Imagine thinking an airdrop you recently claimed had no value yet after it was added to your usual DEX without any price. No marketing info, no news about where to deploy it, nothing...

Then imagine forgetting about it for a few days, waking up on 4 hours of sleep to see a text message of a general Reddit crypto airdrop link. So what? Same thing I thought as my hazy eyes scrolled through the link to appease my friend, only to catch a random comment on the bottom of the page saying that my airdrop above was MASSIVE.

Lastly, imagine me yawning to check a brand new DEX I wasn't aware of to see that my tokens were worth $23,500 at the time!  While this is a huge gift, I was actually late to the party to miss much higher prices mentioned below. Regardless, once I realized that I wasn't dreaming, any thoughts of snoozing were revoked.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/21/77/4c/21774c49405bbaf6b2255da1a74bdfa7.gif
[](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/21/77/4c/21774c49405bbaf6b2255da1a74bdfa7.gif)

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#### So, what just happened?!
####
I fear that I've become too desensitized to crypto prices as I actually wasn't as excited about this as I should've been. I was mostly confused and skeptical that this was too good to be true. With 5+ years of crypto tenure, I've trained myself to largely ignore crypto prices and focus on growing passive crypto income to stay level. If I sound like a monster, I was also still half asleep.

After connecting my wallet and executing a test trade into $20 worth of a stable coin, I realized that this was no joke. There was lots of liquidity, no slippage, and cheap fees.

While trying to familiarize myself with this token's brand new pricing history, which wasn't easy to find, I realized that my tokens were worth about $28,000 two days before. After digging more after on another price chart with a broader date range, I saw that they actually peaked at **$33,000** three days before I figured things out. ARRGGHH. I can't complain since I was fortunate to be aware of it at all from that text since very little news is out on this coin. There was literally almost no info out there and YouTube influencers who may have offered intel virtually all completely snoozed on it.


#### Taking Action:
####
I didn't want to act in haste without know what the heck this all was, so I contacted friends who might've been eligible to alert them. They all missed the snapshot date. I then sold slightly over $5,000 into a stable coin at a decent price to lock something in. Definitely real. 

Despite its price being down a bit from the recent peak, I felt it best to lock something of that proportion in as the current price could easily evaporate. No staking or LP yield opportunities were available yet, so there was little reason to keep all of these funds in a foreign token. I normally hold airdrops because I'm educated on them in advance, but this one was very vague and off the map. Despite my inclination to ultimately offer liquidity for passive ROI and to avoid realizing taxes, derisking felt like the right move.

Since then, I've gotten acclimated to the token's Discord, the new DEX I'm able to sell it on, streaming pricing charts thanks to a validator's custom site, and made two more swaps. These swaps were done at peak price/ratio spikes to efficiently build my core holdings of two main tokens that are staples for drops in this ecosystem. They're now staked and earning nice APR, but my goal was to boost upcoming airdrops. Since I sold decent chunks of each, I actually made a second set of addresses for each. I feel that the exposure to get two airdrops versus higher airdrops from one account will be a wiser move over time. I'm not going to game the system here, but it's smart to split up tokens to not have them all in the same addresses, respectively.

I've still got more than half the airdrop tokens in play and am monitoring the prices/overall market to make my next move. I missed my best opportunity during a nap yesterday, but I couldn't stay awake, fearing that I'd be too tired to make good decisions. Oh well. Murphy's Law 101. 

Sadly, the Discord group is very underwhelming and full of lame messages from those obsessed with price projections and calling sellers "paper hands." While the concept of the token and its future may be bright, I'm not impressed by the current holders I've witnessed so far. While I shouldn't weigh this too much, it doesn't feel like a community I'd be happy interacting with often. 

> The craziest part is that I got 9% of my overall airdrop from my staked balance, a requirement worth about $250 at the time. I got 91% of my airdrop as a BONUS just for making one governance vote on-chain. Now that's unbelievable to me, but I did my homework to qualify. Over $22,000 for one proposal vote!

As the price of these tokens has been ranging between $1,960-$2,400 over the last 1.5 days (currently steady around $2,100 now, I'll consider myself half lucky for this bonus, but also half prepared for the foresight to engage in new chains most aren't doing the legwork to adopt early. Just when it couldn't be more generous, there were actually additional bonus tokens given to those who voted on all proposals (over $10K there), but I missed a few over the months. I can't fault myself for that because there was no way I could've known, or expected such a large reward. You can bet that I'm going to be voting all over now across all of the chains I'm involved in where the airdrops stem from.

General basics on coin are that it's deflationary and that all unclaimed tokens will be burned in a few weeks to finalize the supply. Part of me wants to keep some exposure to see how things pan out after that time, especially as some liquidity pools should be up by then. I don't know where the rewards would come from, but perhaps the other token in the pool this one lives on.

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#### What to do with the rest?
####
> First, I'd like to thank the Crypto Gods.

I have no attachment to my remaining balance, but just don't want to rush the selling process. I definitely want to further derisk as so much of this valuation appears to be based on speculation of decentralized value and scarcity. 

I'm planning to put some into Splinterlands assets, a few Gala Games NFTs, and the rest into BTC. Perhaps I'll also stack on to an ALT coin or two, but I personally prefer locking up more BTC for the long haul. 

I'm somewhat hesitant to sell much more after this dip since the sell pressure may subside to recover as pool incentives should become more apparent soon. I'll probably keep 20-25% for the mid-term just in case.

I'm not going to disclose what this token is, but it's real, and I've allocated myself some as a stable coin gift. If the token magically disappears tomorrow as fast as it came, or the tokens I swapped it for drop with the market, I want something firm to show for it. The real test is if I'll actually send it to my bank and not put it on Anchor at 19.5% APR. I do need some new baseball gear for the upcoming season and can put it toward rent. 

As I've barely sold anything over the years, I don't enjoy taking anything out of crypto. However, sometimes you have to force yourself to break these self-imposed restrictions and benefit in real life a bit.

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#### What's The Moral Of The Story?
####
- Proactively find airdrops and meet/exceed eligibility requirements ASAP. Some airdrops have fixed dates, while others are vague. Some chains are very generous if you seek them out.
- If you're clueless on airdrops, there are plenty of resources that aggregate confirmed and rumored drops on notable chains. Google away or surf Twitter/Reddit. I've done all the digging and am getting a nice stream of them now with a full pipeline.
- Sometimes airdrops are complete surprises, i.e., the Uniswap drop years ago I never thought I'd top. Keep yourself eligible by keeping tokens staked where they should be. 
- Airdrops often build off each other, so hold or utilize a decent portion of them upon claim to increase future exposure. Incentives are also highest at the onset to retain liquidity and secure the chain.
- Get involved in governance via proposal voting on chains where airdrops are stemming from. You never know what type of boost or massive boost that might provide later. ^Exhibit A.
- Staking with validators that aren't in the top 10 or 20 sometimes gives additional bonuses for helping to decentralize networks. Don't stake with exchanges since they're usually skipped.
- Some validators actually may give favorable airdrop boosts for tokens they mint and airdrop if you've stake to them on other projects, so look for announcements or hints on social media. They're all over if you put the effort in.

Any airdrop glory yourself? 

Thanks for reading,
@steemmatt