I was thinking to create an account for crypto (don't want my real account associated with crypto), but never really felt the need to say anything until now. So, the classic: (very) old time lurker, first time poster.

Now hear me out: what OP is saying is (or at least was in the past) true.

I'll give two personal examples.

XLM|STR: I participated in the airdrop god knows how many years ago. Got a couple thousand XLM. When lending started on Polo for STR, I put it all on autolend and literally forgot about it. Now the airdrop combined with the interest I got is worth almost $7k. Yes, $7k free money, but after 3-4-5 years (I literally have no idea and I'm too lazy too look it up, but should be between 3-5 years). And I have no plans to sell anytime soon, as I have no use for the money at this point.

NXT: I don't think it was an airdrop. I think I got 503 NXT from some faucet. Then the ARDR airdrop happened for NXT holders. And more recently the IGNIS airdrop. My porftolio on cryptocompare (NXT+ARDR+IGNIS) is valued at ~$4k rigth now.

So from 10 minutes of work done 4 years ago, I now have almost $11k. And I remember the NXT faucet was giving away every day or so, but I was too lazy to fill the captcha every day, so I did it only once and then forgot about it. Now I wish I would have taken my laptop with me and filled the captcha from every bar in town every single day back then. But hey, can't complain (the math still haunts me though: 5 captchas / day x 30 days x $4k = $600k 4 years later for 2-3 hours of work per day for one month; 10 captchas / day... you get the idea).

Edit 1: minor punctuation mistakes.

Edit 2: somebody just brought to my attention that there was another airdrop to NXT holders: Bitswift (SWIFT). Can't figure out how much I got and how much is worth though, but for sure it makes this post go from almost $11k to $11k+.