I know this is a blog about NFTs but I thought I would indulge you in a bit of mythology, mixing Cryptozoology with Cryptocurrency.
Cryptozoology is a well established field that looks to prove the existence of some of the most famous creatures we all know and love, like the Loch Ness Monster, the story has been around for decades. Nessie is claimed to have been spotted by hundreds of people describing something very similar and yet despite the whole Loch being scanned there has never been any evidence it even exists.
We all know about Bigfoot, the big hairy guy that walks around the forests of North America looking for people with shaky hands and low quality cameras. Is it a lost relic of evolution or a guy in a costume? Who knows! One thing is for sure, Bigfoot is rarely ever spotted, even in the few cases it appears on video you're still not convinced it's genuine.
Which leads us to the latest Cryptid to materialise, a mysterious creature that's so rare it's still not really accepted...the Twitter Giveaway Winner.
Everyday I see an overwhelming amount of giveaways on my Twitter feed, you probably do too. Many people giving away Apes, Cats, Toadz, literally anything that is popular suddenly becomes the prize of the day. All you have to do is retweet and follow, maybe even tag a few friends for good measure, it's all very simple, too simple.
Some of these giveaway posts attract thousands of interactions, even tens of thousands as everyday people try their luck at winning something valuable. Before the great MekaVerse collapse they were regularly offered as prizes but usually it's Bored Apes or other "Blue Chip" NFTs. So who are the winners? Do you follow up with the announcement and check out the winner? Over the last week I've kept a close eye on around 20 giveaways to see what the outcome was and surprisingly, or not, the result was not great. Blue checks and official accounts were as expected, winners revealed and prizes distributed. The remaining giveaways were a swamp, no reveals, no prizes, sometimes even offering the same prize out the day after the original giveaway was supposed to have ended. They are easy to spot and before taking part you should consider if that person is likely to give you something worth tens of thousands of dollars for free.
Fortunately I've seen numerous people calling out fake BAYC giveaways where people are claiming to offer prizes they don't own, yet they still get thousands of interactions from relentless optimists. In some cases new projects even fix the giveaway so people connected to the project win, I can't confirm but I heard this happened with a couple of VERY hyped projects in the last couple of months, which if true should be a huge red flag for anyone looking to buy.
Recently Shiba Inu has pumped and created thousands of potential millionaires and with the new attention comes the influx of virtual vultures, circling waiting to feed off the corpse of social interactions. They're just as bad as the "I've got 1 ETH to spend, drop your art below" people.
Despite what I say there obviously are real giveaways in the community, I've won two myself. Both of these were directly from the official accounts of the project/artists, one win was a rare Lil' Boomie and the other was a PunkScape and Metti Landscape. There are few things that compare to winning something, especially when many people enter and the odds are small, I had a 1 in 172 chance of winning the Pumpametti giveaway and it's always nice to wake up to a notification like that.
I have run giveaways before and obviously they were genuine, every single person that won and provided their wallet address was given their prize, I did have a couple of people claim they never received their prize, which doesn't look great when people are posting on your Twitter. Thankfully due to the beauty of the blockchain I was able to publicly provide the transaction and reassure anyone looking that I wasn't a scam account. I don't know if these people really didn't think they had got their prize or if they were chancers hoping I would send them another one, either way the issue was dealt with.
Giveaways are part of the community, it helps new projects get their work out and drum up some much needed attention, established artists and Twitter accounts do it for the marketing and interactions, there is a huge benefit to giveaways for everyone involved. Sadly, there are too many scammers in this space already and seeing these fake giveaways achieving exactly what they want but not holding up their end of the bargain frustrates me as I consider it a stain on an otherwise straight up community.
So don't be disheartened, my advice would be to stick to giveaways from official pages, whether it's the artist themselves or the developer, even blue check accounts but please please please stop taking part in giveaways from random promo accounts, they are using you and they need starving.
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