It seems a lot of people have become crypto-millionaires in the past couple of years, some almost overnight, which is awesome for these early adopters for sure.
But after a week like this past one, where I know a lot of people lost a LOT of money due to a large pull-back, it’s always good to remind yourself that creating wealth usually takes some time.
So, can you get rich slowly with cryptos? Absolutely!
By using various online tools, or your own equipment, there are two primary options available to you; mining and staking.
Miners use hashpower to process transactions on the blockchain and stakers earn interest by holding coins in specific wallets.
Now there have been numerous articles/videos/content about mining and whether it is profitable or not. I won’t weigh in on that debate here, as there are many variables to consider, especially if you run your own mining rig at home or work.
Again, it really depends on your timeframe. It’s pretty much impossible to mine cryptos and get rich over night, but if your rig is big enough (100,000,000’s of hashpower) I guess it’s possible to make a lot of money in a relative short time.
But it’s certainly not like buying an ICO and flipping it a few days later to make 100x your original investment in 72 hours.
I’ve been trying both, and can tell you that the buy/trade/flip is both very exciting and very stressful at the same time. I was trying to get in on an ICO earlier this week and got scammed by a hacked site. Another ICO, which I had private access to, sold out while I was asleep after being assured it would be available for 24 hours…it lasted about 40 minutes!
But you know what? I’m testing 3 different crypto mining/trading platforms, and they all made money this week, despite the crazy drop in values. In fact, one of them actually pays out more if the markets are crazy and volatile, so my pay outs this week on average were the highest in the past few weeks that I’ve been testing them.
So here is a breakdown of the 3 mining/trading platforms I’m testing:
genesis mining is a pure mining play, and you can purchase packages to mine specific currencies. Cryptos currently available are Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, Monero, Ethereum, and Zcash.
You can purchase a specific package for each coin, but the prices and availability vary from coin to coin. But I have learned a trick that I will share with you.
I started with a Bitcoin package, so this may only work with a BTC contract, but once you have a contract running in the system, you can allocate some of your hashpower to other coins.
So, I’ve “assigned” 50% of my hashpower to LItecoin and 50% to Bitcoin. My point here is you don’t have to necessarily pay a premium when you get started. So, if as an example the Ethereum contract costs more than the Bitcoin contract, you might buy the cheaper contract, then assign your hashpower to the preferred coin.
Currently (as of July 13 2017) their Litecoin contracts are sold out, but I’m still mining Litecoin by allocating some of my Bitcoin hashpower to Litecoin.
But (there is always a “but”) the Bitcoin contract has the highest daily fees, and if you think you can invest $100 and make some money, you won’t due to the daily costs they charge per hash, so you have to do some homework on what the costs are vs the payouts.
On genesis mining, Bitcoin currently has a daily fee, while the other coins have no fee.
There is also a concept called “difficulty” in mining that you should at least understand.
This wiki article explains difficulty related to Bitcoin - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty
Another thing to understand with genesis mining is the contracts vary in lifespan. Dash, Monero, Litecoin and Ethereum have 24 month contracts (you invest and it mines for 24 months) while the Bitcoin contracts are unlimited (until all Bitcoin has been mined) and Zcash is a 12 month contract.
So, you have to calculate if you will actually make a profit from your original investment (which is not returned to you). You earn it back by getting daily payouts from the mining.
Another thing to know about genesis mining, is if you use a credit card to invest, they hold your first month’s earnings in escrow before paying it out (I think this is to avoid card transaction cancellations etc).
If you buy in using Bitcoin, you get the payouts every 24 hours starting after the next payment cycle.
Part 2 Coming Soon…