Thursday, November 16, 2017

Make Money from Cryptocurrency Investment, Staking, Trading, Mining, Lending, Advertising, Blogging

I often get asked about Bitcoin and the rise of cryptocurrency when giving e-commerce talks. As I am improving our E-Payments Module in our E-Commerce Program, I decided to invest time / resource to research on this matter.

Back in November 2016, 1 Bitcoin was only around USD$700. On November 2017, it reached an all-time high of more than US$10,000 per Bitcoin. There's a lot of discussion among its active investors that it will likely reach US$40,000 in a year or two as more countries, businesses, influencers embrace it.



In my ongoing research about cryptocurrency, there are many ways a person can derive income online.

I'll be updating this post as we share the steps we have taken and experiments made.

Bitcoin Wallet / Loading Cash / Withdrawing Cash



1. Buy Bitcoin through Coins.ph (from pesos to Bitcoin)
Sign-up through this link to get P50 after activation. Remember:

  • Use the "cash-in" feature to load funds.
  • Click on "convert" to purchase Bitcoin.
  • Use the "send" feature if you want to send peso or bitcoin to another person or wallet address.
  • Remember to get your Bitcoin Wallet Address (click on your BTC Wallet and then click on the QR code symbol) and give it others or post on other platforms when you need to receive Bitcoin payments.
  • Share your "invite" link to friends so you can earn when they sign-up and have their account validated.
  • Convert your Bitcoin to peso before using the "cash-out" feature. 


2. Use your credit card at Changelly to buy cryptocurrency of your choice
You can buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Zcash, Dash, Ripple, Steem, Ether Classic using your credit card.

You can also use the platform to convert from one cryptocurrency to another type.

Another alternative for cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency conversion or sending to other people is Blocktrades.

3. Open an account at Binance and/or HitBTC

I suggest getting a Binance account and/or HitBTC as there are online earning programs out there that pays through other forms of cryptocurrency. You can also opt to receive Bitcoin funds here if your intention is to invest in other tokens / coins.


4. BitOES Bitcoin to Paypal conversion
If you want to convert and send your Bitcoin to Paypal (or other payment solutions), this is a platform that offers such service.

5. Spectrocoin
If you want accept Bitcoin payment on your website, Spectrocoin is a tool to use. It has plugins that you can use on multiple platforms to process cryptocurrency payments. It allows you to have multiple currency accounts as well that you can exchange in other forms.


It also has an ATM debit card that you can use to withdraw your cryptocurrency. Your account can accept bitcoin, US dollar, Euro, Gold, Dash, Ethereum, among others.



6. BCCPay
If you want to have an ATM card where you can withdraw your Bitcoin, BCCPay will be available for ordering - starting December 15, 2017. Based on what they have on the site, you will be able to order a USD, GBR, or Euro card(s).



Cryptopay Debit Card
If you want to have a Bitcoin wallet that is connected to an ATM card and you can use it when purchasing products online (functioning as debit card), this service is for you. Although this is not yet available in the Philippines at this time.

One you have all of that set-up, you can start joining programs.

With Investment

(We will edit this post and add screenshots as we are able to successfully earn.)

Trading

You can start trading by joining platforms like:

1. Binance
Straightforward to use. They have a lot of promotions that you can participate in. One of the friendliest affiliate program as well where your commission comes in the form of currency that your referees invested in.

2. HitBTC
Have more alt coins available for trading.

3. Bittrex
A popular trading platform in the US. I like the buy and sell activity in this marketplace.

4. Kucoin
I am new here although this site is following the path of Binance.

TIPS

What is usually suggested is to invest in the top 10 coins if you are beginning. "Buy low, sell high" is common advise you will receive from those who have done it.

A reasonable starting amount for trading would be P20,000 pesos. Otherwise, you will lose a lot from the fees charge for processing transfers from your Bitcoin wallet to Trading platforms (which is around P700 at least per transaction for Bitcoin). I learned this the hard way.


I have a small amount that I used as a start to learn how trading works. Having a worksheet that allows you to compute right away what is the ideal price - that will give you margin - will help you decide when to sell.

Focus when you are trading. The last thing you want is to input your desired buying price instead of your desired selling price at the "SELL" section. This is an expensive mistake to make especially when you are selling a lot of coins.

Instead of selling all your coins at once, you can also spread them at 5%, 10%, 20%, 30% difference especially if you see a lot of trading growth potential with the coin you invested in.

What coin to invest in?

Before buying any coin, make sure to read about them online - website, forums, reviews. You can also use CoinMarketCap as a guide and learn more about the cryptocurrencies.

For Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), I have put some on SNOV.io and TagCoin (Tagcash).

If you want to keep yourself posted on industry updates, it is also good to follow industry influencers in this area. Datadash is my favorite so far (am a proud patron).

Crypto-Mining

If you have limited resources, you can only invest in a few coins. That is where mining becomes a great entry point.

Although income generated in mining takes time, I like the idea that you can have passive income if you are able to set this up properly and build up your coin portfolio in due time.

Based on what I have seen from other people's experience and projections, it will take 4 months before you can recover what you invested and start making a profit from there.





I invested around US$100 dollars each on SHA-256, Ethash, and Dash. Sha-256 is the most profitable so far based on revenue projection

Ethash promises around 70% revenue which Equihash at at 50%. Dash tends to disappoint at this time as its revenue projection is half of what I invested. Hope this will improve in the days to come.

I also tried "Reinvest" for the SHA-256 earnings for a few days. This means whenever the minimum amount is reached, it is automatically reinvested.

You can opt to "reinvest" in SHA-256 or in the Scrypt option. Although returns for Scrypt is lower in comparison to SHA-256.

You can turn-off the 'Reinvest" option if you already want to withdraw your daily earnings.


(the 3% discount code is ZimUVN)

I got a Bitcoin pre-mining contract (which will start on March 2018). I think it is worth investing in Genesis Mining as their Bitcoin contracts are open-ended.

Their Ether, Zcash, and Monero contract runs for 2 years.

What I like about Genesis Mining is that you can customize the mining allocations. So even if I got Bitcoin, Ether, Zcash, Monero, I can still mine other coins by choosing it.

If you purchased through credit card, it will take time (32 days) before you see anything on your dashboard in so far as revenue projections are concern. You will need to be patient on that.

I initially invested around $310 for this. The moment the revenue dashboards start showing up, I will have a better picture on what the revenue projections will be like.

Lending

In the traditional world we live in, anyone promising to you daily or weekly returns are usually perceived as a scam.

However, in the cryptocurrency world with its by the second global dynamic trading, not being able to offer a gain or lost perspective on a daily basis is a scam.

If you are actively buying and selling cryptocurrency, it is likely that you know the feeling.

In this part, we will be sharing our experiment and observations in this space. 

THESE ARE NOT MEANT TO BE TREATED AS RECOMMENDATION. DO YOUR OWN DUE DILIGENCE BEFORE VENTURING INTO ANY EXPERIMENT OR INVESTMENT.




1. Poloniex

This site allows you to lend your cryptocurrency to site members who are engaged in margin trading. Although the interest is not that high in comparison to popular lending sites, it doesn't have a hold period and you can withdraw your cryptocurrency anytime.

STAKING

Another way that you can earn from cryptocurrency is "staking". There are cryptocurrencies out there that allows you to earn if you just keep them and don't sell it.

1. NEO
Another cryptocurrency that incentivizes you for investing is NEO. Earnings are given in the form of another coin called GAS. If you buy NEO in Binance, the GAS incentive will be given to your account there.

CRYPTOCURRENCY EXPERIMENT FAILURES

As this market is very new, there are risks. Here are my experiment failures so far.

Mining




1. Hashflare DASH contracts

I bought a US$100 mining contract and shortly thereafter it went out of stock. The platform does not allow you to transfer or cancel your contact and you had to wait it out for the whole year to be completed.

Lending


1. Hexabot

Hexabot experienced a hack attack that resulted to BTCs being added to all user accounts. As users tried to withdraw, their system crashed. The site was not able to recover so far.

Lost around P7,000 here. Investment came from Bitconnect and Steemit earnings.


Bitconnect had a great start. It encouraged me to try out trading to validate whether earnings (though nothing fixed) is possible on a daily basis.

However, being the first in this game exposed them to critics as its business model is parallel to ponzi scams committed in the real world.

Their referral program was also attractive that got people to go on the ground and encouraged people to join. This raised a flag to regulators that prompted US states to ban them.

The site halted its lending business and released the loans. It caused its value to plummet as well. They committed to coming out with better services this year to raise its value up again.

Invested US$100 here. I am giving this until January 2019 to assess how much was lost or recovery was made on or before the said time.

3. Investellect

The site lately became difficult to login too and no reply was received from customer support. Lost around P1,000.



RISKS

Like any investment, there are risks and use only what you can afford to lose. I refer to them as a learning investment as returns is not in the form of monetary income only but also hands-on knowledge gain.

When you research about ICOs, a lot of them are also being accused as scam or shit coins.

Even Bitcoin or alt coins mining are also referred to by some as ponzi or a scam.

Also, even if the sites are doing ok, they are also exposed to hack attacks where their bitcoins get stolen, user accounts compromised, among others. Have seen established sites like Nicehash and Hexabot destroyed as a result of it.

What I learned this early is that in cryptocurrency, those with conventional business models don't grab attention. Some ideas take time to catch on and you rely on influencers you read online or regularly watch on YouTube for info.

In my case, I only started looking at it with the growing number of questions we receive in digitalfilipino and event talks. That is when I decided to understand it better with an open mind knowing its probable monetary losses.

So keep that in mind when you decide to take the plunge or experiment on any investment available out there.

It is always best to do your due diligence and look at both sides of the coin.

Without Investment

There seems to be a lot of sites that gives you an opportunity to earn without any investment asked for. Here are some that we are currently testing.

Advertising

1. Bitter
This site asks you to add a plugin that will allow you to check on available ads that you can view and get paid for it.

2. BTC Clicks
This site pays you for clicking on ads.

3. AdBTC
This site pays you for visiting ads (includes auto-surfing too).



Blogging

1. Steemit
Steemit is a blog site that allows you to earn STEEM currency from blog publishing, commenting, and upvoting content. This can also come in the form of contribution given by other community members.



Crypto-Mining 


Bitcoin Mining

You need to provide your Bitcoin wallet address for this 


Monero, Ethereum, Bitcoin Gold, Zcash, Fantomcoin, Bytecoin, DigitalNote, Dashcoin Mining with MinerGate.

You need to have multiple wallets for this to accept the coin you like or use Changelly or BitOES to convert.


I really like Minergate as it allows you to use your own computer and Android phone resources to mine. If you have several computers at home, it is best that you mine under one account. Please note that Dashcoin is not the same as Dash coin.

When you start using MinerGate, the immediate instinct is to focus on high-value cryptocurrency. That takes time to build especially if your computer processing power is limited. You can also focus on cryptocurrencies that are easier to complete including:
  • Bytecoin (BCN)
  • DigitalNote (XDN)
  • Dashcoin (DSH)
Their value may be small but if you are able to create several coins a day, you will be able to convert it to other cryptocurrencies using Changelly or trade it on HitBTC.


It has a dashboard where you can monitor the progress of what you have mined. Another option they offer is to get a Bitcoin or Monero cloud mining contract. You can use your mining earnings, if you want to, to purchase these mining contracts if desired.

Secure your Accounts

Make sure to secure your accounts including:

  • Use 2 Factor Authentication
  • Use different set of passwords, emails, mobile number for your accounts.
  • Update your password regularly.
  • Track any irregular activity in your account (like password reset that you did not request, among others) and report them.
  • Save your cryptocurrency on your computer using Exodus or Electrum. Or on a hardware device called Ledger Wallet
  • With the increasing value of Bitcoin, there are a lot of hack attempts on Bitcoin-traded platforms. Apply the necessary security processes to your accounts.

WIN or LOSE?

I am glad that I ventured into this field. As I earlier shared, these experiments are important. I treat losses as "tuition fee" in this whole adventure. 

My biggest WIN is now I am managing cryptocurrency accounts in mining, lending, trading of clients.

Learn more

If you would like to see our experiments in action, this includes learning and win / lose updates - become a Patron at http://patreon.com/janettetoral

Always remember, if you will venture into cryptocurrency, don't invest more than what you can afford to lose.