Money for Nothing, Crypto for Free

The crypto-kids call it “airdrop season.” I call it “ridiculously large bags of free money.”

And I do mean “ridiculously large.” Crazy large. So large you stop and re-read the number to make sure that was a comma and not a period.

But we’ll come that…

As I’ve been saying for a while now, we are in a new bull market for cryptocurrency. Frankly, we’ve been in this new bull market since last January, when I sent out a dispatch saying that the bottom was in and that I saw the animal spirits rekindling.

Now here we are a year later, and crypto is already up huge. (Don’t worry; if you’re not in crypto yet, you’re still early. Bitcoin, Solana, Ethereum, and so many others are going to put up numbers that will be truly epic).

One of the side effects of this crypto bull market is the emergence of this so-called airdrop season. These airdrops are events in which the team behind a particular crypto project sends that project’s tokens to users for free. They are “airdropped” into crypto wallets.

If you’re wondering what the tokens are for, they’re often used as “governance” rights, or the right to have a say in how a project operates—almost like voting rights if you hold shares of stock.

In real-world terms, imagine a new bank opens in town and you want to support it, so you go open a checking account there, and you stuff a bit of money into a certificate of deposit, and you use the bank for a home-equity line of credit.

Then one day, months or maybe a year or two later, that bank decides to go public on Wall Street. And because you supported the bank in its early days, bank management dumps a bundle of shares into your account—for free.

You log into your account one morning to check your bank balance and you find that you now own 1,000 shares of the bank, and they’re cumulatively worth possibly $20,000… $50,000… $100,000… etc.

That’s an airdrop.

They’ve become hugely popular in this new crypto bull market.

As I noted in a previous dispatch, a crypto project on the Solana blockchain called Jito Networks airdropped tokens to its users back in November. People I know in the cryptosphere woke up to find tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of Jito tokens in their crypto wallet.

Pyth Network airdropped several thousand dollars’ worth of tokens as well a few weeks back.

And over Christmas, the dogfather of Solana dog-themed “meme coins”—Bonk—announced it would be airdropping tons of Bonk tokens into certain wallets as part of its “Bonkmas” celebration. A year ago, at Christmas 2022, Bonk first emerged as a surprise airdrop at a point when Solana and the entire crypto industry was in a bad way.

A year later, Bonk is widely regarded as having saved Solana and having helped rekindle those animal spirits I mentioned earlier. I received a bunch of Bonk in both airdrops—last year and this year—and, combined, my Bonk is now worth nearly $10,000.

I did literally nothing for that money.

Yet there it is, staring at me every day when I log into my crypto wallet.

Now, I’m awaiting another airdrop slated for this month from a project called Jupiter Networks. It’s the largest token-swap site on Solana—meaning a site where Coin X turns into Coin Y through a trade, much like trading dollars for euro at an airport currency kiosk.

I’ve been using Jupiter for about two years and because of that, Jupiter will be sending me 7,500 so-called $JUP tokens (the ticker symbol for that crypto). Though the tokens haven’t landed yet, they’re already trading in pre-sale markets for $0.80 each. So there’s another $6,000 of free money… and possibly quite a good bit more, if $JUP surges. Indeed, expectations are that $JUP flies once it’s live because the team has hinted at the notion that Jupiter will likely begin facilitating trading in everything from crypto to stocks, commodities, and traditional currencies.

The fee income would see Jupiter become one of the biggest financial players in crypto, meaning the $JUP token could very well shoot the moon, taking my 7,500 $JUP into the stratosphere.

Why do I tell you all of this?

Well, like I said, we are in airdrop season and lots of successful crypto companies are announcing pending airdrops. Others that are successful have not yet announced an airdrop, but are widely expected to. They’re all doing so because they see an opportunity to exploit bullishness in the market. Strike will the iron is hot, and all that.

Thing is, there’s still time to qualify for many of these.

I’ve spent the last month using all kinds of crypto services in order to build a track-record of usage that should qualify me for those various airdrops. It’s not terribly difficult, nor does it have to be risky.

One small example: The Jupiter airdrop is split into four tranches. The first tranche happens this month and is based on a snapshot of users the company completed weeks ago. So there’s no way to quality now for tranche #1.

However, tranches #2, #3, and #4—all of which will happen in coming months—will likely be based on the volume of trading a user compiles on various Jupiter services. To that end, I’ve been making a bunch of risk-free trades in Jupiter across four or five different crypto wallets (I use the Solana-based Phantom Wallet, which is also rumored to launch an airdrop in 2024, possibly, and that would go to those using the wallet. So, you know: Two birds, one stone).

On Jupiter, I’ve been trading US Dollar Coin—a stablecoin that tightly shadows the greenback—for UXD, another stablecoin that tracks the greenback. This is usually a $1 for $1 trade, so I’m taking no risk. But I’m building trading volume that should get me more $JUP in the next three airdrop tranches.

I won’t lay out all my strategies here because there’s too much ‘splaining to do. Instead, I’m thinking of whipping up a Masterclass detailing how to go about what’s known as “airdrop farming.”

So if you’re interested, be on the lookout for an email from me about that Masterclass soon-ish.

It’s not every day you can pocket free money of this magnitude. But that day is upon us during airdrop season, and I’m doing what I can to fatten my wallet as much as possible.

I mean, who doesn’t like free money?