Report: US residents miss out on potential revenue of up to $2.6 billion due to geographically blocked airdrops

According to CoinDesk, according to a report released on Tuesday by Dragonfly, a venture capital firm, over the past four years, the strict regulation of cryptocurrency in the United States has prevented American citizens from benefiting from air drops, resulting in a loss of up to 2.6 billion dollars in potential income for Americans, and a loss of up to 1.4 billion dollars in tax revenue for the United States government. In this report, Dragonfly provides a series of data based on 11 major airdrop samples generated since 2020 (totaling over 7.16 billion US dollars). These airdrops include 1-inch, EigenLayer, Arbitrarum, Athena, Optimism, and LayerZero, among others. The average claim amount for each eligible address participating in these airdrops is $4562. Jessica Furr, Vice General Counsel of Dragonfly, stated in an interview, "We realize that we do need some data to actually demonstrate the effectiveness of 'law enforcement regulation' and how these policies affect individuals, the overall economy, and the US government. Therefore, we have decided to use airdrops as an independent use case in cryptocurrency to see what negative externalities current policies may have generated." The report estimates that US users lost potential revenue of $1.84 billion to $2.64 billion between 2020 and 2024 due to geographic lockdowns. Furr said, "If the rules are not clear, it is best for the project party to directly implement a geographical blockade to avoid getting into trouble. Being involved in expensive litigation and having to defend themselves may lead to the closure of the project because they cannot afford the cost The report states that nearly a quarter of active cryptocurrency addresses worldwide are controlled by US residents, and the number of US users who have been geographically blocked since 2020 is approximately 5.2 million. This number does not include those who use virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass geographical blocking measures. Dragonfly also estimated the tax revenue lost due to geographical blockade airdrop revenue between 2020 and 2024, with an estimated personal and corporate tax loss of $525 million to $1.38 billion.