With no real markets or user base, the first wave of cryptocurrencies needed a way to spread. The answer was simple: give the coins away.
Faucets, airdrops and oddball promotions put tokens into people’s hands for free. Now, many of those giveaways rank among some of the most valuable windfalls in financial history.
From gaming tournaments to email signups, early crypto projects found creative ways to distribute their tokens. Finder.com shares some of the most famous giveaways and what they’d be worth if you’d held onto them.
In February 2011, a StarCraft gaming tournament offered 25 bitcoin for placing 5th through 8th place. Back then, bitcoin was worth around $0.87 a piece, totaling a prize of around $21.75 at the time. Today, those coins would be worth over $2.8 million.
What did first place receive? $500.
In 2013, Ripple sent out 1,000 XRP to 25,000 users who had signed up for its mailing list. At the time, each coin was worth around $0.005, so the giveaway totaled about $5. At its all-time high in 2018, XRP reached $3.65, bringing the giveaway’s worth up to around $3,650.
Today, XRP trades around $2.99, so if you had received the original giveaway and held your coins, you’d have around $2,990. Not a bad turnaround for just submitting your email.
A crypto airdrop of 282.64 DCR was awarded to 2,972 people in 2016, in lieu of an initial coin offering (ICO). In total, over 840,000 DCR were given away, which would be worth over $13 million today.
At its peak in 2021, DCR’s value was just over $250, meaning each airdrop would have been worth more than $70,000 at its peak.
When Dogecoin launched in 2013, faucets and tipping bots on Reddit showered users with hundreds or even thousands of DOGE. It was a joke currency worth fractions of a penny — or to be precise, $0.00056 at launch.
By 2021, 1,000 DOGE was worth over $700, and billions had been given away, making it one of the most valuable “worthless” distributions in hindsight. Turns out that commenting on social media isn’t always a waste of time.
In 2016, Stellar ran one of the largest crypto giveaways in history. Its first distribution program gifted 19 billion XLM to Bitcoin holders. In 2017, it distributed 16 billion more, for a total of 35 billion XLM sent to users.
Back then, Lumens were almost worthless. At their 2018 peak, they were worth $0.94 each, meaning the grand total for both drops would have been valued at approximately $32.9 billion.
In 2010, developer Gavin Andresen set up the first Bitcoin “faucet,” handing out 5 BTC to anyone who solved a CAPTCHA. At the time, it was worth pennies — basically free internet money.
Today, five bitcoin are worth over $500,000, and the worth just keeps growing. The faucet gave away nearly 20,000 BTC in total, an amount totaling over $1.2 billion by today’s standards.
For comparison, El Salvador’s entire bitcoin reserves, currently holding 6,237 BTC, are only worth $760 million.
In any cryptocurrency’s early days, most projects have no users and no value. Giveaways, airdrops and the like are a way for developers to drum up social media hype and new interest.
Giving away free crypto is typically cheaper than traditional marketing and revolves around one of crypto’s core components — decentralized ownership. Plus, if thousands of people are holding the coin, it comes across less like a scam and more like a potential investment.
In short, free tokens turn curiosity into a community.
Crypto giveaways started as a way to get projects off the ground, but they ended up creating some of the most valuable windfalls in financial history.
These days, most airdrops are tied to using a platform or holding certain coins, and the “free billions” era is long gone. But the stories of those early giveaways remain a reminder that in crypto, even the smallest amounts can grow into something massive.
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