Disclaimer: Some links in this article are referrals. Namely, the link to Publish0x and the one to Celsius Network. The Publish0x one generates me 5% whenever you tip someone while my id is in your navigation bar, while the Celsius one will give both me and you $20 worth of Bitcoin if you deposit $200 on their platform using my link. You can support me using those links, but you don't have to and that's why I'm including the non-referral version of those two links here:
Enjoy the article!
We're all focusing on how to get more crypto, what trades to make, what to HODL, and which DeFi yields to chase next, but have you stopped for a second and thought, when am I going to spend all that? Is crypto even real money? Can I do anything with it or it's just a number that I can show off to strangers on the internet?
How to get crypto
There are many ways to get crypto and while the fastest way is to buy it, if you're not experienced with crypto it can quickly lead to losing it all in a bad investment. I always pride myself as someone that never invested in crypto, but instead made everything from scratch, through work and sometimes sheer dumb luck. Yes, success is 90% work and 10% luck, and even though luck can get you much further than work, without working towards success you'll find your chances of getting lucky diminishing.
1. Have a hobby? Stop doing it for free!
Hobbies are work we do because we love it, that's why we don't call it work. Now, more than ever, you'll find online communities ready to pay you crypto for your hobbies, be it music, photography, or writing. Personally, I can't sing or paint, but I can write and I always liked that. Writing was one of my passions and I did it a lot in my free time, but it wasn't until I discovered Publish0x that I was finally able to keep doing it for prolonged periods of time. I abandoned all my blogs, but not the ones I created on Publish0x, quite the contrary, I expanded on Hive, Steem, and Blurt.
There are also other places where you can earn crypto with your hobby, I heard Appics is quite a lovely place for photographers and there are a bunch of places of nerds like myself that love to code. One of those would be Gitcoin, a place where you get paid to develop features and solve bugs for different projects. Another place is none other than the Harvest Finance community. I think their contests pay really well if you want to compete with your fellow programmers, but even if they don't have a contest running, you can present your project related to their platform on their discord channel and they surely won't hesitate to tip you a bunch of FARM for your work.
At some point, even you love your hobby you might feel burnt out and that's why the financial aspect is so important. It can get you back on track, you can regain motivation. I'm not at all saying you should do this for money, but I also won't lie to you and tell you that money doesn't matter. It matters a lot.
2. Staking
In the beginning, I didn't have a lot of crypto, I think that after a few months I finally managed to get $20-30. While the staking rewards for this amount wasn't going to be anything extraordinary, I started staking everything I got. I think ATOM was the best option at that time with 10% annual returns. The idea behind it was to not let my funds be idle, even they are worth only a couple of dollars, at this level every cent mattered to me.
This option is for you people that want to use decentralized services because staking can be done in a trustless fashion, allowing you to own the private keys to your crypto wallet. I used GuardaWallet for that.
3. Centralized services
An alternative to staking, sometimes with greater APY than it, it's using a centralized service like Celsius Network to lend money through their platform. What platforms like this allow you to do is to gain some interest on your assets, sometimes even assets that don't support staking themselves like Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins, etc. Right now with Celsius, you can get 11% APY on stablecoins like DAI, USDT and others paid either in kind or in their own token CEL, which saw a massive surge in price in the last few months.
If you don't care about keys and who has them, which you should, then you can choose one of those services. You have to understand that you must do your own research and not invest your money in a centralized business that tomorrow might not exist.
4. Dumb luck
As I already mentioned, some luck is necessary if you want to get ahead. Of course, you can't always get lucky and that's why work is much more important, but you'll find that sometimes opportunities arise where you expect them the least. The way I got my hands on some bigger amounts of crypto was through luck.
When Uniswap launched their token, UNI, I was one of the people that used their services before and thus was rewarded 400 UNI. Even now, this much UNI is worth around $800, but I managed to sell mine for $5 each which means suddenly I found myself with $2000 more than I had yesterday. I didn't do anything more than swap some tokens using a platform on the internet, that's why I call it dumb luck.
How to buy stuff with crypto
Now that I have a bunch of money that has literally fallen from the sky how do I spend it? Can you even spend that magical internet money? Sure they have value on the internet, but how about we exchange it for some real-world stuff. Luckily for me, about the time Uniswap dropped its UNI token, Binance was releasing their Visa card, and I enrolled in the program a few days prior. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have known how to spend it, but using Binance was a piece of cake, I just transferred the UNI, exchanged it for BUSD and voila you've got funds to spend. I did a more in-depth review of the Binance visa card which you can read HERE, but in a nutshell, this card won't work in every place.
"So what did you buy?"
Well, half of it I invested back into various programs so I can get some interest on my money. The other half I used to buy myself a new laptop which I needed for my work. Surprisingly, even though I spent a pretty big amount of money, the transaction was fine, nobody complained and the FBI didn't show up at my doorstep asking me about the wizardry I do on the internet that got me this money.
Besides, that, which is my biggest purchase with magical money to date, I bought some more little stuff to test the limits of the Binance Visa cars. You know! Normal things, like food for my cat, a notebook, a VPN subscription 😳, a ticket to a remote place where the police won't find me, everyday stuff.
It ain't much but it's honest work
I've got to say, for something that it ain't much Harvest Finance is a real gem. Not only are they providing an incredible opportunity to earn more crypto through their FARM staking, but I absolutely love their contests. One factor for my big love is the big paycheck they attach to the competitions. I mean get this, in their last contest, the web design one, I was the last out of the 10 winners and yet I got $450, that's a bunch of money.
I also staked around $400 worth of FARM for a month and got about $40 interest, which is insane, but to be fair in the last week or so I increased the amount of staked farm by quite a lot, more than doubling it.
Harvest Finance would be an opportunity for the more experienced crypto investors out there as is anything in the DeFi space. Do not put money you can't lose in projects you don't trust, that's all I'm saying.
Ending thoughts
In the end, I think balance is what's important here. If you HODL too much you might miss opportunities in real life.
"Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop look around once in a while... you could miss it"
On the other hand, it's important to not get greedy. It might be tempting to spend the couple of thousands of dollars you got, especially if you've got them through sheer luck. Usually, the money you get fast is gone fast, so think about it and put some aside, put it at work, and save for rainy days or for bigger plans you have in life.