Whether you are a n00b crypto investor like myself or an advanced cypto jedi, the lure of free crypto airdrops that have the potential to moon is always enticing. Think about it: you just do a few tasks and boom!...free digital assets get dropped into a wallet that previously had zero coins in it. I am currently waiting for a handful of tokens to drop in the upcoming month, and I wouldn't be a blockchain shill if I didn't list them, so if you are interested in the free airdrops that I believe are "safe" scroll down below.
I wanted to document the story of VarySafe Token, a Bep20 token "potentially a first of its kind; an end-to-end product for new crypto projects," or so their website claims. I found the free airdrop on https://icomarks.com, which is a great place to look for initial coin offers (ICOs) and promotional airdrops. I don't want to put the exact website for the airdrop, because I won't want you (the reader) to even think about participating in it now. To summarize my draw to the project: the tasks were very simple, and the rewards were reasonable. See for yourself:
I completed the steps, and like any shill for a token, broadcast the free airdrop across Twitter and Torum. (For those of you who don't know about Torum yet, I will create a post on that later.) Since I completed the tasks early, I simply had to sit and wait for my 25 $VRF to show up in my wallet on May 18.
Now, like many pre-sale and airdrop coins, there are means of communication for the consumer to interact with the project team in order to make sure things are going well. VarySafe had three channels on Telegram: Group Chat, Project Channel, and Airdrop Bot. The Group Chat has chatter from all users that are trying to get their wallet contracts added or buying tokens. The Project Channel contains announcements from the project team. And the Airdrop bot is a programmed bot that enters your information automatically for the airdrop and confirms tasks.
The project team started to hint at a big announcement that was going to be released after April 30, and the group channel new that it was going to be the announcement of a 10 $BNB prize.
And the specifics were announced quite often during the last week of April. The main note I want you to pay attention to is the total number of winners = 10. Only 10 people are supposed to receive the 10 $BNB prize.
Well, like everyone else, I did not think that I was going to win this grand prize, so i went to sleep soundly on April 30.
On May 1st, I woke up to find that I had an announcement on my Telegram, to which I opened this up and found a message that made my heart skip a beat. I had won! I had won! I am actually one of the 10 people to win 10 $BNB just by signing up to a free airdrop! Here is the announcement below, and think what seems odd...
You guessed it! This is one of the oldest scams in the book: send a small amount of crypto for a much larger amount of crypto. To confirm, I checked a few places: (1) I went to bscscan.com to check the Binance Smart Coin blockchain, and sure enough there was only $BNB going into the wallet and no $BNB was being received by the sending wallet. And (2) I went to Twitter to see just how many people "won" this award and watch the list of "scam" posts grow. Sure enough, way more than 10 people claimed to have received the same message from the airdrop bot, and a few posted that they actually sent over the crypto. I do feel bad for these people because for these "too good to be true" scams, there is a small sense of hope. What's a real dirtbag move is the scammers closed the group chat on the Telegram platform so no one could announce that they won the grand prize. Wow!!! Way to leave people hanging as you steal their hard-earned money!
So, now what happens? I don't know! This is my first encounter with a scam. If you look on bscscan.com, there are currently 189 wallets that contain various amounts of $VRF, which means that the scammers actually distributed out some tokens: 73,760 $VRF to be exact. What will happen to these token holders?
The airdrop distribution date is supposed to be May 18. I'm keeping my $VRF wallet live just in case they actually distribute out the tokens. Again, I have no idea about the supply and demand of scam tokens, but if there is a stash of 19.9 million $VRF sitting in a scammer wallet somewhere, the value of these tokens might not be worth the electricity to light the screen displaying the number of tokens i have.
What I am most surprised is the response by many of the platforms that listed VarySafe, or #VaryUnSafe now! Twitter still allows the VarySafe account to be active, although they haven't posted anything since the group chat went silent. There are some advisors listed on the VarySafe website, and they have twitter accounts (Geo Oliva Lead Advisor, João Campos Lead Blockchain Advisor), but there is no response or apologies from them at all. Maybe these people don't even exist. Their marketing advisor has a suspended Twitter account, whatever good that is. But the only warnings seem to come from Telegram where VarySafe is currently listed as potential scams.
Will this be my last airdrop participation event? Heck no! I have already received so much from projects that actually are transparent and honest. Airdrops will remain a central feature of the cryptocurrency space for new projects to instill excitement by creating incentives for people to own the coin. Sign me up, I will try every airdrop that doesn't require me to purchase a digital asset beforehand. Remember to always do your own research.
As promised, here are some life free Airdrops that you can try for your own: https://coinmarketcap.com/airdrop. Happy HODLing and looking forward to being your neighbor on the moon.
