Back before the market went to shit... what was that? A month ago? Seems like longer. Time flies when you're getting wrecked. In any case. Back in say March and April when we were all riding high I started getting a bit generous with my crypto holdings. Rather than try to talk to people about crypto I would just give them ETH or LTC after they downloaded Metamask or Trust Wallet onto their phone. This process was illuminating.
The first lesson I learned in giving away free crypto is that, like many things, it always takes a lot longer than you think it will. I gave a little money away to half a dozen people. Each time I had them:
- download the app
- write down the seed password
- receive crypto from my wallet
Each one of these steps takes time. You wouldn't think it takes that long but it's a lot longer than it needs to be, and more complicated as well. The next time the market is doing well and I feel like dishing out these custom airdrops once again, I'm going to employ a new strategy.
So the new plan is to eliminate the waiting caused by sending LTC from my wallet to theirs. This is the most anticlimactic and unnecessary part of the entire interchange. It often takes minutes when I want it to be happening instantly. As soon as they type in that 12 word seed their needs to be money on their phone. No waiting, no bullshit.
I will accomplish this by printing out custom pre-loaded business cards that have the seed written on them already. Each one will have a small amount that's already been sent to it in advance. Say 0.1 LTC. Hopefully by then 0.1 LTC will be a lot more than it is today.
Upon further inspection, it appears I can buy these scratch off stickers for super cheap... $5 for 150? lol what? I can put these stickers over the keys so they can't be read unless the coating is scratched off. This gives it more of an airdrop feel like the person won on a small payout on a lottery ticket. I think the scratch-off is a nice touch that will really resonate with no-coiners.
Subsidies?
This really got me to thinking: what if this whole mega-bull run works out, and I do end up giving away a tiny bit of crypto to a couple dozen people? What should we do if this model actually works and gets a bunch of random newbies excited to participate in this emergent economy?
Clearly we should socialize the method in order to make it profitable for the network.
Oh no! Socialism! Run! It's the devil!
The only reason why socialism fails is because there are people in charge of it that fail. Just like all aspects: power corrupts. Obviously it's a tough sell to get users on Hive or wherever else to just give money away to randoms. While that strategy of altruistic airdrops probably would be extremely profitable to the network at large, it's just not possible to get everyone on board with giving their money away (unless it's through a tricky mechanic like upvotes/curation/downvotes).
Luckily, Hive already has a way to fund projects like this for exactly these reasons. The dev fund exists to build value where none could exist otherwise. When the value being built can not be captured by the agent making it a reality, we use the dev fund to allocate resources to trustworthy individuals in the hopes that they bring in more value to the network than they take. So far it is yet to be seen if that is actually happening but I'm hopeful for the long term.
In any case: imagine it.
Being able to hand out custom airdrop cards to new users as a marketing tactic. Yeah, people love "free" money, even if it's a tiny amount, and we should consider these airdrops as more of a job (learning how to claim the money and interact with the network) rather than just giving value away. It is worth it to pay people to learn how to connect an exchange to their bank account and cash out. A lot of people have heard about Bitcoin these days. Mainstream adoption is right around the corner. Soon™
Seriously, I've only done this half a dozen times, but random people are flabbergasted by getting airdropped free money on the spot and having it exist on their phone. A magic string of 12 words allows this to work. Think about how crazy that is to someone who's never interacted with crypto before. They download and app, type in the 12 words on the card and bam... there's money in their account. So weird.
Of course this all raises a lot of questions like: who do you trust to distribute the money rather than stealing the airdrops themselves? How do you get users on Hive if you're airdropping Litecoin? How do you airdrop Hive if you don't know in advance what the user name should be? Yada yada yada. Details.
The truly important part of this process is getting people involved who would otherwise not participate. Crypto tokenomics have shown time and time again that giving away money actually increases the value of the network. It's a business model that the legacy economy could never ever hope to copy in their wildest dreams. There are many things like this in crypto that leave the competition in the dust wondering what just happened. Airdrops are a big one. They are the ultimate loss-leaders.
Conclusion
By giving away crypto to no-coiners it essentially forces them to learn and interact with this emergent economy. They think they are getting free money, and they are excited about it, but in reality they have actually been offered a job. We can pay people to learn and participate in the economy for the first time, and that value should easily more than pay for itself in the long run.
Again, this entire concept is in the extreme early testing phases. I have yet to give anyone crypto by preloading money onto a 12-word seed phrase, but I'm 99% sure this is the way to go. More on this at the end of the year when I'm a multi-millionaire :D