Introduction
Owning cryptocurrency isn't the only way to benefit from distributed ledger technologies.
Often, I speak with individuals who can't see past the skyrocketing BTC/USD price. Or others who think that they have to read the White Paper and truly understand a coin before using it.
I'm here to say, please stop and smell the roses. There are great ways to enjoy or support crypto without buying any. I've studied Bitcoin (and many altcoins) for hundreds of hours, and I'm still intermediate at best.
Here are some ways to benefit from cryptocurrencies without spending a buck.
1 - Browse with Brave
Brave[^https://brave.com] is a new browser based on Chromium [^https://www.chromium.org/Home]. That's the same project that powers Chrome. Anyhow, browsing the web with Brave offers tons of security and privacy benefits, but they are also disrupting advertising on the internet.
From brave.com homepage:
Brave Payments utilizes the Basic Attention Token for contributions to your favorite content creators.
Coming soon, you will be able to opt into a new blockchain-based digital advertising system, giving publishers a better deal and users a share of the ad revenue for their attention.”
In a nutshell, you'll earn BAT just by browsing the web. At the time of this writing BAT/USD is at $0.15[^http://coincap.io/BAT].
2 - Chat with Keybase
I've noticed recently that lots of cryptos are hosting Telegram chat rooms. This is a pretty cool way to keep in touch with your community. What I find strange is that more organization aren't using another chat service that leverages the Bitcoin blockchain in some pretty cool ways.
Keybase[^http://keybase.io] offers chats, file sharing, and more recently git hosting. All free (for now), and encrypted by default.
Admittedly, the Keybase chat feature is relatively new. Maybe that's why it's not as popular.
There is no Keybase token, but you can read more about how Keybase leverages the Bitcoin blockchain at https://keybase.io/docs/server_security/merkle_root_in_bitcoin_blockchain.
Conclusion
While I still encourage everyone to buy Bitcoin, also try to look for other opportunities to use cryptocurrencies in your life.