those companies’ growth.

The Gnosis team is taking this very long view. Their token sale was halted after that furious 12 minutes by an Ethereum-based bot that knew exactly what the fundraising goal was. It even returned more than $1 million to eager buyers who missed the cutoff. Gnosis’s co-founder Martin Koppelman says the company wants to use its remaining tokens not to enrich its creators, but to attract developers and users. That’s similar to the way that Uber has used cash subsidies to recruit riders and drivers, except that once those new recruits hold Gnosis tokens, they will have a serious stake in the platform’s future.

Article Produced By
David Z. Morris

David is a writer based in Florida. He has written for Fortune, Aeon, and The Japan Times.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/cryptocurrency-ponzi-schemes/528624/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Beyond Crypto Friendly: Swiss Bank Helps Clients Participate in ICOs

Beyond Crypto Friendly: Swiss Bank Helps Clients Participate in ICOs

Here’s something we don’t hear every day:

a Swiss bank has opted to enable its clients to participate in initial coin offerings easily. The bank, Swissquote, has previously allowed customers to trade in cryptos. This is, to say the least, an unusual service for a fiat banking institution. Additionally, Swissquote offers traditional FOREX trading and the range of services that traditional banks offer.

LakeDiamond ICO

The first ICO to be offered as an investment option on the banking platform is LakeDiamond, a lab-grown diamond company which is raising funds to purchase new equipment. They will offer more ICOs in the future. The pre-sale of this ICO is ongoing and offers a 10 percent bonus up to 4 million CHF (just under $4 million).The regular public sale will not open until January. Presumably, buyers will not have the opportunity to realize any gains or exchange their tokens for other cryptocurrencies before the spring.

The token itself is pegged to the cost of diamond production. Each token is meant to be equivalent in value to “1 (one) minute of growth reactor operating time, which produces lab-grown diamonds. One minute is the smallest possible unit, so the tokens are non-divisible past this point. If a diamond plate takes 180.5 minutes to grow, it will consume 181 LKD.” While this is not an ICO Review, LKD tokens are priced around 50 cents each. There will be a maximum supply of close to 6.8 million. The funds raised will be used to improve and expand the firm’s operations. Within the system, the tokens will have utility.

Lab-grown diamonds are a growing industry which markets themselves as more ethical. The movie Blood Diamond speaks to the reason that the ethics of traditional diamonds can be seen as questionable. Like all industries which require entry into disadvantaged countries and massive labor forces, the diamond industry has its share of detractors. Nevertheless, not everyone feels they are more ethical. There is the fact that they require less labor and if they became the norm, many thousands of people would find themselves without a livelihood.

You Don’t Need a Bank to Invest in ICOs

Yet, there’s certainly nothing unethical about investing in a firm to help it grow. LakeDiamond is meeting a demand and wants the public’s help to get there. SwissQuote feels it is a good investment opportunity for its account holders, and so they have partnered. All the same, cryptonaughts have invested in ICOs since before banks even took notice of bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. While it is certainly positive to see a bank be so forward-thinking, ultimately banks are not necessary for investment into ICOs and are furthermore decreasingly necessary for anything at all as the blockchain revolution moves on.

Article Produced By
CCN-Altcoin News

https://www.ccn.com/beyond-crypto-friendly-swiss-bank-helps-clients-participate-in-icos/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Token Airdrops Are Taking Off Despite Legal Concerns

Token Airdrops Are Taking Off Despite Legal Concerns

They say you get nothing for free in this life,

but tokenized projects running airdrops would beg to differ. You can now get a whole lotta crypto assets for free – hundreds of them in fact – simply for signing up and following some social channels. What started as a novelty has become the norm, with a vast number of ICOs now earmarking a portion of their tokens for free distribution. Questions remain though about the legal status of airdropped tokens in an age where anything related to crypto risks being labeled a security.

Airdrops Are the New Faucets

In bitcoin’s earliest days, faucets were used to distribute the cryptocurrency. Fractions of a bitcoin were given away on tap, back when BTC was cheap enough to send in small amounts and bits were worth buttons. Anyone who claimed those free morsels back in the day and held onto them will have eventually came into possession of some extremely valuable cryptocurrency. Today, airdrops are the faucets of the token economy. These freely dispensed tokens aren’t worth much – if anything – but there’s a small chance that one day they might be worth something.

At the Crypto Investor show in London last weekend, glossy flyers promoted an after-party with “free drinks + airdrop”. Come for the prosecco, stay for the tokenized revolution. Such is the prevalence of airdrops that an entire cottage industry has sprung up to promote them and inform crypto holders of the latest ones worth catching. Prominent Twitter traders compete to top the referral leaderboard for airdrops, whereupon they will be rewarded with yet more tokens. Everyone’s clamoring for free tokens right now, even though no one’s sure whether they’ll ever have any utility or market value.

Get Your Airdrops While They’re Hot

For new entrants to the cryptocurrency scene, airdrops provide a way to get some points on the board, or rather some tokens in the portfolio. The very act of claiming them is enough to teach beginners the basics of wallet use and receiving crypto. The problems these projects purport to solve also provides a primer on the weird and wonderful world of crypto. Such is the prevalence of airdrops, they now have a dedicated Bitcointalk forum thread, dedicated Telegram groups and, in Airdropalert, a website that promises you need “never miss a free crypto airdrop again!”

Most of the tokens awarded are ERC20s, though other blockchains have also caught on; NEO for example recently distributed ONT via an airdrop. Just like an ICO tracker, Airdropalert filters offers based on upcoming/active/past. Tokens currently up for grabs include Boutspro, Yee, Sofin, and Aelf. Giving away tokens is easy in the early stages of a project, when they’re literally worth nothing. The trick is getting the airdrop community to start using these tokens on the platforms they were designed for. If that occurs, and the project reaches critical mass, the tokens should rise in value, and then everyone will be a winner. Or so the theory goes.

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

While the legal status of tokens has attracted a lot of scrutiny recently, little has been said about airdrops. Does the act of giving something away for free mean it is free from securities laws and other regulations affecting cryptocurrency? Probably not. As Tokendata recently noted: “While airdrops can make economic sense…we’ve seen some ICOs revert to airdrops because they believe that: Airdrops reduce the regulatory footprint in terms of securities laws…Airdrops increase a project’s valuation instantly”.

Tokendata then goes on to explain that airdrops are still subject to securities regulations. The problem is that airdrop claimants aren’t obliged to undergo KYC, as ICO participants now routinely are. If it were necessary to submit documents for verification, suffice to say the airdrop business would fold overnight. People are always up for free stuff, but force them to jump through too many hoops and they’ll walk away. But should the SEC come after an ICO further down the line, and it emerged that 5% of their tokens were in the hands of unknown investors, there could be trouble.

Blockchain advisor and investor Oliver Isaacs opined: “The attraction with airdrops is natural, as they have the potential to rapidly onboard users and create an engaged community virtually from day one. ICOs need to be careful to be seen to issuing airdropped tokens for the right reasons though, and not as a means of circumventing securities laws.”

The truth is, no one knows for sure where regulations are going to lead the crypto economy, both in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Tokens may or may not be commodities, securities, or some new asset class that’s yet to be defined. But whatever they are, doling them out like confetti could be a recipe for regulatory trouble should these tokens attain value. Cryptocurrency users won’t care about this stuff – they’re only there for the free tokens after all – but it’s something ICOs should carefully consider. One cease and desist order and the entire airdrop racket could come tumbling down.

Article Produced By
Kai Sedgwick

Kai's been playing with words for a living since 2009 and bought his first bitcoin at $19. It's long gone. He's previously written white papers for blockchain startups and is especially interested in P2P exchanges and DNMs.

https://news.bitcoin.com/token-airdrops-taking-off-despite-legal-concerns/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Crypto Airdrops – Effective Marketing Tool, And Potential ICO Replacement

Crypto Airdrops – Effective Marketing Tool, And Potential ICO Replacement

Crypto Airdrops – Effective Marketing Tool, And Potential ICO Replacement

One of the biggest challenges in the cryptocurrency space is to raise people’s awareness of your project, especially when it is time to raise capital or to boost the growth of the network. Nowadays, many projects rely on increasing their brand awareness using traditional mediums, such as paid YouTube influencers, paid-content writers, paid Twitter accounts, or simply by conducting huge marketing campaigns and questionable teasers.

The problem is that most of these marketing schemes are illegal as tokens are considered financial assets by many institutions such as the SEC, which warned influencers and celebrities that they are violating securities laws, such as the anti-touting provision of the federal securities laws, by promoting ICOs without disclosing the nature and amount of their compensation for any type of endorsement. 

For these reasons, token airdrops seem to have become the new cryptocurrency marketing craze, with many projects deciding to use this strategy to distribute their tokens to the public. For instance, NNS, Neo Name Service, decided to airdrop 1% of its total supply to NEO holders on June 27th, and a dozen projects evolving within the EOS ecosystem decided to follow the same strategy (Most EOS airdrops can be found on EOSDrops.io)

What Is An Airdrop?

An airdrop occurs when coins are deposited into someone’s wallet, without the person having paid anything, almost out of thin air. In many cases, to be the recipient of an airdrop, the only requirement is to have some coins from the hosting blockchain of the project stored in a private wallet. For instance, if the token being airdropped is an ERC-20 coin, then holding a certain amount of ETH is sufficient to be eligible for the airdrop. The same idea works from project evolving on the NEO, Stellar (XLM), or Icon (ICX) blockchains. Sometimes, and most often than not, other non-financial requirements also have to be met, such as subscribing to social media feeds or completing KYC. “Airdrops combine the best of paid referral programs with stock options. Potential users get paid for joining or using the network and have the potential upside if the network increases in value.”

Why Do Projects Airdrop Their Tokens For Free?

The reason behind airdrops is not simply to give the public free coins, but rather as part of a more elaborate corporate strategy. First and foremost, airdrops are used to increase awareness around a token, which might lead to an increase in the token value and to the creation of a network effect. This marketing strategy plays on a cognitive bias known as the endowment effect – suggesting that individuals value something higher if they own it. Moreover, like most types of advertisement, airdrops are used to plant a “seed” into users’ psyches. The aim is that the next time users see the ticker of the coin they have been airdropped, even months later, they will have the reflex to stop and be more likely to click on the ticker to know what is happening to the coin, even if only to see the current price.

Secondly, airdrops are a way to avoid regulatory scrutiny, as ICOs are currently in a grey area in some jurisdictions (the US) or completely banned (China, Korea). Therefore, projects are instead deciding to raise money from institutional investors and airdrop the rest as a way to allow users to get their hands on the token. Examples of companies using airdrops to this extent are Banyan Network and Polymath. Most companies which decided not to conduct public ICOs, are either China-based or evolve in the US financial industry (for an extensive review on this point, we suggest reading this article).

Are Airdrops Effective Marketing Tools?

OmiseGo (OMG)

OmiseGo conducted the first airdrop of this kind and amplitude on September 4th – distributing 5% of the total issuance of OMG token to every ETH address, with a minimum balance of 0.1 ETH. The purpose of requiring a minimum wallet balance was to avoid sending tokens to phantom wallets and ensure that real users received the OMG tokens.  The airdrop enabled each ETH holder, by providing them with a share of the 5%, proportional to their share of the total circulating supply of Ether.

According to the team, the aim of the airdrop was to allow the token to be distributed as widely as possible, allowing for true decentralisation of the platform, to ultimately increase its network security. However, the statistics demonstrate that the aim of the Omise team might not have been purely holistic, but might have been part of a grand marketing scheme.    

On the chart below from Google Trends, you can see that a surge in search interest related to OmiseGo occurred during the days of the airdrop, reaching a peak close to the end of 2017, and dropping to a tenth of the search interest in June 2018. Most websites such as CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, and much of the Twittersphere spoke about the airdrop, leading to many people wondering what the project was about, and increasing OMG brand awareness.

Ontology (ONT)

In contrast with OmiseGo, Ontology did not perform a public token sale but raised its capital uniquely from private investors. Rather than conducting an ICO to provide the crypto community with the ONT tokens, the company decided to launch 3 rounds of airdropping possibilities, with the first being worth $8,000 at ONT all-time high.

The first phase involved the subscription to the Ontology Newsletter, coupled with a KYC in January 2018, with as a reward for doing so, 1,000 ONT being distributed by email address. The second was to people attending the NEO DevCon by giving them 500 ONT. Finally, Ontology being from the same mother-house than NEO, AntChain, the company decided to give 100 million ONT (10%) to the NEO council, which decided to pass on 20 million of them to its community at a ratio of 0.2 ONT for each NEO owned.

The snapshot of the third phase of the airdrop occurred on March 1st, leading to the all-time peak in Google searches for the term Ontology. As in the case of OmiseGo, the airdrop has been covered in pretty much every crypto news outlet, meaning crowd awareness was at a high. Additionally, the token having been sold at $0.20 during the pre-sale, privates investors already realised a 40x return on their investments.

Tron (TRX)

Now, let’s take a look at Tron (TRX), and its PR machine and CEO, Justin Sun. On April 27th the team decided to airdrop 30 million TRX ($1.7 million equivalent) to Ethereum users having a balance of over 1 ETH (as of April 20) in their wallet. Unlike OMG, which decided to airdrop amounts proportional to the holding of ETH, or Ontology which gave everyone the same amount of ONT, Tron decided to credit each account with a random amount of TRX between 10 and 100. 

The Tron foundation has been clear that the reason for the airdrop was to market the Tron platform which was set to launch a few days after the airdrop, as their stated motives were to increase awareness around TRX and allow people to use these TRX to vote for the supernodes. However, unlike for the two examples mentioned above, the airdrop did not result in a drastic increase in Google search interest. The cause could be simply that Tron was omnipresent in social media since January, meaning people were already aware of an incoming airdrop, or as this is the first airdrop that took place squarely in the middle of the current bear market we find ourselves in, so overall interest in cryptocurrency has led to this lack of interest in Tron’s airdrop.

PolyMath (POLY)

Lastly, let’s take a look at Polymath, which in the same way as Ontology raised funds only from private investors, and did not conduct a public ICO. In a few words, the project sold 12.9 million POLY to private investors in their presale and decided to airdrop 10 million POLY to the blockchain community instead of executing an ICO. However, unlike all the projects above, which targeted the users of a particular platform, Polymath decided to allow anyone to subscribe to the airdrop, regardless of their holdings. 

Unsurprisingly, the project being fundamentally interesting, the team received more than 40,000 applications and demanded that each airdrop applicant complete a KYC and AML screening, to ensure that the tokens were airdropped to real users, rather than bots. All the people which completed the procedure received 250 POLY, worth $165 at the time of writing and $400 at the token’s all-time high.

Similarly to the other projects, besides Tron, the marketing scheme worked, as the search interest for Polymath reached its all-time high by the 10th of January, the deadline to apply to the airdrop. The airdropping strategy from a PR perspective is extremely effective, no matter the coin, the way the company decided to raise capital (public, or private), nor the distribution mechanism.  In all examples cited above, all coins show a spike in Google search interests – demonstrating that airdropping is an effective marketing tool.

Which Impact Do Airdrops Have On Token Price?

You might expect that airdrops automatically lead to selloffs. However, things are a little bit more complicated than that. In the case of Ontology (ONT), the data clearly shows that the airdrops led to a continuous increase in the token’s value. This might be explained by the fact that as the project was not traded prior to the airdrop; therefore, no price action prior to the airdrop occurred which would have allowed a buy the rumor, sell the news type pattern. Additionally, due to the token being highly anticipated by the cryptocurrency community, the project being from the same house as NEO, many decided to keep hold of their airdrop tokens.

In the Case of OmiseGo (OMG) the story is quite different. The token was tradeable long before the airdrop, and therefore people being airdropped OMG tokens might not have been interested in receiving them, thus selling their tokens, resulting in a cascading effect. This demonstrates that from a price standpoint, it might be important to investigate whether the target audience to receive the airdrop are going to be interested in holding the coin. In our opinion, giving airdrops to people who are uninterested in a project might not be the best strategy as it might become bad publicity, leading to even true holders being exasperated.

For Tron, as for its Google search movement, it is hard to know what the impact of the airdrop was, given the fact that several other pieces of news such as the mainnet release were given in the same period. Nevertheless, since the airdrop occurred, we can see that the token price has been steadily declining, with some sporadic upswing movements, coinciding with the overall crypto market movements – leading us to believe that the airdrop had indeed no particular effect to TRX as a whole

In Conclusion

Airdrops appear to be a highly effective tool to raise awareness of a project. Additionally, many projects see airdrops as a way to create a network effect, which is highly important in the blockchain space, where network security is proportionally related to the diversification of holdings. Needless to say, for an airdrop to be successful, it needs to have an extremely strong community. A community that believes in the coin will continue to promote it over a longer period of time and won’t sell off as soon as the distribution is carried out.

We see that both tokens, ONT and POLY, completed a private sale but no ICO – meaning that airdrops might become a good strategy for VCs to invest, as well as to provide an exit option. As stressed before, regulatory frameworks surrounding ICOs are highly uncertain, leading to higher regulatory risks. Thus, VCs might be reluctant to invest in projects undertaking a public sale, and the airdrop solution enables them to bypass these. Moreover, by not conducting an ICO, investors have the possibility to opt for reduced vesting and lock-up periods – allowing them to have higher liquidity on their holdings and to sell their positions if wanted.

The problem is, given that the airdrop method seems to be increasingly used, blockchain users might find themselves with increasing numbers of coins in their wallets which they could find themselves wanting to get rid of quickly. This problem has been pinpointed by Brayton Williams of Boost VC, who told CoinDesk that issuers could do a better job at targeting a relevant audience, rather than sending tokens to all addresses of a blockchain. For instance, issuers could airdrop tokens based on geography, demographics, job, or other factors, to cultivate the best market for the future of the platform.

The author succinctly describes the different kinds of online influencers, and how airdrops could capitalise on their reach, leading to airdrops reaching the right people who might have an interest in specific tokens, as well as referring them to their friends and further audience. For instance, an energy network evolving in a certain country would have no value to users living outside the said country, while a well-targetted airdrop to people living in the area might lead to a genuine interest in the project. The author of the text mentioned above envisions AI-driven tools, which won’t scan blockchains, or ask for manual inputs in order to receive the airdrops, but will instead look for data telling us which addresses are owned by which kind of people.

We believe that airdrops are here to stay and will become a big part of companies’ user acquisition schemes, and being able to market these will be increasingly important. However, despite being highly effective right now, as more projects turn toward this strategy, the effectiveness is likely to diminish – meaning that new marketing schemes, as well as more accurate targeting will need to be used. 

Article Produced By
Jacek Bastin

Jacek graduated with an M.A. in Finance from the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. He lived in Europe and Asia, and always loved to dig into papers and research projects to really understand the key drivers and trends. He’s passionate about blockchain’s business application, the sharing economy, and FinTech.

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden