Backed by Coinbase and OKX raised $30M+ and made their community grind for years then gave them peanuts
Portal to Bitcoin ($PTB) - PortaltoBitcoin
- cross chain Bitcoin infrastructure project
- no bridges, no custody, atomic swaps
- backed by Coinbase Ventures, OKX Ventures, and others
- raised somewhere between $30 to $43 million
- real tech, real team, real funding
- sounds like a winner right
the grind they put their community through
- testnet farming for months
- running LiteNodes and collecting Sparks
- social quests on Kaito
- badge hunting with codes like "MoMaVaSoPoHo-MGGA"
- tweeting, engaging, yappping every single day
- some people did this for 7 to 8 months straight
- all for one promise: the airdrop
mid 2025, the hype was insane
- YouTube guides on how to farm Portal
- Threads and X posts breaking down every testnet step
- people treating it like a full time job
- the logic was simple
- Coinbase backed project + months of grinding = life changing airdrop
- nobody questioned it
then the token launched
- $PTB went live around September 2025 on Ethereum
- and the community finally checked their allocations
- yappers and community got roughly 0.5% of total supply
- part of a broader 2.6% community bucket
- most people got three figures
- some got less than $100
- after 7 to 8 months of daily grinding
the math that broke people
- you farmed for 8 months
- ran nodes
- completed every quest
- posted content daily
- and your reward was maybe $150 in a token that was already dumping
- while VCs who wrote a check sat on millions in allocation
token went straight to the floor
- $PTB launched and dumped immediately
- despite vesting schedules
- current price sits around $0.001
- down 98% from its all time high
- market cap between $2 to $5 million
- for a project that raised $30M+
the community snapped
- crypto twitter turned on them fast
- "Portal to scam" started trending
- "planned fraud" accusations everywhere
- Reddit threads full of people sharing their tiny allocations
- eligibility checker drama made it worse
- some people found out they were "not eligible" after months of work
- claim delays and unlock issues piled on
March 2026, fresh pain
- new token unlocks hit
- people who were waiting finally got access
- saw what their tokens were worth at $0.001
- more complaints flooded X and Reddit
the split in the community
- some people still defend the tech
- say the team is shipping real products
- FloTC DEX updates, Babylon Genesis partnership, OTC deals
- the project is still building
- but most of the community does not care about the tech anymore
- they care about the 8 months they will never get back
the scammers showed up too
- phishing sites popped up everywhere
- fake "claim your PTB airdrop" links
- copycat accounts sending DMs
- classic wallet drainer setup
- connect wallet, approve a transaction, funds gone
- the real team warned about it but damage was already done
here is what actually happened
- the project is not a rug
- the tech is real
- the team is still building
- but the airdrop allocation told the community exactly where they stand
- VCs got the bag
- community got the crumbs
- and "we are still building" does not pay for 8 months of free labor
raised $30M+ from VCs
grinded their community for months
gave them 0.5% of supply
token dumped 98%
this is not a scam story
this is a "we used you as free marketing and gave you nothing" story
and it keeps happening across crypto
drop a project that did this to you below
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