Airdrop Alert is the world’s first website for airdrops, but airdrops existed prior to our start. What happened to the first crypto airdrop in history? More importantly, who did it?
Auroracoin – The first crypto airdrop ever!
Auroracoin, the “cryptocurrency for Iceland”, distributed Auroracoins to the country’s citizens in March 2014.
The distribution, which is the very first airdrop, sends 50% of the total Auroracoins to the country’s citizens. To the Icelandic residents that entered their permanent resident ID received 31.8 AUR
To be precise, on March 25th the Icelandic citizens received their tokens.
Why did it happen?
Since the economy crisis of 2008, the Icelandic people had been looking for ways to exit the Icelandic krona.
Hlynur Þór Björnsson, board member of the Auraráð foundation, said to Cointelegraph:
Auroracoin came into the picture in 2014 with a fresh idea. Replace the Icelandic krona with a cryptocurrency.
Auroracoin was designed to change the traditional fiat currency financial system in the country.
Cryptocurrency was seen as an opportunity for Icelanders to free themselves from currency controls and government debasement of the currency.
As a geographically based virtual currency, an Airdrop was the best solution to distribute to the citizens of Iceland.
What happened after airdrop distribution?
Auroracoin price drop 2014
There was an “oops” moment.
The devaluation happened over a few months. Over the first few days it fell over 50%.
Possibly, this was the very first crypto airdrop pump and dump!
Auroracoin marketcap 2014
In as short as 6 months, the Icelandic coin lost their entire marketcap. The project conclusion: “failure”.
Luckily the first crypto airdrop disappointing result, did not effect the future of airdrops.
In the end
Free cryptocurrency, airdrops, AirdropAlert
Even though the first crypto giveaway took place in 2014, it still took 3 years for the first airdrop website to be launched: AirdropAlert.com
Over the past years projects have experimented with the concept of airdrops. Therefor, we recapped the history of airdrops from 2017 till 2019 in an earlier post on the changes from innocent giveaway to a full blown marketing strategy.
Today we see ICO’s, dApp’s and established coins conduct airdrops for user acquisitions, including several large brand names like BitTorrent and Stellar. Additionally we see new smart devices becoming airdrop friendly, like the Samsung S10.
The future looks bright my fellow airdrop hunters!
To celebrate the 5 year anniversary of the first airdrop, we’re giving away free HYPE tokens.
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Airdrops & Bounties – The Key difference ← P R E V I O U S
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