Classic Blur Airdrop Whale Sybil Campaign
Performance of Past Airdrops Playbook & Airdrop Taxes - Yuck
Theo Delarosa
February 15, 2023
🗓 Daily Bullets - Wednesday, February 15th
Today’s newsletter is 1001 words. A cool 5 minute read.
Crypto is rebounding - after a general slide in the market over the past week, some life is trickling back into the market. The Blur airdrop has captured most of the recent attention of market participants and we’ve shrugged off the hotter than anticipated CPI. Next macro date to keep in mind is FOMC on March 21-22. In the meantime, there’s lots to consider on the topic of airdrops today.
Today we’re looking at:
- 🪂 Blur Whale Sybil Campaign? - Classic
- 🐳 Performance of Past Airdrops Playbook
- 🤢 Airdrops and Taxes - Yuck
🪂 Blur Whale Sybil Campaign? - Classic
Quick Take: NFT marketplace Blur’s token airdrop has landed and we’re analyzing who got what. Unsurprisingly, it looks like many were able to successfully game the system.
Key Details:
- The top trader claimed over 3.2M BLUR tokens valued ~ $1.93M
- Top wallet was a new wallet created less than three months ago
- Top 3 wallets each claimed at least $1.5M worth of tokens
- Trading activity from the wallets suggests wash trading or at least a coordinated effort to game the Blur trading model
- Second-highest and third-highest claimant show numerous interactions with the top wallet
- Other top claimants in the Blur airdrop include well-known collectors and social media personalities
Significance: Whales gaming the system is nothing new and there is often deep complexity in how these players professionally operate. Just take a look at the lengths they go to! Operating hundreds of different wallets. Stay aware of your counterparties.
The Coordination involved in sybiling Airdrops:
1/ Certain individuals are running operations sybilling crypto projects and netting upwards of $500k for each big airdrop.
I've talked with a whale who made millions of industrial farming airdrops
Here are the main takeaways
— Auri 🔮 (@Auri_0x)
Oct 24, 2022
The struggles of an airdrop farmer:
there isnt a way to skip the loading animation on blur's site, and i dont know how to access the merkle proof to claim from contract, so i have to just sit here and watch this unboxing animation hundreds of times across wallets
— Sisyphus (@0xSisyphus)
Feb 14, 2023
Go Deeper: 1st
🐳 Performance of Past Airdrops Playbook
Backstory: OP, APE, APT, DYDX, LOOKS and now BLUR. There have been many high profile airdrops. What’s the best way to play them?
Looking at some past performance to (gasp) try and infer future performance. We can see that most airdrops tend to have a similar dump and pump behavior.
Chart of Past Drops:
Blur has an uphill battle. Token airdrop performance has been very poor.
h/t @blockworksres
— Tom Dunleavy (@dunleavy89)
Feb 15, 2023
NFT Strategy Playbook: pump, dump and then liquidity from airdrops eventually flows into NFTs
The $BLUR airdrop is going to print millions
and the smartest traders will come out on top
Here's your 3-step game plan to maximize this opportunity 🧵
— Hunter Solaire ᵍᵐ (Right-of-Game) (@huntersolaire_)
Feb 13, 2023
Valuation Playbook: Market Cap comparison with competitors to determine if over or undervalued
The @blur_io airdrop is coming in 2 days.
Should you dump, should you hodl or even buy more?
Here is my playbook 🧵👇
(1/8)
— Bagman (@0xBagman)
Feb 12, 2023
Takeaway: Watch out for an initial pump following the days after an airdrop and that characteristic dump. However we also have examples such as Aptos, OP and Canto who managed to reach all time highs months after their initial dump.
Go Deeper: 1st
🤢 Airdrops and Taxes - Yuck
The Ugly Truth: airdrops are taxed as income when you receive them - then you also have to consider long-term and short-term capital gains taxes on top of that! Fun…
Significance: This can really mess up your plans because let’s say you receive a sizable airdrop and plan on selling it for more at a later time, but the market moves against you and the value of your airdrop drops. Well unfortunately you are still liable for the original amount when you received it!
Should you sell a portion to cover your tax liability? Then there’s also confusion on what the “fair market value” of an airdrop is, especially when you consider all the volatility around drops.
Some strategies you could consider include delaying when you claim your airdrop (unless it’s automatically airdropped to your wallet) but at the end of the day, there’s no escaping taxes for long.
Token Tax Professionals:
gm $blur claimers
Claims are taxable as ordinary income.
Generally speaking, best practice is to sell 1/3 on claim day to cover the liability.
If you claim today and the price drops 90% by year end, you still owe taxes at todays price.
— TokenTax (@TokenTax)
Feb 14, 2023
Brutal Math:
fyi airdrops are income in the US
if you get airdropped $100k at $4 coin price and it immediately goes sub $1, you still have to report $100k income on your tax return regardless of what you do with it post airdrop
🫡
— blockgraze (@blockgraze)
Feb 14, 2023
✅ Daily Bullets
- USDC issuer Circle denied rumors that it received a "Wells Notice" over its dollar-pegged stablecoin
- Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network proposes a sale and restructuring to NovaWulf Digital Management
- China Telecom partnered with Conflux to develop Blockchain-enabled SIM cards - BSIM
- Arrest warrant issued for former CEO of Tmon, a Korean e-commerce platform, for promoting Terra
- Square Enix will launch its upcoming NFT-based game Symbiogensis on Polygon
- Napster is buying music startup Mint Songs in Web3 push
- Lido Finance and Optimism new 1M OP token incentive grant program aims to migrate liquid stakers
- The Graph can access The Graph Network on Arbitrum
- Lido DAO proposals to sell or stake $30M worth of ETH
- Introducing yGenius - a new way to find out anything about Yearn using AI
- Celsius seeks to recover millions from Mashinsky and other former executives
- Hub71, Abu Dhabi's tech ecosystem, has started a new $2B Web3 initiative
- Amazon’s Alexa Fund led a $20M Series A-4 funding round for the 3D character studio Superplastic
- Alongside, a crypto index-focused platform, closed an $11M seed round led by a16z
- Cosmos ecosystem to launch interchain NFTs via $270K incentivized testnet
- RNDR Distributions and Unlocks update and clarification
- Ethereum Foundation - Layer 2 Community Grants Winners
📊 Market Dashboard
- 📈 Gainers:
- AHT: Knowledge Q&A Platform
- FLOKI: Dog Meme Coin Based on Elon Musk's Dog
- CFX: Partnered with Chinese 2nd Largest Wireless Carrier
- 📉 Losers:
- BLUR: NFT Marketplace - launch hype caused spike up to $5
- CORE: DeFi Protocol
- LOOKS: NFT Marketplace
Chart of the Day - ETH Supply on Exchanges
- How’s the amount of ETH that’s being held on exchanges? January seemed to find a bottom before a huge outflow starting on February 10th pushed down the balance to new lows. Less selling pressure is good but it also underscores uncertainty and a lack of trust in the space
📚Research/Reads
- Stablecoins are worth the risk | Dollar Stablecoins Are Great for Users and the US Government - source
- Fueled by Blur | Emerging Explorations: NFTFI Derivatives Track and Project Inventory - source
- Coinbase Report | Ether Selling Pressure Should Be Fairly Limited Around the Shanghai Fork Upgrade - source
- Layer 2 rollups now see more transaction volume than Ethereum’s main network | Arbitrum Surges - source
- DeFi swaps out one set of risks for another | DeFi can’t match its promise until it confronts its problems - source
- Roles, advantages, who & what | What are the applications of NFTs in supply chains? - source
🎁 Bonus - Did an overexcited intern leak the $LENS airdrop?
More free money coming your way? Keep an eye out.
This has been deleted now, but the $LENS airdrop is only a matter of time it seems... 🌱
— Aylo (@alpha_pls)
Feb 14, 2023