I’ve always treated crypto as a risky investment and thus only put in what I ‘can afford to lose’. I’ve had some regrets about this - maybe if I’d gone in with more conviction, I’d be on my way to retirement? But the advantage I have is that I don’t need to be taking profits - I can afford to leave it all on the line. I have an IRL job and IRL investments. For me, crypto is as much hobby as it is an investment (how much of this is true I’ll never know, but I keep telling myself it’s a hobby!). It’s probably true that most smart people would say you’re a fool to not be taking profits along the way but I’m going to let it ride. And with this realisation, I’ve become more determined to stake as much as I can to grow my stack through the next bear/bull cycle One inspiration for this was a Bankless podcast episode with Cobie. This guy was early in crypto and probably made a lot of mistakes but holding bags through cycles grows your wealth in multiples. Folks that got rekt in 2018 but stayed invested and DCA-ed over the years are looking pretty strong nowadays. But in the spirit of Cobie I am happy to carry on business as usual into the next cycle and hopefully this will see me through to financial independence. I cringe at the number of folks that have been into crypto for a year or two and have “quit their job for NFTs full-time”. Go watch Cobie and get back to work :-)
Here are some ways I am trying to set myself up for a better future -
Hive
I was pretty bearish about Hive in 2021. I wasn’t engaged on the platform, didn’t feel confident Hive would be around long and thought there was a more than fair chance its fiat value could go to nearly zero.
Thus I tried different strategies for ‘taking profit’ - my idea of taking profit in crypto is selling alts and buying ETH. First I went to 50/50 rewards and built up a stack of 50 HIVE (later changed to 100 when I realised 50 wasn’t going to get me far especially considering gas fees on Ethereum) and withdrew and swapped for ETH. I tried this for about six months and then tried powering down for one week once a quarter. That lasted two quarters. It felt like a tough grind to get the HP back from powering down. So then I decided. I don’t need to take profits, I’m just going to keep ‘building’ on Hive and eventually reach ‘dolphin’ status. My returns are decent (in my opinion). When I’m not creating here and just consuming, I earn about 0.5 Hive a day. That involves scrolling through my feed, skimming posts that take my fancy and tipping them 100%. In the background I have some auto-voting happening for the old ‘runningproject’ gang and a few select accounts. Last week I decided to delegate to a few accounts - I did about 10 minutes reading into accounts on Hive that offer the best returns for delegating. I went for qurator, ecency and tipu. From those delegations I earn about 0.15 a day. Interestingly, these delegations don’t seem to have reduced my 0.5ish Hive a day I was already earning. When I feel inspired to write posting my own content also provides nice returns!
As I increase my HP to 2000 and onwards, I’ll start delegating to more high-return accounts as it seems to be a sound strategy for growing HP. I’ve read some interesting posts here recently from the likes of 
and the rest
Other cryptos I am staking and restaking in 2022 -
- AXS - I restake 50% and keep 50% liquid to save for NFTs on my wishlist. So far I’ve bought this Spells of Genesis x Force of Will collab set and this ShipCat from Cryptokitties - the first ‘fancy’ from CryptoKitties, with a 2017 DOB, 0 breeds and a perfectbreed. I’m currently saving for a Tubby Cat.
- I’m pretty far down the Cosmos rabbit hole so I’m staking as much as I can. I swap out some staking rewards for other coins in the ecosystem I’m more bullish on and restake!
- ICP (Dfinity) - this was a 2018 airdrop. At the time it was one of the most hyped ‘Ethereum-killers’. Just recently the last tranche of the airdrop was finally distributed so last week I withdrew all of it and staked for the maximum time period (8 years) - #8yeargang yolo! See you in 2030 ICP!
- Kind of random, but Blackpool Finance (BPT), another airdrop I received (I think in early 2021 for participation in the Axie ecosystem). I also maxed out to four years so I’m receiving the highest rewards possible for my tiny bags. The rewards are paid out in ETH but it’s about 0.0000…-something a week currently. Ahh wells. See you in 2026 Blackpool!
- SOS, writing this post reminds me that I should also extend my staking period for this one.
- I have a bit of ETH that I’ve accumulated over the years and that’s in the Curve ETH/stETH pool earning more ETH plus LDO and CRV. Woop!
NFTs
I’m also pretty NFT-obsessed. I’m currently most interested in 2017 or earlier NFTs (Curio cards, Mooncats, Rare Pepes) and also cute meme-ish collections, namely Tubby Cats at the moment. Every NFT I buy is with a view to hold it long term as a speculative investment (gamble?) but I must also love the aesthetics. We’re already seeing crypto projects that allow you to use NFTs as collateral to borrow other cryptos (for now this only allows CryptoPunks as NFT collateral), so in the not too distant future I’ll be able to leverage some of my own collection to get more crypto for some more sweet passive income.
Stacking staking
For now crypto land and IRL are different worlds to me. I’m excited for the day when these two worlds merge and hopefully when that day happens I’ll be financially independent. I’ll be able to divide my days the metaverse and the garden. When will this be? Five years, or is that too soon? The crypto, DeFi and NFTs worlds still seem so far from reality, but the rate of innovation is crazy! The key now is to stack various forms of passive income. Each one (for example Hive) can be small but with enough of them they will provide for me more than enough and I will be able to draw down just enough - say 4% pa annuity-style? - such that the bags keep growing. Hopeful.