I'm saying this from experience: It's not worth it.

Airdrops and all new projects that promise they are going to compensate their early members or users with tokens after their TGEs or listing don't do that to provide benefits to users. Still, they do it because they know they are going to get free promotions and advertisement by doing this since people who hear about this will tell others, and such things spread like a fire in a forest these days because people who are new in this space are always looking for ways to earn free money. They consider these to be great opportunities.

However, the reality that I have seen so far is that they don't compensate you enough for your efforts, and I'm saying this because I have tried all these things myself in the past. I have participated in airdrops of new protocols since they became a trend after the successful airdrop of Arbitrum, where some users earned great returns for their participation as early birds. And I have also used the current trending airdrops, which are the mini-bots in Telegram; I wouldn't be wrong if I say that it's all only a waste of time and efforts, and even if you spend money, you will barely get enough money back for what you've spent and the time you have wasted.

It shows that they're not completely useless if gotten through those means, since they can be converted to Bitcoin which is a better Cryptocurrency when it comes to investment purpose, the mistake people make is trying to see them as a store of value and hold for a longer period to get profits, they'll definitely point the middle finger at you anddump before you'll know it.

 Instead of using my hard earned money to risk on this coins and regret later, I'll rather get them through airdrops and swap or convert to Bitcoin, it's another cool way of adding to ones portfolio; i mean for those holding Bitcoin, their are some risks that are meant to be avoided and some that are worth it, buying Bitcoin is that risk that's worth every penny.

It is theoretically correct but in the real world and in practice it is not. There are two reasons why it doesn't work the way theory says.

First is the fact that if it were that easy to earn bitcoin through claiming "free" coins through airdrops, everyone would do it. And when large number of people do the same thing (claim free coins then dump them) the price of that coin cannot be high meaning the amount of bitcoin you'd earn would be very small. Therefore you can't really call it "earning bitcoin".

Second is the fact that what we call airdrop or free giveaways is no longer airdrop or free. You actually have to work for it. Free giveaways used to be simple faucets like this one where all you had to do was enter your address and claim 5 full bitcoins! Nowadays you have to actually "work" to get "paid" that new coin. That work could be advertising their coin on social media, creating videos, and so on but it is work and you are getting paid. The payment is low as well, just as I explained in fist part.
So if you want to spend time and work to get paid, why not spend that time more efficiently and do something else to get paid a higher amount of money and use that money to buy bitcoin?

P.S. Keep in mind that exceptions may apply to what I explained. You could find some token that would give you a better reward but exceptions don't make the rule.

If you can do it, without any prepaid cost, it's good. You can do it with retroactive airdrop, do some tasks with testnets that are free, no cost, and get shitcoins. When you receive shitcoin distributions, you can convert them to Bitcoin. Sell them and buy bitcoin or swap them to bitcoin through cross chain bridges if possible.

The risk is you need to use a device for interactions with shitcoin's websites and smart contracts. Make sure you don't store any of your Bitcoin wallet on that device because if you do interactions with shitcoin projects, and let your device with Bitcoin wallet compromised, it's terrible practice.

Scambook.

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To me the biggest difference is how bitcoins are created. It takes a great deal of investment in time, effort, money and energy just to mine and produce a single bitcoin.
Unlike altcoins, you can't just print a bitcoin out of thin air whenever you want. Any idiot with a PC can create a new crypto altcoin and print an unlimited or nearly unlimited supply for himself to dump onto the market, whenever he wants. But that's not how bitcoin works.

Imagine having a money printer that prints an unlimited amount of dollars anytime you want. You don't have to do shit to earn it. Just enter the amount you want and press the print button. Voila! You are instantly rich. That's basically how garbage like dogecoin, ethereum, solana, XRP, fartcoin, pepecoin, clowncoin, etc. all work. They are just a digital recreation of the unlimited fiat money system but worse, with no discernible value beyond being a high-tech Ponzi scheme.

What are other differences?


https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1280,quality=80,format=auto/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20150110_WBP001_0.jpg
A bitcoin mining facility