How to identify fake cryptocurrency airdrop

Airdrop is one of the ways to earn cryptocurrency free without paying a dime. Airdrop is a way to reward users for performing certain tasks in exchange for awareness given to the coin. Every participant is rewarded on completion of the airdrop once they fulfill all terms and conditions. Airdrop is synonymous to cryptocurrencies and it is a way for new or old crypto projects to reach out to millions of users in the world. Users are asked to accomplish simple tasks like

• Follow a Twitter account

• Join Telegram group

• Retweet a certain post

• Refer your friends for extra reward

Why pay thousands of dollars for marketing when you can easily give out your native token for a better result. Airdrop have been given so many names overtime such as claimdrop, airgrab, spacedrop, raindrop, and so on. The modus operandi still remain the same. A typical airdrop that shows you don’t need thousands of dollars for advertising is the ongoing Scorum airdrop where you can win up to 1000 SCR and 1000 SP.

The Crypto airdrop has been hijacked by some unscrupulous elements who use it as an avenue to farm user data or scam investors. This post will expose how to identify fake airdrops so you don’t fall a victim.

Zero or Incorrect details on the web

Most airdrops organizers nowadays only have a telegram channel where everything starts and ends. This is a red flag and you should run from it after due investigation. Before running an airdrop, do the following

• Search the coin name on a search engine preferably Google

• Search the coin on coingecko, coincodex, or coinmarketcap

• Search the coin name on medium

• Search the coin name on twitter

Any serious coin should have at least a website where they will showcase their whitepaper, team, roadmap, and other details about their coin. You can’t expect serious investors to trust a Telegram group that can be deleted any moment or even locked. The google search will also reveal the coin presence on any of coinmarketcap, coingecko, coincodex, and so on. You can view the coin information here and link it back to the website you found and the website provided by the airdrop organizers. If they are in tandem, you can go on with the airdrop. If the details are a bit skewed, you have to ditch that airdrop immediately.

Another way to verify authenticity is searching the coin name on Twitter or medium. This will expose a lot of things especially for the fake airdrops. An ongoing airdrop BITCNY is one that will return as fake if you follow the steps given. The given website for this fake airdrop is bitcny.app which is totally different from what is available on coinmarketcap. You can see that the genuine BITCNY is actively traded and even has an explorer compared to the fake airdrop of 1500 CNY being circulated around. The fake BITCNY telegram group currently have 120565 members which shows the number of people that have fallen for the scam.

Purchase before withdraw

This is another red flag that you mustn’t fall for. The advent of decentralized exchanges (DEX) like Uniswap, Sushiswap and others has make it easy for this fake coins to list on an exchange and swindle unsuspecting investors. You see so many airdrops asking for purchase of so-so amount of coin before withdrawing your earned coins. On no account should you yield to this because it is a scam and you should run away from it. They rug pull once they get certain amount of ETH leaving users with fake coins of no value. Airdrop is always free and you shouldn’t pay any dime to get withdraw your airdrop rewards.

Extra reward for airdrop participants

This is another common gimmick used to entice users to fall into their scam. You see something like

We are giving away 2000 UNI or 2000 USDT for airdrop participants who buy at least 5 ETH worth of XYZ token.

Kindly run from it because it is a scam nothing else.

Asking for private key or passwords

This sounds absurd but it happens. You see many users losing their wallet cryptocurrencies to fake airdrops. Many will design a website and ask users to input their private key in the textbox given to earn certain amount of tokens. Some will even ask for gmail, facebook, and twitter passwords with the claim that they want to verify the authenticity of the user. They utilize different method to trick users in parting with their private information which end in tears for many.

Run away when you see any of the above signs because it shows that airdrop is definitely fake.

Airdrop ethics

Cryptocurrency wallets have made it easier to create and manage different wallets on a single device. You can create a separate wallet for your airdrops.

Follow your intuition, if it’s too real, then it’s not real.

Happy Reading.