Ahhhh... I had sort of missed the crowdsales from KuCoin, Binance, and CoinList... sure, you are behind the private sales and the VCs, but there was always something quite exciting about getting some early exposure on some pretty nice projects! And it was always definitely less risky and random than the ones that you would find on-chain. Perhaps less lucrative, but I'm more for risk minimisation than looking for that 1000x bet.

Part of the excitement of the IEOs involve the different ways that the exchanges handle the sale. KuCoin has lotteries and time-windowed staking... the lotteries are weighted by volume or holdings, and it is sort of a wait and see sort of thing, whilst the time windowed staking (Burning Drops) are a countdown to rapidly hammer that subscribe button... whilst seeing the network get overloaded by requests! It is sort of hilarious, and if you get in on that 10 second window at the start... then you are sitting pretty on dropped tokens in exchange for a lock-up (no spend). More recently, they added a captcha and other speedbumps to hamper the bots and the farms... which actually has been great! It extends the window out to a few minutes, which is more manageable to compete within for a single human.

Meanwhile, Binance has the Launchpools which are staked drops... and the Launchpad, which is a subscription event. Both of these are decent if you have a stash of BNB, as these are weighted according to the committed BNB... so, not for everyone... but no spend for the Launchpools, and still worthwhile for the Luanchpads if you temper your expectations of what you will get!

The CoinList ones are sort of my favourite... not for the returns, but because I was an early subscriber to their sales... which means that I often get put in a priority queue. It is a queued event... and the gaming of the queues has now been relatively well fixed... I think, well, at least for me!

The poop part of the CoinList sales are the hours in which the happen. They used to be great in Europe... but on the other side of the planet, they are happening in the middle of the night. So, that means sleeping on the couch and setting an alarm for the middle of the night and blearily waiting in the queue for the purchase spot. Thankfully, the priority queue does mean that I will most likely get a spot... there is nothing worse than waking up and then seeing about 100k people in front of you!

Of course, the most fun comes when the token or project is listed... setting a calender reminder for the event... planning out your dump and moonbag plan... and then watching the counter tick down, and then GO GO GO! It is really quite exhilarating... and there have been times that my game plan wasn't optimal (I could have made more...), but then others when it performed better than expected. You never know... but if you don't regret and you make back at LEAST your invested principal then it doesn't really matter! A bit of a adrenaline rush!

I can also be found cross-posting at:
Hive
Steem
Publish0x

Handy Crypto Tools

Ledger Nano S/X: Keep your crypto safe and offline with the leading hardware wallet provider. Not your keys, not your crypto!
Binance: My first choice of centralised exchange, featuring a wide variety of crypto and savings products.
WooX: The centralised version of WooFi. Stake WOO for fee-free trades and free withdrawals!
GMX.io: Decentralised perpetual futures trading on Arbitrum!
Coinbase: If you need a regulated and safe environment to trade, this is the first exchange for most newcomers!
Crypto.com: Mixed feelings, but they have the BEST looking VISA debit card in existence! Seriously, it is beautiful!
CoinList: Access to early investor and crowdsale of vetted and reserached projects.
Cointracking: Automated or manual tracking of crypto for accounting and taxation reports.