Imagine thinking an airdrop you recently claimed had no value yet after it was added to your usual DEX without any price. No marketing info, no news about where to deploy it, nothing...
Then imagine forgetting about it for a few days, waking up on 4 hours of sleep to see a text message of a general Reddit crypto airdrop link. So what? Same thing I thought as my hazy eyes scrolled through the link to appease my friend, only to catch a random comment on the bottom of the page saying that my airdrop above was MASSIVE.
Lastly, imagine me yawning to check a brand new DEX I wasn't aware of to see that my tokens were worth $23,500 at the time! While this is a huge gift, I was actually late to the party to miss much higher prices mentioned below. Regardless, once I realized that I wasn't dreaming, any thoughts of snoozing were revoked.
So, what just happened?!
I fear that I've become too desensitized to crypto prices as I actually wasn't as excited about this as I should've been. I was mostly confused and skeptical that this was too good to be true. With 5+ years of crypto tenure, I've trained myself to largely ignore crypto prices and focus on growing passive crypto income to stay level. If I sound like a monster, I was also still half asleep.
After connecting my wallet and executing a test trade into $20 worth of a stable coin, I realized that this was no joke. There was lots of liquidity, no slippage, and cheap fees.
While trying to familiarize myself with this token's brand new pricing history, which wasn't easy to find, I realized that my tokens were worth about $28,000 two days before. After digging more after on another price chart with a broader date range, I saw that they actually peaked at $33,000 three days before I figured things out. ARRGGHH. I can't complain since I was fortunate to be aware of it at all from that text since very little news is out on this coin. There was literally almost no info out there and YouTube influencers who may have offered intel virtually all completely snoozed on it.
Taking Action:
I didn't want to act in haste without know what the heck this all was, so I contacted friends who might've been eligible to alert them. They all missed the snapshot date. I then sold slightly over $5,000 into a stable coin at a decent price to lock something in. Definitely real.
Despite its price being down a bit from the recent peak, I felt it best to lock something of that proportion in as the current price could easily evaporate. No staking or LP yield opportunities were available yet, so there was little reason to keep all of these funds in a foreign token. I normally hold airdrops because I'm educated on them in advance, but this one was very vague and off the map. Despite my inclination to ultimately offer liquidity for passive ROI and to avoid realizing taxes, derisking felt like the right move.
Since then, I've gotten acclimated to the token's Discord, the new DEX I'm able to sell it on, streaming pricing charts thanks to a validator's custom site, and made two more swaps. These swaps were done at peak price/ratio spikes to efficiently build my core holdings of two main tokens that are staples for drops in this ecosystem. They're now staked and earning nice APR, but my goal was to boost upcoming airdrops. Since I sold decent chunks of each, I actually made a second set of addresses for each. I feel that the exposure to get two airdrops versus higher airdrops from one account will be a wiser move over time. I'm not going to game the system here, but it's smart to split up tokens to not have them all in the same addresses, respectively.
I've still got more than half the airdrop tokens in play and am monitoring the prices/overall market to make my next move. I missed my best opportunity during a nap yesterday, but I couldn't stay awake, fearing that I'd be too tired to make good decisions. Oh well. Murphy's Law 101.
Sadly, the Discord group is very underwhelming and full of lame messages from those obsessed with price projections and calling sellers "paper hands." While the concept of the token and its future may be bright, I'm not impressed by the current holders I've witnessed so far. While I shouldn't weigh this too much, it doesn't feel like a community I'd be happy interacting with often.
The craziest part is that I got 9% of my overall airdrop from my staked balance, a requirement worth about $250 at the time. I got 91% of my airdrop as a BONUS just for making one governance vote on-chain. Now that's unbelievable to me, but I did my homework to qualify. Over $22,000 for one proposal vote!
As the price of these tokens has been ranging between $1,960-$2,400 over the last 1.5 days (currently steady around $2,100 now, I'll consider myself half lucky for this bonus, but also half prepared for the foresight to engage in new chains most aren't doing the legwork to adopt early. Just when it couldn't be more generous, there were actually additional bonus tokens given to those who voted on all proposals (over $10K there), but I missed a few over the months. I can't fault myself for that because there was no way I could've known, or expected such a large reward. You can bet that I'm going to be voting all over now across all of the chains I'm involved in where the airdrops stem from.
General basics on coin are that it's deflationary and that all unclaimed tokens will be burned in a few weeks to finalize the supply. Part of me wants to keep some exposure to see how things pan out after that time, especially as some liquidity pools should be up by then. I don't know where the rewards would come from, but perhaps the other token in the pool this one lives on.
What to do with the rest?
First, I'd like to thank the Crypto Gods.
I have no attachment to my remaining balance, but just don't want to rush the selling process. I definitely want to further derisk as so much of this valuation appears to be based on speculation of decentralized value and scarcity.
I'm planning to put some into Splinterlands assets, a few Gala Games NFTs, and the rest into BTC. Perhaps I'll also stack on to an ALT coin or two, but I personally prefer locking up more BTC for the long haul.
I'm somewhat hesitant to sell much more after this dip since the sell pressure may subside to recover as pool incentives should become more apparent soon. I'll probably keep 20-25% for the mid-term just in case.
I'm not going to disclose what this token is, but it's real, and I've allocated myself some as a stable coin gift. If the token magically disappears tomorrow as fast as it came, or the tokens I swapped it for drop with the market, I want something firm to show for it. The real test is if I'll actually send it to my bank and not put it on Anchor at 19.5% APR. I do need some new baseball gear for the upcoming season and can put it toward rent.
As I've barely sold anything over the years, I don't enjoy taking anything out of crypto. However, sometimes you have to force yourself to break these self-imposed restrictions and benefit in real life a bit.
What's The Moral Of The Story?
- Proactively find airdrops and meet/exceed eligibility requirements ASAP. Some airdrops have fixed dates, while others are vague. Some chains are very generous if you seek them out.
- If you're clueless on airdrops, there are plenty of resources that aggregate confirmed and rumored drops on notable chains. Google away or surf Twitter/Reddit. I've done all the digging and am getting a nice stream of them now with a full pipeline.
- Sometimes airdrops are complete surprises, i.e., the Uniswap drop years ago I never thought I'd top. Keep yourself eligible by keeping tokens staked where they should be.
- Airdrops often build off each other, so hold or utilize a decent portion of them upon claim to increase future exposure. Incentives are also highest at the onset to retain liquidity and secure the chain.
- Get involved in governance via proposal voting on chains where airdrops are stemming from. You never know what type of boost or massive boost that might provide later. ^Exhibit A.
- Staking with validators that aren't in the top 10 or 20 sometimes gives additional bonuses for helping to decentralize networks. Don't stake with exchanges since they're usually skipped.
- Some validators actually may give favorable airdrop boosts for tokens they mint and airdrop if you've stake to them on other projects, so look for announcements or hints on social media. They're all over if you put the effort in.
Any airdrop glory yourself?
Thanks for reading,
@steemmatt
It is worth doing these things every now and then, could you have actually offloaded your tokens for those higher prices though? Probably not is my gut feeling...?
!1UP
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
The liquidity of these tokens has been excellent all along. While I wasn't there at that specific time, I've been monitoring price/liquidity charts regularly since, and have sold off half in total before the larger dip without any issue. Transactions have been instantaneous with only .3% fee. While the market cap isn't huge by any means, there's a strong group of buyers in the community (which I can't grasp yet, other than them having God-like faith in the token's mission, or just being dumb money). There's a very low supply, so it's got the scarcity narrative people tend to get hyped up about.
Congrats! That's a great airdrop. I really miss those huge airdrops, need to start some hunting now.
You're in the circle of trust. I'll send you a message on Discord with some tips tomorrow.
Thanks mate. Is it on cosmos? I’m 0 funds on cosmoc :(((((
Take this, it's dangerous to go alone.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
This is a nice one. Congrats! The biggest I got was about 500 DYDX tokens that I forgot to claim, worth about $10k at peak. It was disturbing when I found out about that lol.
From those that I claimed Badger was probably the best one with $4-5k at the time.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Congrats! The key is that you were able to still claim the drop before it expired. There are some airdrops that burn the unclaimed tokens by a specific date, which would require some to seek therapy. What made you forget? $4-5K is a strong airdrop. Definitely a notable one.
A lot of airdrops were happening at the time and most of them were worth a few hundred bucks or even less. It felt like the hype has died off and the DYDX drop would end up being the same so I never bothered. Also, the only action I made was deposit and withdraw ETH, I never made a trade...
Turns out people made millions and I missed out on 10k. Not complaining though, I got enough free money from DeFi to just let that one slide.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Wow that's a lot of money. If I were you, my instinct would have been to convert the entire $23,000 to a stablecoin as quickly as possible.
I received a $300 airdrop on Osmosis last week which is my largest so far. I have the cosmos airdrop reddit page bookmarked. Looks like I should also search for some airdrop aggregator pages to bookmark.
Try to put your airdrops into ATOM/JUNO/OSMO staking to branch out for upcoming airdrops. I've managed half of the airdrop so far before the larger dip, but am letting half ride for the time being. Moving all of it around means taxable transactions, so I'll take the hit on half and make moves with the balance once yield-bearing options present themselves within a few weeks. This avoids taxes and increase my passive income, ideally.
Thanks for all your help. I've already 10x the original Atom investment I put into Osmosis.
Woah, now we are talking!!! Congrats. You're ahead of the curve now.
Damn that's awesome! Maybe put some of that to a Valentine's gift for someone? I've never had much in terms of airdrops, but waking up to a $28k airdrop would definitely make my day haha. Looks like good karma is on your side
Knock on wood. Just think, you could then buy two Teslas... 1 used with this drop, and 1 brand new with your HivePunk... Cough.
That way, I'll always have a full charge 😁
Holy crap, that's amazing! Congratulations, man :D
That's some good advice too. I've definitely haven't spent enough time actively searching for airdrops by a longshot
It's worth it. The drops often are related to each other on the same network to compound on each other, while offering solid APR or pool rates to grow the free money into even more. Splinterlands has ruined me. When I started selling some off, the thought of hold many gold foil legendaries and land plots I could buy with it was way too prominent in my mind. Uh oh.
Apparently so! I'm just gonna have to set aside some time for it soon, nothing else to do about it. So much to do and so little time xD I'm pretty certain I'd spend A LOT on Splinterlands assets too (with emphasis on GFLs), if I suddenly got this kind of money between my fingers. From where I'm sitting, it looks like you're doing solid decisions on your investments. And those GFLs will certainly appreciate a lot, regardless if they reach the thousands. Bsides, they have a lot of important work to do on your land when the time comes, in addition to generating extra dec for you now.
btw, I just read your last SPL post, and I gotta say I'm beyond impressed with the progress of your collection and general asset accumulation. I'm learning a lot (both about spl and investing in general) from reading your posts. I was just lucky to be here early, but you are growing strong regardless. Soon we shall both sit comfortably on our porches in Praetoria with straws between our teeth, watching our golden monsters working the land :D
PS, if you aren't aware, WAX is another way to buy land plots without the cumbersome Hive-engine route. Besides being a feeless blockchain specifically designed for NFTs with tons of interesting projects, it's quite easy to acquire WAX directly in the cloud wallet.
The WAX tip sounds promising if I can find a way to get WAX. It doesn't seem to be available on any exchange I can access, but will definitely explore it. I just bought up more gold summoners to get Kelya and Thaddius to level 5. I'm tempted to just pull the bandaid off and bring them up a few levels more because it'll make game play so much easier. I'm just not sure if prices are about to rebound up or slide down, so I'm trying to be patient and do this in steps. With my L5 gold summoners, I can now play the L3 GFL's without Quix, and the Baakjira's self-heal up front is AWESOME. I also have the Cursed Windeku that can self-heal too, so I've tried to see beyond the cost for the better armies to allow me to earn more easily. I also don't see myself buying tons of packs to get these cards at random, so I'm sort of counting this spend as "my future pack purchases" instead.
Sorry for the late response, been knocked out by covid for the past week. Hm, looking at the cloud wallet interface, there should be some US-available exchanges for it, both fiat and crypto options.
Level 5 rare summoners, yes, that's where I've been since Beta. Right in the middle between silver and gold, too strong for silver, a bit too weak for gold. I see you got your Tarsa and Thaddius up to level 6 now. Good call. Now they're maxed out in gold league. So just the rest of the collection remains! I think you're doing it in the right order, slow, steady and patient. And buying singles, not packs, that's the way to go.
Baakjira at level 3 IS amazing. In semi-low-mana battles with the Noxious Fumes ruleset, I put him in the back, while the rest of our teams fight it out. Enjoy, adversary :D Another interesting card to look out for that's super cheap now, is Pelacor Conjurer. Quite strong in low mana battles
Well I certainly wouldn't mind waking up to a sum like that!
If I'd only woken myself up 3 days earlier, ahhhh. If my friend didn't text me, I'd probably have found out a week later and be sulking with the market correction. I'm always all over the distributions and listings, but didn't realize this was to be specifically listed on a new exchange that turned on at the same time the drop was claimable.
You have received a 1UP from @revisesociology!
@leo-curatorAnd they will bring !PIZZA 🍕
Learn more about our delegation service to earn daily rewards. Join the family on Discord.
Wow. That is absolutely amazing. Congratulations. I am soooooooo behind and doing the bare minimum in this world. Receiving an air drop like that would be life changing for me. I clicked some links, did some reading, and followed some accounts. Immersing myself much more deeply in to the cryptosphere would probably be much more profitable than the reselling I do. It feels overwhelming, and the learning curve is great. There's very little available for newbies into this kind of thing, and you have to just kind of dive in and do your best. Seems the most important thing is to be in the right groups and the right places at the right time.
If you proactively search for the terms airdrop on YouTube, many influencers post videos about them and you can follow their steps to become eligible to the degree you can. Some airdrop snapshots have already occurred, but many are to come. Some require a decent investment of staked tokens, while others don't require much at all. Airdrops are a good way to get ROI on your investment into the tokens that gained you eligibility, plus they then offer you yield or compounding airdrops if future snapshots account for those new tokens you got. It can waterfall quite nicely. The last year has been very profitable in this sense, but I didn't start with a large amount on one main chain (Cosmos). I've diligently compounded at high APR yields, and gotten tons of other airdrops (while the prices have also rose). You just have to find the right layer one or key tokens to stake on-chain, and use sources like YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, etc. to get ahead of them.
That's helpful. Do you find that information much here or on Leo Finance?
Not on Hive or Leo at all, but I'm not digging much. Perhaps there's some, but I'd rather go right to the source.
Thanks.