What the Hell are Airdrop Tokens?

Originally published on Medium. View original.

Major Token Types

The differences between the major crypto token types are important from legal and financial perspectives. I could write a book about them, and you, dear reader, could get an excellent night’s sleep if you tried to read it.

Quick summary.

Utility tokens are very popular. They let you do things, like access a service. In the old days — when Gary Gensler was the industry’s Darth Vader — having a token declared a utility token was the best way to avoid getting in trouble by the SEC. Problem was, the SEC refused to declare any tokens “utility tokens”. Nice.

Security tokens are — surprise! — securities, like stock shares. This means that the buyer / holder expects to derive some sort of financial benefit from them. In the old days, many projects would have loved to register their tokens as securities, but the SEC, chaired by the aforementioned Darth Vader, wouldn’t tell them how, thereby growing their pool of potential victims.

Payment tokens are like money. The great thing about being money is that the SEC can’t regulate you. The bad thing is that the Federal Reserve might try. And if not the Federal Reserve, some other regulators. It’s a harsh environment. Not many tokens fall into this category. Some people think ETH and BTC do. I’ve used BTC to pay for groceries, but never ETH. And some people think BTC should be considered a commodity. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Governance tokens are a big dodge. They’re utility tokens that give you some rights, a bit like security tokens, but THEY AREN’T SECURITY TOKENS GARY! I’m going to stay out of it and let the regulators fight this one out.

NFTs are digital trading cards. Except when they aren’t. I don’t make the rules.

And finally we have hybrid tokens which can be a mixture of the above, or anything else you want. We can also call them undecided tokens.

Airdrop Tokens

Now that you know everything there is to know about token types, you’re almost certainly asking yourself the title of this blog post: “What the hell are Airdrop Token?” Either that or you’ve gone back to your X feed.

Airdrop tokens give you the right to aidrops, i.e., aidrops of other tokens. 🤔

Before Darth Vader was eliminated by his son, I wouldn’t have dared use the word “right”, but it’s a new era. Anyone holding an Airdrop token expects new airdrops in proportion to the number of tokens they hold.

NFTs sometimes play this role, but in a cruder way because they can’t be counted. If you hold an Airdrop NFT (I’m coining the term now) you can expect airdrops, but everyone holding a related NFT will get the same amount. Airdrop tokens can be counted, so airdrop amounts will depend on the number of tokens held.

Airdrop Token Example

A few weeks ago, in an unwell state, I decided to mint an Aidrop token on pump.fun: $ATPM.

ATPM stands for “All the President’s Men”. The creator of this Airdrop token, me, promised to mint a token for every confirmed member of Trump’s Cabinet and Airdrop those tokens to holders of $ATPM, in proportion to the number of tokens in their wallet. For a longer explanation check out the project’s microsite hosted by TrueTribe.

To date about 120 wallets hold $ATPM. Holdings range from a few million to a few hundred. Each time I mint a new Cabinet token, $HEGSETH for example, I airdrop tokens to all the $ATPM holders. A wallet with 3MM $ATPMs got 3MM $HEGSETH; a wallet with 2K $ATPMs got 2K $HEGSETH; etc.

Needless to say, I use TrueTribe to make these token distributions. Eating my own dog food. 🦴

$TRIBE

TrueTribe will soon be launching its very own Airdrop token: $TRIBE. You can read about it here.

If you know about TrueTribe you know that we make it easy to distribute tokens. We get paid by taking a percentage of the tokens we Airdrop. Those payments go to our treasury.

After we launch $TRIBE, a percentage of those treasury tokens will automatically be dropped to $TRIBE holders. As long as projects airdrop using TrueTribe, $TRIBE holders will be rewarded with our customers’ tokens. 🤯

If you think it’s a good idea to own $TRIBE, you’re right. Even though we haven’t launched it yet, there are 3 ways you can prepare.

Complete the quests on the TrueTribe microsite.
Once we launch, you’ll get a $TRIBE airdrop.
Do something useful for the community, i.e., writing a blog post, promoting us, etc.
DM me on Telegram or X to work something out.
Watch the TrueTribe Telegram channel to get a heads up about our fair launch. The sooner you buy, the cheaper the tokens!

$TRIBE will be the first serious Airdrop token. There will be others of course, but you don’t want to miss holding the OG.

Useful Links

TrueTribe

X: https://x.com/TrueTribe_xyz
Discord: https://discord.gg/JEQ2Ks9EHr
Telegram: https://t.me/TrueTribe_xyz

Personal

X: https://x.com/PRMurphy
Telegram: https://t.me/prmurphy

What the Hell are Airdrop Tokens? was originally published in TrueTribe on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.