We will list the most profitable ways to earn cryptocurrency with and without investments, which are suitable for both beginners and experienced users. What is important is that this material is relevant for 2020, since there is a lot of old information on the Internet that has lost its relevance several years ago.
We have compiled step-by-step instructions that describe in simple words where and how residents of Russia and the CIS countries can get cryptocurrency, what is needed for this, as well as the features and risks of each method.
The article will be especially useful for beginners, because due to the lack of experience and knowledge, beginners often lose their invested funds by believing in a far from the most profitable and effective strategy for making money on stocks/arbitrage/trading or by investing in a scam project.
Is it possible to avoid unpredictable costs and become the owner of cryptocurrency without losing your invested money? Certainly. There are several ways to do this; let’s look at them in more detail.
Cloud mining - renting power for cryptocurrency mining
The first in our rating is cloud mining, since this is the most optimal and profitable way to earn cryptocurrency in 2020.
Mining has always been the most profitable investment option in cryptocurrency, but starting in 2020, purchasing and maintaining your own equipment (ASIC and GPU farms) for mining digital assets has become completely unprofitable due to the reduction in mining margins.
However, classic mining has successfully replaced cloud mining, since contracts in it (power for cryptocurrency mining) are much more profitable than own equipment, due to a significant reduction in cost - the costs of purchasing, maintaining and servicing equipment.
In cloud mining, the equipment is owned by a company that rents it to users for a certain price for a period of 1 year.
It is worth using only the most reliable and proven services, for 2020 this is IQ Mining (the editors of Mining-Cryptocurrency.ru purchase contracts from it).
Cloud mining is based on the operator acquiring large computing power, setting it up for the extraction of certain cryptocurrencies, after which this power is rented out in parts to smaller consumers. The main unit of measurement when determining shares is the capacity MH/s, while the client, if desired, can additionally rent capacity in order to increase their own investments in production.
An important advantage of cloud mining is the minimum entry threshold. If you have to spend money to buy your own equipment, cloud services offer rental of small capacities at minimal prices with the possibility of additional purchase at any time.
Another advantage of cloud services is the ability to work with mining for users who do not have knowledge of programming and setting up equipment. The tenant simply receives a set amount of remuneration in Bitcoin, Ethereum or other cryptocurrencies specified in the contract.
Pros:
- Low entry price.
- Fast payback.
- Does not require technical knowledge about mining and cryptocurrencies.
- A variety of tariff plans for mining different coins.
- You can mine several cryptocurrencies at the same time.
- The ability to systematically increase your own capacity to any extent.
Minuses:
- Commissions for withdrawing cryptocurrency (with small volumes it is not profitable to withdraw frequently).
- Withdrawal only in cryptocurrency.
- There are many scammers, services that are created for several months and then disappear with investors’ money (use only reliable services).
The full rating of the best cloud mining services can be found here. There we also published a list of scam projects, so that you do not fall into the hands of scammers, choose only reliable, time-tested services.
conclusions
- Mining is one of the main ways to make a profit from cryptocurrencies.
- Mining Bitcoin and other top cryptocurrencies requires high computing power. Compared to the period of the birth of the cryptocurrency industry, when Bitcoin mining was as easy as possible, now it is a rather labor-intensive process that requires taking into account many parameters, purchasing and setting up special equipment, and calculating all costs for cooling and electricity.
- For beginners and those who want to simplify the process, we recommend cloud contracts from IQ Mining. Their cost starts from $37 per year, in addition, you can often get discounts.
- Advanced miners can try mining on video cards and ASICs. Organizing production in this case will require significant financial investments. In addition, this method of earning money is associated with the risks of a fall in exchange rate and a decrease in activity in the crypto market. But the earnings can significantly recoup the investment.
Trading on a cryptocurrency exchange
You register on a popular cryptocurrency exchange (for example, Binance), open your account, deposit money into it and earn money on the cryptocurrency exchange rate by selling it at a higher rate than when buying it.
Advantages:
- variety of cryptocurrencies: you can buy/sell any coin that is attractive to you for investment;
- The minimum deposit required to enter the exchange allows you to work with small amounts;
- the opportunity to earn a lot by buying foreign currency cheaply and selling it at a higher rate;
- Cryptocurrency prices on exchanges are determined solely by the relationship between supply and demand, and not by adding a markup to the market price, as is the case with exchange services, therefore
- it is more profitable to trade cryptocurrency on the exchange;
- large reserves of popular cryptocurrencies.
Flaws:
- the set of currency pairs on different exchanges differs: Bitcoin is everywhere, but less popular young currencies may be absent;
- the need to pay a commission for the operation of the exchange, the amount of which also varies depending on the specific trading platform;
- not all exchanges support fiat currency and allow you to top up your account only with cryptocurrency, which must first be purchased at the exchanger;
- takes a lot of time, since you need to constantly monitor the dynamics of the exchange rate and be ready to quickly respond to its changes.
To make good money on the stock exchange, you need to have perseverance and patience to monitor cryptocurrency quotes 24/7 and instantly respond to their fluctuations.
Also, you should not limit yourself to one crypto exchange, but register and trade on several platforms at once, since each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. Diversification of investments between different trading platforms will also reduce risks.
You can see the full ranking of the best exchanges for cryptocurrency trading in 2020 here.
The best thing is to work with the largest and most reliable exchanges with an excellent reputation, which, in addition to favorable rates and ample opportunities to make money trading cryptocurrency, offer enhanced protection and complete security of digital assets.
The most reliable exchanges are those with the highest cash turnover. Each exchange has its own advantages or disadvantages. One may have many trading pairs, another may have convenient methods for depositing and withdrawing money, low commissions, and the third may have a convenient interface. Therefore, you should not limit yourself to one exchange, but register and work on several.
Rating of TOP 5 cryptocurrency exchanges for 2020:
| # | Cryptocurrency exchange | Official site | Site assessment |
| 1 | Binance (Editor's Choice) | https://binance.com | 9.7 |
| 2 | Huobi | https://www.huobi.com | 7.5 |
| 3 | Exmo | https://exmo.me | 6.9 |
| 4 | OKEx | https://www.okex.com | 6.3 |
| 5 | Yobit | https://yobit.io | 6.1 |
The criteria by which the rating is given in our rating of crypto exchanges:
- Reliability of operation
- stable access to all functions of the platform, including uninterrupted trading, deposits and withdrawals of funds, as well as the period of operation on the market and daily trading volume. - Commissions – the amount of commission for trading operations within the platform and withdrawal of assets.
- Reviews and support – we analyze user reviews and the quality of technical support.
- Interface convenience – we evaluate the functionality and intuitiveness of the interface, possible errors and failures when working with the exchange.
- Features of the platform are the presence of additional features - futures, options, staking, etc.
- The final score is the average number of points for all indicators, determines the place in the ranking.
Bitcoin mining wallets
On the technical side, the wallets themselves (BTC) are not stored anywhere - it is a digital code recorded in a database using Blockchain technology. There are 4 groups of such cryptocurrency storage facilities:
- for computers;
- application on a smartphone;
- web wallets;
- in the form of gadgets.
Among the PC options, the most reliable are Bitcoin Knots, Bitcoin Core, GreenAddress, ArcBit. Mobile versions are selected depending on the gadget's software; there are options for Android, IOS, and Windows. If you choose among virtual ones, then pay attention to Blockchain, Xapo, Coinapult.
Arbitration of rates on exchanges and exchangers
On exchanges and exchangers you often encounter so-called rate forks, this is when the rate on one resource is slightly higher than on another. By carrying out simple trading operations, you can make money on this difference. For example, exchange Qiwi for BTC in one bitcoin exchanger, and then exchange BTC for Qiwi in another with a profit. This scheme is also called rate arbitrage.
There are programs that make the task easier, which automatically monitor all the services included in the database and select the most profitable chains. As an example, Kurs Expert Arbitration.
The resource creates chains that include up to 5 exchangers, so that the result of making money on cryptocurrency exchange is as profitable as possible. Additionally, it also evaluates the reliability of sites, takes into account the commissions of payment systems and the cryptocurrency exchangers themselves, and offers a large selection of individual settings.
Arbitration is a very voluminous topic; we described its features in more detail in a separate article.
Masternodes
A masternode is the main node in a decentralized network. It performs actions that simple nodes cannot, such as direct or private transactions. Launching a masternode is not accessible to everyone, as it is expensive and technically difficult. However, in return, masternode owners receive a percentage of the rewards for blocks found during mining.
Examples of cryptocurrencies that provide the opportunity to purchase a masternode:
- Dash.
- ImageCoin.
- Blocknet.
- Stakenet.
The full list is on the website https://masternodes.pro/
There are a number of factors on which earnings from masternodes depend. These are the features of a particular coin, changes in its exchange rate, and the mining protocol. When choosing which masternode to invest in, you need to analyze which coin will give the fastest payback.
Cryptocurrency staking
Proof-of-Stake coins allow network users to store their coins in exchange for rewards. In terms of earnings, the principle is similar to masternodes, but requires a little less effort. It is enough to simply store funds in your wallet. The more coins, the greater the reward.
Some projects approach this with imagination. For example, on EOS you can earn profits in tokens or instead rent network resources needed by decentralized application developers.
The Binance exchange regularly distributes staking rewards, in particular such as GAS, ONG, XLM, KMD, QTUM, VTHO, ALGO and STRAT.
We tell you more about staking cryptocurrencies here.
Working with payment in cryptocurrency
This option is suitable primarily for IT specialists, and secondarily for designers, copywriters and marketers. It is possible to earn cryptocurrency using your knowledge and skills - writing texts, creating designs, editing videos, editing photos, etc.
Freelancing is usually the most obvious answer to the question of what kind of business to start on the Internet. Many companies looking for freelancers are now willing to pay in crypto. Examples of sites where you can find employers:
- Crypto.jobs
- Cryptojobslist.com
- Bitgigs.com
- CryptocurrencyJobs.co
- Cryptogrind.com
- ethlance.com
More information about vacancies in the cryptocurrency market and sites for finding work in the blockchain field can be found in a special material.
Features of earning bitcoins without investments
The first thing that should be remembered by those who want to receive cryptocurrency, but do not intend to spend their own savings on it, is that many sites require payment for receiving income, but offer free Satoshi for registration. There is no need to spend your money if you can spend your bonus money.
The next point that should not be forgotten indicates that new portals appear almost every day. You don’t need to believe the words about high earnings, but you shouldn’t avoid new products. They can turn out to be reliable.
The third point is related to the first and second: to increase profitability, you should use several online resources at once. This will not only increase your income, but will also guarantee that you will receive Satoshi.
It is also worth mentioning that many popular resources are not in Russian.
There is no need to avoid such portals, although they will have to be checked especially carefully.
Bitcoin faucets
The simplest and, I would even say, primitive way to earn bitcoins from scratch is to complete tasks on so-called faucet sites. The tasks are extremely simple and do not require any specific skills from the user and, as a rule, Bitcoin faucets with instant withdrawal. For example, enter a captcha, mark elements in pictures, watch videos or emails, follow links, etc., and quickly withdraw the amount.
The earnings will be very small. Typically, the reward on faucet sites is 1 satoshi – that’s one millionth of a bitcoin. At the current exchange rate, this is less than half a penny, but if you register on several sites at once and regularly log in and complete the Bitcoin faucet task, the amount will be transferred immediately to your wallet and someday you will earn a decent amount, since earnings on Bitcoin faucets are not significant, many They are looking for Bitcoin faucets that pay with instant payout in order to withdraw a certain amount to a wallet and not touch it, but save it, thereby making a Bitcoin accumulative faucet.
There is an automatic Bitcoin faucet, which has been working on the market for many years, delighting participants with steel and high payouts (relative to other faucets): FreeBitco.
A complete list of current Bitcoin faucets can be found here.
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to “download” a Bitcoin faucet so that all actions are performed automatically through the program. But the earnings from Bitcoin faucets are very small in any case.
It is simply impossible to build more or less reasonable cryptocurrency earnings on such sites. How to put together initial capital, as in other types of earnings that are indicated in this material.
Earning cryptocurrencies with investments
These methods require investments, and sometimes very serious ones, but the return on investment will be significant. Both mining and trading on the stock exchange is already a serious business that requires certain knowledge and financial capital.
Mining
Cryptocurrency is created by processors that perform complex mathematical calculations. This process is called mining. To make money from cryptocurrency mining, you will need equipment, for example, these could be mining farms or ASICs.
Farms
A mining farm is a computer to which several video cards are connected at once. It is graphic processors that are needed to carry out the very calculations mentioned above. Typically, 4–6 video cards are installed on one farm. The more, the better, since income directly depends on their quantity. There are motherboards that allow you to connect 12 video cards at once.
Otherwise, the farm requires the same components as a regular computer:
- CPU,
- RAM,
- HDD,
- power unit.
You can and even need to save on all this, except the power supply. There is no point in purchasing a powerful gaming processor of the latest generation. A 60 GB hard drive and 4 GB of RAM are enough. It is better to choose a power supply from expensive models that are certified 80Plus Gold. And most importantly, its power should exceed the total consumption of video cards and other components.
Anyone who wants to make money from cryptocurrency mining is faced with the choice of which video cards are best to buy. There cannot be a universal answer that suits everyone. It all depends on the budget, the cost of electricity and your priorities regarding the fastest payback or maintaining the relevance of the equipment for years to come. You can see how much income a specific video card brings in per day using the specialized calculator whattomine.com.
Select the GPU type and click the Calculate button. For example, let's take one 1080Ti video card.
The calculator will automatically calculate the current daily income when mining different cryptocurrencies. This allows you to calculate the payback of the video card and find out which digital coins are best to mine.
Note that profitability can vary significantly, both up and down. It is influenced by the rates of cryptocurrencies and the complexity of their production.
Where you can purchase components or an assembled truss:
- Mining farm on Avito
- Farms and components on Ali Express
- Complete farms in the NIX store
Asics
You can also earn cryptocurrency using ASICs, which are an alternative to mining farms.
ASICs are specialized high-performance processors designed specifically for mining digital coins. Unlike video cards, they have no other use.
ASICS are capable of producing enormous computing power, but only on one operating algorithm. For example, Bitcoin mining devices cannot mine Ethereum. The performance of video cards is much lower, but they are capable of running different algorithms. Once upon a time, Bitcoin was successfully mined by mining farms. Then ASICs were developed for the mining algorithm for this cryptocurrency, which greatly increased the complexity of the network. As a result, mining Bitcoin with video cards became completely pointless and mining farms switched to other coins.
In search of an answer to the question of how to make money on cryptocurrencies in Russia, many find the solution in buying an ASIC. And this solution is the most correct for residents of regions with cold climates and cheap electricity.
The main disadvantage of ASICs is their high power consumption, strong heat generation and enormous noise from the cooling system. If you can be in the same room with a farm of video cards without any inconvenience, this will not work with them. There will be unbearable noise not only throughout the entire apartment, but even among the neighbors. Therefore, ASICs are installed only in non-residential premises.
How much you can earn: $100 - $2000 per month (depending on the number of farms or ASICs). Required investment: $500 - $10,000 or more. Advantages of the method: relatively quick return on investment compared to other types of business. Disadvantages of this method: the equipment takes up space, generates heat and consumes a lot of electricity.
Where can you buy miners:
- Official website BITMAIN
- ASICS on AliExpress
- Asiki on Avito
Exchange trading
Making money on cryptocurrency rates can be very profitable due to high volatility. Ten percent fluctuations are common in the digital coin market. This opens up good opportunities for speculative transactions. There are many exchanges where you can trade cryptocurrency. We have already listed some of them when we talked about making money through affiliate programs.
What kind of income trading on the stock exchange will bring depends only on you. Some manage to earn tens of thousands of dollars a month. But this requires initially large investments and experience. This is not earning cryptocurrencies for beginners, but a labor-intensive process that requires skills in technical analysis of charts.
How much you can earn: 20 – 30% per month from the deposit. Required investment: $100 - $10,000 or more. The advantages of this method: the opportunity to earn large sums using a relatively small initial capital. Disadvantages of this method: the risk of losses in case of making erroneous decisions on the purchase or sale of cryptocurrency.
Popular cryptocurrency exchanges:
- binance.com;
- exmo.me;
- localbitcoins.com;
- yobit.net;
- poloniex.com;
- bitfinex.com;
- kraken.com;
- bitstamp.net;
- stex.com;
- bittrex.com.
Investing for the long term
At the very beginning, we talked about how many times Bitcoin has risen in price during its existence. There are forecasts that its rate will increase by tens and even hundreds of times. It's only a matter of time. Many analysts believe that investing for the long term is the easiest way to earn cryptocurrency, and at the same time the most reliable.
How much you can earn: 20 – 100% per year from the deposit. Required investment: $100 - $10,000 or more. The advantages of the method: simplicity and potentially high profitability. Disadvantages of this method: no guarantees.
Other less popular methods (extremely ineffective - not suitable for everyone)
There are several other ways to earn bitcoins, but they have significant limitations - they are not suitable for all users (trust management and issuing loans), or they bring too little income, often almost zero (Airdrop and Bounty).
The choice of the appropriate method depends on the answers to the following questions:
- Ability and desire to invest your own funds;
- Set goals (long-term prospects for maximizing profits, urgent conclusions);
- Having a lot of free time.
Airdrop
Airdrop is a type of marketing strategy in which tokens are distributed free of charge to new clients or existing owners of a certain cryptocurrency. That is, in essence, this is a free distribution of tokens of various cryptocurrencies to users for the purpose of advertising or increasing loyalty.
Recently, these events have become increasingly popular, so it is important to know the platforms on which information about ongoing Airdrops is published.
The list of such projects can be found on specialized sites - TOP 7 sites with a selection of free token distributions.
Bounty
Bounty campaigns are created to promote new technological projects and cryptocurrencies. As part of such events, participants receive a reward in the form of new tokens, which can then be exchanged on cryptocurrency exchanges for fiat money (rubles, dollars, euros) or left in their wallet in the hope of a significant increase in the rate in the future.
Types of bounty campaigns:
- Advertising on social networks - posts, tweets, comments, likes;
- Advertising ICO in the signature of messages on the BitcoinTalk forum;
- Translations of information about ICO into local languages - website, announcements, white paper;
- Search for project bugs;
- Development of software add-ons - wallets and mobile applications;
- Writing and publishing articles on blogs and news resources;
- Mailings;
- Design - logo, landing page, booklets.
How to earn cryptocurrency by participating in bounty campaigns? You need to do the following:
- Explore current projects. Their list can be found on the websites neironix.io, bountyhub.io and others.
- Evaluate the activities and reputation of the organizers, read reviews on the Internet. You should not participate in a bounty campaign if you do not understand the real value of the product (service, technological solution) behind the new coin.
- Familiarize yourself with the terms and frequency of remuneration payments.
- Register in the project.
- Complete tasks. Usually, organizers ask participants to be active on social networks (like, repost, join groups), create posts, and translate foreign content into Russian. Sometimes there are jobs for web designers and programmers.
The amount of real earnings in a bounty campaign depends on two factors: the amount of investments attracted to the project and the exchange rate of the new cryptocurrency. The reward is distributed among all participants in proportion to the complexity of the tasks performed.
Trust management
Already from the name it is clear that the money will have to be entrusted to management. To whom? Crypto broker or crypto fund. They will decide what to buy and what to sell, when and how. Their earnings are part of the profits received from managing your money. Interest is negotiated individually by each fund. The most common scheme is 50/50.
- Pros - no need to think about what to invest in;
- Disadvantages - high entry threshold (several million rubles) and risks of broker reliability (may lose your money).
For both crypto mutual funds and crypto funds, big risks are associated with the lack of a legislative framework and the short period of time for managers to develop reputations.
Issuance of loans
So far, this is a rather unusual way to build earnings on cryptocurrency - issuing loans to private people or organizations. There are special p2p platforms where you can transfer a private loan.
The advantage of this method is that the amount of earnings is virtually unlimited: you can assign any percentage of remuneration, and the borrower will be forced to repay the amount specified in the contract.
However, there are also plenty of disadvantages. Thus, the number of non-repaid loans is quite large, and you have to go to court to defend your interests. And since Bitcoin in Russia is semi-legal and is considered a quasi-currency, the outcome of the court’s decision is difficult to predict.
Therefore, you can try this method only if you have significant capital and on a site that insures loans or helps repay overdue debt. For now, this method is quite “crude” and we do not recommend it because high risks do not justify the possible benefits.
Platforms that pay with their tokens for publications
There are several large portals on the Internet that pay users with cryptocurrency for writing articles.
Most often, these are sites that pay with their internal tokens, which can then be sold or exchanged on an exchange. Let’s make a reservation right away, the real income here is close to zero, as in all ways of earning crypto without investments.
Steemit
The first site we will talk about is Steemit. This site belongs to the Steem cryptocurrency.
On this site, anyone can publish their article and make money from it. Payments are made using their internal Steem Dollars token.
LBRY
LBRY is another platform with its own currency (LBC). However, it is significantly different from Steem. LBC used on the platform must be purchased or mined by users, who will pay it to you.
Their website lbry.tv is something like a YouTube analogue that allows you to upload videos. If users like your video, they pay you LBC.
Dtube
Dtube is a decentralized Youtube (although it is not a Google project), in fact it is the same site as LBRY. Users can upload videos and receive rewards in the form of crypto tokens for uploading quality content.
Since DTube is created on a blockchain like Bitcoin, it adheres to the same rules: security and decentralization. On the other hand, since the TPS speed is quite low, content on DTube can take forever to load, especially if your video is more than 10 minutes long.
Where to earn bitcoins without investment - 4 best ways
Servers that distribute free bitcoins are called bitcoin faucets. The earnings are not high, but you also do not perform complex tasks. Initially, faucets were created to “promote” currency, but now they are essentially showcases for advertisements.
Bitcoin faucets are the easiest and most popular way to earn cryptocurrency without investing your own funds. Plus, there is a referral program on all servers. According to which, by attracting partners, you receive additional income.
| pros | Minuses |
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Three options for earning cryptocurrency using Bitcoin faucets
- Bitcoin collection.
The easiest way to get bitcoins. The registered user is asked to either enter a captcha or view an advertisement, and after the action is completed, they are paid from 50 to 200 satoshi.
Typically, such faucets have a timer for entering a captcha or viewing an advertisement. On some sites, the entry can be repeated every five minutes, while on others it can be repeated every hour. Experienced “hunters” suggest setting up 10 – 20 servers for coin mining, because it is very difficult to get even an average income from one such faucet.
The list of the most stable and paying Bitcoin faucets is posted on our website (updated regularly).
- Partnership programs.
If you have a blog or a well-promoted social network, then this method is just for you. You can leave affiliate links to Bitcoin faucets where a certain number of people will see them. Thus, we are back to the referral system again. For referrals, that is, partners, the service determines your percentage.
- Automatic earnings on faucets.
Making money on a machine is the best option for finding virtual currency. This is a fairly simple method that is suitable for those who want to make a profit without any action at all. In order to earn money, you just need to install the special STARTAVTOBET application on your computer, and it will bring you money automatically.
Bounty campaigns from new ICOs with wallet bonuses
New ICO companies are constantly appearing on the Internet, which, as part of their advertising campaign, distribute tokens free of charge for regular registration on the website of a project or service.
On the website Mining-Cryptocurrency.ru we update the list of such bounty campaigns from ICOs, regularly adding new ones and removing expired ones (usually lasting from one to several months). You can also look at the current Airdrop and Bounty programs in these services: TOP 7 sites with a selection of free token distributions.
ICO is a collection of investments from people in exchange for cryptocurrency for new startups. Successful projects can increase in price by up to 10,000% in a year.
Therefore, you should not miss this opportunity, especially since registering even for 10 such Bounty takes a total of 5-10 minutes.
Cloud mining without investment
Some cloud mining services give a small bonus in the form of a free hashrate for registering on the service, and it is not necessary to top up your account at all to withdraw (tested).
The only disadvantage is that this type of earnings can be classified as HYIPs (pyramids). Therefore, sites in this topic usually live for 6-12 months. But we monitor all such projects and have selected several of the most reliable ones that have existed and been paying for many years; a complete list of reliable cloud services without investments is here.
Bitcoin games without investments with withdrawal options
You can have fun playing games and get Satoshi into your account for it. It seems that this is impossible, but there are several honest projects where you can actually earn money without investments!
- Stake is the most popular platform, where about 10 gambling games are collected. There is a faucet there that gives 100 satoshi and you can easily make 10 thousand of them in a day.
- BitKong - similar to the game Minesweeper, only here the monkey hides fruits under boxes. There is also a faucet inside the game where they give 100 satoshi to your account.
There are so many reliable sites in this topic, so we advise you to use only the two above; if more worthy services appear, we will also add them to the list.
