7 Ways Traders Can Earn Crypto Without Trading
By: Nicholas Donahue
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Crypto, Bitcoin

Traders are always on the hunt for new strategies, fresh news, and hot coins to invest in. And it’s no different in the crypto world. Crypto traders converse about the latest initial coin offering or where they believe prices will move in the near-future. But there are others way to earn as well.

In this post, we’ll explore how crypto enthusiasts can make money without having to give up fiat or your existing crypto. Here are 7 ways to earn crypto without trading.

VideoCoin

VideoCoin is a blockchain startup that is creating the video infrastructure for a new type of internet. Today, video content comprises more than 70% of consumer internet traffic — and that figure is expected to grow to 82% by 2021 (Cisco). The current video infrastructure relies on a small handful of vendors — giants like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and content delivery network service Akamai.

These vendors both dictate price and provide a technical dependency. Leveraging blockchain technology, VideoCoin is building a decentralized alternative. Instead of buying and managing thousands of servers, the VideoCoin team allows individuals to earn income from their spare compute, storage, or bandwidth resources.

By giving up your idle resources, you will be compensated in VID coin while VideoCoin builds their global, decentralized video infrastructure.

Storj

Similarly, Storj is building a decentralized cloud storage network — competing with the likes of Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, and Box. The company, founded in 2015, completed a $30 million dollar initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017 and recently announced that they have surpassed 30 petabytes of storage.

The Storj network is secure and private by design. Files uploaded to Storj are encrypted, divided into pieces, and stored in a unique location. At best, any one user only has a portion of your encrypted file — and you are the only person with your private key to decrypt your files.

Storj also allows developers to build on top of their platform, and, of course, provides crypto to reward individuals who offer storage space (in the Storj world, these users are called “farmers”).

Golem

The team at Golem is looking to disrupt the supercomputer market. Traditionally, a supercomputer refers to a high-powered and expensive computer managed by a single entity. For instance, the IBM Summit was built by IBM for use at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

By contrast, Golem looks to build a network of computers around the world — from a single consumer PC all the way up to a partially-used data center — that can work in tandem. The combined power of these computers can rival the computational ability of a supercomputer.

Golem can be used by professionals looking to do advanced CGI renderings, 3D modeling, protein folding, or training machine learning models. Individuals who contribute computing power to the Golem network will be rewarded with Golem Network Tokens (GNT).

Steem

Blockchain startup Steem is looking to monetize publishers and community creators in a novel way. The company, which runs Steemit, a decentralized social media platform, rewards people who post popular, helpful, or otherwise positive content with tokens.

The Steem Media Token (SMT) provides a way for helpful community members to be rewarded for their contribution. Since its introduction to the market, Steem has paid out more than $40 million in rewards.

We believe providing rewards, along with appropriate punishments for posting low quality content or spam, can solve a number of issues currently plaguing social media services.

Celsius

Celsius is a peer-to-peer, decentralized lending platform. At its core, Celsius allows individuals to deposit their funds and earn 5% interest. Celsius then takes those deposits and lends them out at 9%, allowing for both high returns for investors and reasonably-priced loans for billions around the world.

Because Celsius is a blockchain-based platform, users do not need to be a part of the traditional financial system — which is helpful given that billions of people around the world do not have access to basic financial services.

As the company grows, we anticipate new features to be added to the Celsius network.

Hilo

Hilo is a social platform for crypto traders and enthusiasts. The founders of Hilo started the project to help others learn about cryptocurrencies, discuss the latest news, and interact with crypto influencers. For example, Hilo allows individuals to annotate pricing charts, which is particularly helpful for visual learners.

Ultimately, the Hilo team would like to combine the best aspects of an online community with a crypto trading platform. Along the way, members can earn HILO tokens for being helpful and active community members. By providing this reward, the Hilo platform hopes to combine the best aspects of news, community, and an exchange into a user-friendly platform.

Conclusion

Decentralized services provide opportunities to create new business models, including compensating users for their idle computer capacity, their contributions, and the ongoing usage of crypto tokens. These different methods are designed to better align incentives and provide profit-sharing opportunities for community members. We look forward to following this space as new tokens and platforms are launched.

The Hilo platform is powered by the HILO ERC20 token, which is given out as a reward for active and helpful community members. It’s also important to note that Hilo is a decentralized platform where users are in charge of their data.

To learn more about crypto, or Hilo in particular, check out: