How to Never Miss an Airdrop, Hard Fork, Swap or Block Halving

In a rapidly evolving industry like cryptocurrencies there’s so much going on that keeping up can be tough. Not only do you need to follow the prices that move up and down in double digit percentage moves, sometimes in a matter of minutes, but you also have to look at what makes them move like that. There are so many events and upgrades going on that without the proper tools it’s impossible to keep up.

However, with the right tools and the right knowledge a growing industry like this provides great opportunities. Be the first one to know about any major upgrades or ICOs and there’s a chance that you’ll make big bucks. We’ve seen how many cryptos tend to act in anticipation of a major update and those strong moves upwards are great place to be if you prefer some swing trading or day trading. But even if you aren't interested in trading the news it’s extremely important to know what’s going on since major upgrades to our biggest crypto Bitcoin and Ethereum can have a significant impact on the whole market. So, what are these tools that help you keep up with crypto markets? Let's have a look and see.

1. Read the News

Newspapers, radios, television and now the web. These are all mediums used by news sites to provide us with everything going on in the world. With the internet we have gotten more news sites since publishing on the internet nowadays is so easy. We have gotten more concentrated sites which only focus on one particular topic, and in our case, we want those focused on cryptocurrencies.

Now, reading these big news sites won’t necessarily provide you with the best trading opportunities, since there is a saying that once it’s covered in the news it’s too late. However, it doesn’t take away the fact that in the long run you’ll benefit from the knowledge you get. News sites do cover all of the major events going which you’ll be needing to know in order to manage your portfolio correctly. If you look at the top news sites for cryptocurrencies, I assure you that 99% of all major events surrounding at least the top 10 cryptos will be covered there.

Two news sites I use for my daily crypto news are Cointelegraph and Coindesk. Both of them provide kind of the same information but I feel like Coindesk has taken a more traditional media view while Cointelegraph also includes price predictions and more “speculative” news. Coindesk recently upgraded their whole webpage and it’s currently in beta mode. Their new interface makes it easy to sort through topics, so you’ll find what you’re looking for. For example, in the current stake keeping up with policy changes is extremely important when every day, regulators are debating on what to do with cryptocurrencies. Another notable site which I personally use more rarely but heard good things about is Decrypt. I’m also sure that there are tons of good sites out there which are equally as good as those I mentioned here. However, where should you go if you need the most accurate information as soon as possible?

Those who are real news hounds might find news aggregator sites are extremely useful. These news aggregators pull together all the news from all over the web. Two popular crypto focused news aggregators are Cryptonews.net and Cryptopanic.com.

2. CoinMarketCal

This is perhaps the most comprehensive crypto calendar service out there and if something is happening in crypto, you’ll probably find it here. CoinMarketCal was founded in 2017 and has been growing since. CoinMarketCal features all sorts of events like Reddit AMAs, updates, hard forks, airdrops, listings, and ICOs.

How CoinMarketCal works is by relying on the community to post events. Anyone can post an event here and then the community votes on whether the event is real or not. This is why size matters. If there’s not a strong user base, then it won’t work. If for some reason the community isn’t large enough to trust the page there can also be a trusted badge in the top left corner of an event which means that it has been verified by an official representative. With these two verifications it should be clear that you’re not wasting your time going through these events since everything's verified as real.

However, since anyone is allowed to post on the platform and there are over 12,000 different cryptos currently it can be quite a pain to go through everything to find what you’re looking for. Therefore, as with most websites CoinMarketCal has search and sorting features. If you’re looking for a certain crypto then it’s as simple as typing in the name of that crypto in the search bar. However, often times you simply want to filter away all small cap events that don’t really have an effect on you or the markets. This you can do by choosing to only see the top 10 or maybe top 100 cryptos.

Another useful filter is to only look at major events, after-all you might not be interested in every Reddit AMA going on. To do this you can choose to only see trending events, Hot events, or significant events. These are ranked by looking at the number of views and positive votes. When filtering by these you usually see the events that are likely to have both an impact on that particular crypto as well as the whole markets.

Another fun and potentially useful feature for traders is the coins with potential ranking. This calculates the number of events and votes to see which coins might be taking off from these events. I didn’t find any statistics of how many of these coins actually take off but that might be something you want to look into if trading is what you like.

Lastly, to give some criticism to CoinMarketCal the details on events are quite light. You won’t find much information rather than the title and the date. This is why looking through the news sites talked about earlier might clarify what’s truly happening in an event. Another place to check if you don’t know what an event means is to go to the projects website and see in their roadmap or their news site since who knows better than the project developers themselves.

3. Coins Calendar

Another comprehensive calendar service that provides you everything you need is Coins Calendar. This is basically just an equivalent of CoinMarketCal, but the uploading and verifying is a bit different.

Here the community also uploads events, however, the events are not voted on. Instead users are required to upload the source of the event, which is then checked by Coins Calendar. Therefore, you won’t see any votes next to the events. The calendar page itself is good looking and easy to use and it has good search features. In my opinion the page is much clearer than CoinMarketCal, however, if I had to choose one, I would still go with CoinMarketCal. I feel that the platform there is more comprehensive and the community voting aspect makes me trust it more. That’s just my opinion. If you prefer Coins Calendar, I'm sure it’s just as good, here checking the source is super easy.

4. Airdrops.io

If you read the Coin Bureau article on best ways to earn free crypto, you’ll know that airdrops can be highly lucrative. For those who didn’t read here’s an example. Last year Uniswap decided to Airdrop 400 UNI to its users and in today's prices (October 8, 2021) that would be worth roughly $10,000 - not bad.

However, it might be hard to know when these airdrops are going down and what you need to do in order to participate, and that’s why we have Airdrops.io. Here you can find a full calendar on upcoming Airdrops. On top of showing traditional airdrops where a project deposits you their native coin it also lists a few alternative types of Airdrops. For example, it can show some signing bonuses where you earn free BTC. They also categorise airdrops according to what you need to do, as an example there are those that require certain tasks as well as those which you get by hodling.

Another extremely good feature Airdrops.io offers is that they always explain what needs to be done. There’s always a step-by-step guide and following that you’ll be sure that you do everything correctly. They also often link back to the original project behind the airdrop so that you can verify yourself both the authenticity and the requirements.

5. CoinMarketCap

Yep, this again. From CoinMarketCap you’ll nowadays find much more than just current market prices. Now for this article we’ll focus on its calendar services, of which I was pleasantly surprised by the high quality. CoinMarketCap has a full calendar on everything, airdrops, events, ICOs, and even Polkadot parachains.

You’ll find these services in the top menu on CoinMarketCap. What I like about their layout is that they clearly divide the different calendars. This makes it easy for you if you only want to look at airdrops or maybe just ICOs. When you click on the events calendar you might notice an interesting detail. 

CoinMarketCap has a data partnership with CoinMarketcal. Thus, you can with confidence choose to look from either of the two sites since the information should be the same. However, as a quick tip, the filters and sorting systems are better on CoinmarketCal and there’s no denying that. So, if you're doing more thorough research on a project I would suggest using CoinMarketCal. However, if you check crypto prices daily from CoinMarketCap then make sure to check the calendar too while you're there.

6. Reddit, Telegram, Discord and Twitter

As previously mentioned, looking at a project's website might just be the best way to find out what’s happening. However, going through a large number of projects websites every day might be something you don’t have the time or even want to do. Luckily for us, we now have social media. Almost all projects have at least a Twitter account and many also have other channels like Telegram groups. Following these keeps you up to date on all the latest developments.

Of course, it’s not possible to follow all projects out there since the number of projects nowadays is way too many for that. Therefore, what I would do is choose those in your portfolio plus maybe some large cap coins. 

Primarily the ones you're thinking of adding to your portfolio. To even make it easier for you I would perhaps create a separate account to follow these to avoid the other content creators you follow getting lost in the masses. Then when actively following these, you’ll start seeing how different news move the price of your crypto and maybe you even try to capitalize on that.

Another possibility for those who maybe don’t want to follow all of these projects themselves or want to find more details is to rely on the community. All of these three, Telegram, Reddit, and Discord are full of groups for all things crypto. 

You'll find specific groups for certain projects and also larger groups focused on the whole markets, the most famous one being r/cryptocurrency on Reddit. However, while there are many smart people who give valuable information there’s also a bunch of nonsense like misinformation and promoting frauds. So, when engaging in these community groups make sure to double check the information out there.

Conclusion

As you might have seen there are many ways to keep yourself on track. The most important thing is just to choose the channels you like and start following them. Also, it’s not that important what you choose as long as you’re actively following the cryptocurrency space as a whole. For example, just looking at YouTube on Coin Bureau’s or Digital Assets News’ videos will provide you somewhat of a view on what’s happening. There’s always a reason for why Guy does the videos in the order he does. He’s not just going to pick a project where nothing's happening. 

For those of you who want to capitalize on trend trading news or some other way you need to be more alert. In order to successfully trade on how others will feel when they see the news piece you saw means you need to be first. To do this you need to follow the most accurate sites and use notifications to be ready right when something happens. However, it’s never guaranteed how others will react which is why it’s important to remember the risk of trading. But now, it’s time for you to go check on the calendars mentioned here, cause as mentioned in the beginning there’s a lot going on at all times in the crypto industry, and you don’t want to miss anything.