Even if you’re not a crypto enthusiast you should go ahead and read this post as everyone is a “give me free money” enthusiast for sure.
For many of the ways mentioned below, you don’t even need to know cryptocurrency, or blockchain for that matter, in-depth. If you believe in crypto, you can keep your earnings in cryptocurrency or else you can convert them to fiat currency and transfer them to your bank account. Without further ado, let’s get to know how to earn money for free.
1. Coinbase Earn
I’ve read many blogs on this topic and was surprised to see none of them mentioning Coinbase Earn. This is a program from Coinbase––one of the most famous crypto exchanges––that allows you to earn crypto while learning about crypto. They have 3-4 two minute videos on each cryptocurrency and you get free crypto for each video you watch. And, the videos aren’t boring either, they are quite intuitive. You can have a glance at their offerings below (only a subset is shown, they have more):
Having said that, you need two things before you can start earning from these videos, i.e, a Coinbase account, and an invite to Coinbase Earn. You can use my referral link to join Coinbase if don’t already have an account there. You would earn €10 with this referral link. And, the invite to Coinbase Earn can either be sent by Coinbase itself or another person who already has access to this program can invite you to earn from a particular cryptocurrency. I can invite a limited number of folks to earn from Stellar, EOS, and Orchid. So, open an account on Coinbase, using my referral link, and start earning from the 3 crypto links I shared above.
You can convert your earnings to Euros or Dollars anytime and also transfer the same to your bank account, all from Coinbase itself as it’s an Exchange after all.
2. Airdrop
An airdrop is a distribution of a cryptocurrency token or coin, usually for free, to numerous wallet addresses. Many new or existing cryptocurrencies do airdrops to publicize their crypto or to gain more users. So, its a fun and easy way to earn free crypto. However, there are numerous airdrops on the internet and some require you to submit your KYC documents to earn free crypto or tokens. But I simply do not trust these websites and I don’t want to submit my KYC documents to them for sure. There are airdrops which only require you to submit your wallet address or sign up with your email address, etc. These are completely fine with me. I use a famous website, airdropalert.com, that lists all the airdrops happening at the moment and it also lists the tasks involved in each airdrop and their reward. I always choose the airdrops which have the least number of tasks and a reasonable reward. You can look at the below screenshot of airdropalert, highlighting the tasks involved in each airdrop.
There are various other websites to know about airdrops like airdropbob.com, airdrops.io, etc. You can use whichever you like but make sure you do not submit your credentials to them but to the crypto company offering the airdrops, provided you trust them. Having said that, submitting just your wallet address is probably fine.
Apart from this, I also enrolled myself for airdrops in blockchain.com. It’s a trusted website backed by some of the big players so I feel it’s worth registering there. They list some of the well-known airdrops on their website.
3. Brave Browser
This is an interesting concept where you earn while surfing the web and also support your favorite publishers or content creators if you wish to. You earn BAT for watching ads that you like, there’s no tracking, the browser keeps all the user data locally and shows you ads that you might be interested in, using machine learning algorithms. You can even set the frequency of ads that you would like to view. You can set a percentage of your earnings to go to your favorite content creators to help them create more useful content in the future. You keep 70% of your earnings and the rest 30% is split between content creators and Brave. Lastly, it’s easy to convert BAT to any other crypto or fiat currency on Exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, etc. Having said that, if you don’t prefer watching ads in order to contribute then you can simply add funds to your Brave wallet and contribute directly to the publishers. To recapitulate, if you’re interested in privacy-focused browsing, earn free crypto, and also support the content creators at the same time then go ahead and download the Brave Browser and start surfing. Below is a screenshot of the Brave Browser and my earnings when I first installed it.
4. SteemIt
This is a social network built on blockchain where they reward users for sharing content based on the upvotes it receives. It’s like Reddit but with a difference that the users who contribute to the community get a fair share for their efforts and time. They pay users in STEEM, Steem Power, and Steem Dollars. You can trade STEEM on Binance and some other exchanges.
5. Lolli Extension
This is a browser extension that lets you earn free bitcoins when you shop online. You can view how much Lolli gives you back for each brand and if you feel like, you can register using my Lolli referral link. The extension will automatically notify you when you shop in one of their partner brands. I have used this extension while purchasing my camera gadgets online. Usually, there are no discounts on electronic gadgets but I got 1% back through this extension by doing nothing so thought of mentioning it here. If you feel like 1% is too less, they give up to 30% back depending on what you’re shopping so it’s worth checking out all the brands they have partnered with.
6. Hard Forks
This method isn’t entirely free but it’s close. If you have some crypto in your wallet, that is not an exchange wallet, and if the community decides to split, due to opposing interests or some other reason then they create a fork of the underlying blockchain. This is called Hard Fork. And, when this happens you get the exact amount of the new coin in the new blockchain as you had in the old blockchain for free. The only caveat, as mentioned earlier, is that you should completely own the wallet, i.e, you should have the private key of the wallet. The wallets provided by exchanges won’t work as they hold the private key of the wallet and not you. Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic are some examples of Hard Forks.
7. PoS and PoW (Mining)
You can earn crypto by staking cryptocurrencies on exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, etc. In other words, you just have to deposit a certain amount of cryptocurrency in a staking wallet and you’re done. The cryptocurrency you can stake should use “Proof of Stake” to secure their network like Tezos, Stellar, etc. and not “Proof of Work” like Bitcoin, or Ethereum. For the latter, you can mine blocks to earn crypto. And, for mining, you need a proper machine with lots of GPU power to make a profit. I personally use Binance for staking as they support a large number of cryptocurrencies that are based on “Proof of Stake”.
Moreover, Binance has 0% fees for staking but Coinbase charges around 20%. So, do look at the fees charged by your exchange before you stake.
Now, let’s talk about mining. Most people think that you need to be a geek in order to mine cryptocurrency but it is not entirely true. All you need is a computer with a good enough GPU/CPU/ASIC power and a mining software like Nicehash or Cudominer and you’re done. Nicehash also has a profit calculator that you can use to see how much your computer can make in a day. I mine on a Windows machine with GPU power and use both Nicehash and Cudominer as I find these two performing well for me. I have written another blog post on how to build a machine with good enough GPU power for mining. I started mining in early 2018 and the profit was okay back then but now, with increased difficulty and lesser rewards, the profit is meager. However, if you have a clean/free source of electricity or enormous GPU/CPU/ASIC power then you can consider mining for sure. Of course, this last method isn’t free but thought of mentioning it to make the list complete.
Do keep in mind that there are hundreds of ways to earn free crypto but I have listed what I personally use and most of them are trustworthy and well known. Having said that, you should always be careful, especially with airdrops and KYC documents. I hope you learned something new today. Please, leave any suggestions or questions in the comment section below.
