Op Ed: Is Airdrop Culture Over?

It was 2021, and Clubhouse had just reached over 1 million users. I logged onto one of those audio rooms for the first time after a friend sent me her referral invite. Six weeks later they were overflowing with crypto degens spewing alpha about the next airdrops to come from hype NFT projects. OpenSea’s website traffic was probably topping CNN. On the day everyone went “to the moon,” CryptoPunks NFTs sold for thousands of ETH, which at the time was worth converting to over $1 million USD.

Generational Wealth

Back in 2020, when I fell down the crypto rabbit hole, it was the height of crypto trading, and people were making a killing, building generational wealth gains that would have been unfathomable with a 9-5. It was the kind of money you use to buy a house, a car, move to Dubai, and live large. A lot of Americans got so rich they actually did move their families to Florida and Puerto Rico and completely reinvent themselves with magical internet money. With NFTs came airdrops. It was part of the crypto experience and arrived when you completed quests like holding a popular NFT, signing up for an early access list, and overall connecting your wallet to a blockchain. 

Back then, airdrops felt like chaos. It was essentially free money raining down if you happened to be in the right Discord, clicked the right buttons, or stayed up late enough chasing clues left from a lengthy whitepaper. They were messy, euphoric, and impossible to explain to anyone outside the crypto bubble. But they worked. One day I got an airdrop for ~$800 for posting on a social media platform that was built on a blockchain. Projects loved rewarding curiosity, conviction, and a certain willingness to wander around their web of crypto stuff without a map. It was risky because your wallet could be drained at any given phishing link, and there was no customer service to call. No FDIC approval. 

Internet Capital Markets

Now, it’s called Internet Capital Markets, and institutional players have arrived and started regulating the entire landscape. Meanwhile, what amazes me is how much NFTs are mentioned very cavalierly on TV shows and in movies and have become synonymous with digital collectibles. And yet, real ones know it was a shiny ticket to the top of the food chain. We won’t ever see gains like we did in 2017/2021 again, which is actually a travesty when you think about it. We'll also be chasing the highs of that time period; 100x gains was crazy work. 

And yet, airdrops are cool again. Not in the spray-and-pray way of the last cycle, but in something quieter and more intentional. The best ones feel like inside jokes—rewards for behavior, participation, and time spent when no one was watching. They signal who actually used the product versus who just traded the narrative. In a market that’s been smoothed, regulated, and institutionalized, the airdrop is one of the last remnants of crypto’s original magic.

As the market levels out and the Museum of Modern Art acquires some of the first NFTs, it begs the question: are NFTs, for art’s sake, back—and being swapped? Maybe the real flex now isn’t the headline sale or the TV mention, but the quiet receipt that proves you were there early enough to earn it.

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. Please do not click on sketchy links! When in doubt, don't connect your wallet or give away your seed phrase to anyone.