The largest airdrop recipient on Friend.tech has sold all his tokens just hours after the airdrop creating concerns over the token’s price action

Just hours after the Friend.tech airdrop went live on May 3, the largest whale, known as “Murphys1d” sold over 55,000 of the newly-issued Friend tokens, blockchain data shows.

Beyond the sell-off, some users were unable to claim their airdrop, including crypto investor Luke Martin, who wrote in a May 3 X post:

“Watching the value of my airdrop go from 7 figures to 5 figures in the span of 2 hours while I keep refreshing the page trying to claim....still can't claim. Adds insult to injury.”

Martin also added that the whale wallet seems to be linked to a fake X account with no activity, which enabled it to farm over 500.000 Friend.tech points risk-free.

The new Friend.tech (FRIEND) token fell over 52.5% since launch, from $3.26 to just $1.32 as of 9:50 am UTC. The token’s price fell over 32% within the last hour, according to CoinGecko data.

While the selling by the largest Friend.tech whale may impact the market in the short term, it doesn’t necessarily dictate a token’s long-term trajectory, according to Anndy Lian, intergovernmental blockchain expert and author of NFT: From Zero to Hero. Lian told Cointelegraph:

“While it might cause a short-term dip in price due to increased supply and potential panic selling, it doesn’t always mean a long-term downtrend. To me, it is a good thing… The sell-off would mean a more decentralized distribution of tokens. A broader distribution reduces the risk of a single entity having excessive control over the project.”

However, Lian noted that the token’s value will mainly be reliant on the community’s trust in Friend.tech and how the team manages the current situation.

Related: LayerZero cross-chain interoperability protocol completes first airdrop snapshot

Airdrop farmers continue to plague token launches

The mysterious Friend.tech whale is another example of a professional airdrop farmer (squatter), who interacts with emerging protocols solely for the airdrop rewards, often with multiple wallets to compound rewards.

The main issue with airdrop farmers is that they tend to market sell all their airdropped tokens creating significant sell pressure resultingin more panic selling by legitimate protocol users.

An example of this came at the end of April, when the Omni Network’s OMNI token fell 55% in less than 18 hours following its airdrop, losing over half of its market capitalization.

In March 2023, it was revealed that airdrop hunters consolidated $3.3 million worth of tokens from Arbitrum’s ARB airdrop from 1,496 wallets into just two wallets they had controlled.

Related: ‘Mr. 100’ buys the Bitcoin dip for the first time since halving — Is the BTC bottom in?