Crypto-exposed residents of the United States have lost billions in revenue since 2020 due to geopolitical zone blocking from airdrop participation.
Cryptocurrency projects and enthusiasts view airdrops as a means of rewarding fervent users who have interacted with a protocol. Through pre-determined metrics, new and already existing projects incentivize user engagement with their ecosystems.
While these have changed over time due to the farming trick—a ploy employed by users to pose artificial interaction and earn more rewards—airdrops remain a widely recognized means projects boost community engagement. Meanwhile, US residents have missed major drops since 2020 amid regulatory impediments.
A recent Dragonfly report highlights this disposition and the estimated financial impact on both US residents and the government.
US Residents Lose $1.84B-$2.64B in Airdrop Reward
The report, published on Tuesday, shows that US residents have missed substantial rewards due to their inability to participate in airdrops. For perspective, the US Securities and Exchange Commission clamped down on crypto projects since former chair Gary Gensler took office in 2021, with projects geoblocking US users from airdrop participation in a cautious move.
Meanwhile, the United States has between 18.4 and 52.3 million cryptocurrency users. Interestingly, the geoblocking affected 920,000 and 5.2 million of these monthly active market participants in 2024.
Notably, the Dragonfly report highlighted 11 major airdrops between 2020 and 2024, which dropped a staggering $7.16 billion to over 1.9 million claimants. Some of these projects include 1inch, Uniswap, and EigenLayer, and the average median claim is $4,562 per eligible address.
As a result of the airdrop exclusion, US residents have missed between $1.84 billion and $2.64 billion in potential revenue. Moreover, these figures get larger with CoinGecko’s sample of 21 airdrops, with between $3.49 billion and $5.02 billion in revenue lost.
US Government Not Left Out
The report further indicated that the US government has also lost staggering amounts of revenue. With the $1.84 billion lower band and CoinGecko’s $5.02 billion upper band, an individual tax of $418 million and $1.1 billion and a state tax of $107 million and $284 million would have flowed into the state’s purse had the geoblocking not affected residents.
In total, the US government has lost between $525 million and $1.38 billion in taxes on US residents’ airdrop geoblocking. This adds to the growing number of funds the country has missed out on due to its mismanagement of the opportunities the crypto industry brings.
David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto czar, recently pointed out that the United States missed over $17 billion from the nation’s miscalculated Bitcoin sales.
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