First, let me take a short time to explain what an AirDrop is and what an ICO is.
What is an ICO?
An ICO, or Initial Coin Offering, is a fundraising campaign by a cryptocurrency project where they sell their coins/tokens in exchange for money (often in BitCoin, Ether, Litecoin etc...). This money is later used to fund the development of the project. The incentive for the investors is that, supposedly, the price for the tokens will be worth more upon launch of the project and thereby investors will make a profit.
What is an AirDrop?
AirDrops are basically a free distribution of a cryptocurrency coins/token. I mention the word "free", which could be the case, but most often this involves some sort of "payment" in the form of advertisement or referrals by the participants of the AirDrops.
The rules for taking part in an AirDrop are often individual to each coin but it could mean;
- Having a referral link in you BitCoinTalk signature
- Writing positive articles, tutorials or translations
In exchange, you receive a predetermined amount of tokens, often without investing any money. That means that it is often the community behind an AirDrop coin that mostly handles the marketing of the project.
Not all coins are distributed in the AirDrop, a certain amount is held back for the creators and developers, to be used as an investment for future development. The amount that is held back varies from AirDrop to AirDrop so it is impossible to say exactly but 10-20% is a normal number.
In order to better understand what could be involved lets take DeepOnion as a concrete example; in order to join the DeepOnion AirDrop one needs to:
- Have a BitCoinTalk account with Jr. Member rank as minimum
- Add DeepOnion referral link in BCT signature
- Have 100 DeepOnion tokens in your main wallet
There are some other minor rules in order to stay in the AirDrop and you can find them here: DeepOnion AirDrop but I think you get the picture.
So why would a successful AirDrop be more likely to succeed rather than a sold-out ICO?
I am not saying that this is a "for sure" thing but here is my reasoning on the matter. An AirDrop won't be successful unless it manages to prove to its community that it has inherent value and a proper future. This is pretty much true for a sold-out ICO as well but the difference comes after.
In order for an AirDrop coin to be successful, it needs to have an extremely strong and loyal community. A community that believes in the coin, continues to promote it over a longer period of time and won't sell off as soon as the project starts. Since the value of the AirDrop coin is all in the hands of the community and it is this value that is used to develop the coin, to even get such a coin started the community must continue to believe in the coin all throughout the development. A perfect example of this is DeepOnion, it has been going for six months and it is only going higher in evaluation, the community is growing bigger and development has really gotten underway.
In the case of an ICO the fundraising has been done beforehand so such a coin isn't at all as sensitive to the evaluation of the community. Which means that development can continue even though the consensus of the community might be that the coin is close to worthless. This is often what happens in the case of ICOs, people buy in, hoping for fast gains only to sell their tokens since it doesn't 10x in the first month of the project start.
Now don't get me wrong, A LOT, if not most of the AirDrop coins end up not being worth much of anything. But that is not what I am talking about here. What I specifically said, in the beginning, was successful AirDrop coins, which is why I gave DeepOnion, BitSend and ByteBall as examples. That means coins that have managed to start development and where the evaluation of the token is kept steady, or even better is rising, after the project launch.
Why is this such a good sign?! Well that should almost be obvious that a coin that manages to;
- Convince the community to continuously support it
- Keep its evaluation high enough during launch to further fund future development
is a coin that has a VERY strong chance of increasing in value. Since the base support has been through the early phases I don't ever see them leaving the coin unless something drastic happens. This makes future growth that much more likely and the risks involved that much lower.
So why not take a chance and try to find a new undiscovered AirDrop coin here: AirDrop Alert List. Or feel free to use my the link, in my signature, to join the AirDrop of an already successful coin such as DeepOnion.
Disclaimer: I am no financial advisor so you should always do your own research before choosing to invest in any project