Aaahhh. I am still dreaming to have a taste of a tender, juicy, and a thick slab of meat which is cooked medium rare. The meat juice flows out as you try to cut it with a steak knife. Alright, that's quite enough. I am already salivating. This article is again, not about steak but about cryptocurrency staking.
A couple of days ago, I published an article ( https://blurt.blog/instablurt/@meitanteikudo/wine-and-dine-staking-is-fine ) containing some of the things I learned about cryptocurrency staking. I have read several articles about it, I have watched multiple videos about it and I have asked several people all about it. And in the end I have learned some things but those things just gave birth to other multiple questions and aspects of crypto staking. I have written all I have gathered but to be completely honest, I feel that I am just about a millimeter away from where I started. It only became clearer to me that I am leaps and bounds away to fully understanding even that one aspect of cryptocurrency.
I look at myself to be a fast learner, but only if I really wanted to. And also, I observed that I learn better when the approach to learning is kind of a hands-on. So to further educate myself in staking I decided to really immerse myself and experience it first hand.
Staking BCH
And as an ignorant newbie, I thought of staking my bitcoin cash, I was excited and I was itching to make some fractions of my BCH to work. And after reading about Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanisms, my hopes died down and I fell flat on my face. I found out that I can't directly stake my BCH because like BTC, it's a PoW-based coin. I was mad, I was sad and a whole lot of crazy. I wanted to throw my laptop right through the window. LOL. Kidding aside I went on reading.
Since I was already trying to learn this topic, I decided to go through with it. I used some fractions of my BCH to try and stake another coin just to see how it really works and to further understand it.
For that purpose, I chose Binance to perform the staking exercise. I transferred some of my precious BCH to Binance wallet. Alright, the first time I used Binance I was completely lost, It's not as straightforward as Coins.ph and Bitcoin.com wallet. I didn't know where my bitcoin cash wallet is located inside Binance. After a while of clicking all that is clickable I finally found it:
When you successfully logged into Binance, you have to click "Wallets" on the right bottom corner of the app and you will be taken to the page that is pictured above. The first time I saw that page, I was like "what on Earth are all these?!". I was just expecting to see wallets of respective coins but instead I see this, what am I to do then? So apparently, when you are at this page, you have to click "Spot" under portfolio or alternatively, you can click the "Spot" just beside the Overview tab. If you click that, you will be directed to this next interface:
By default, every coin and token that Binance supports will be displayed here even if everything is in 0.00 balance. Good thing is that you can filter the displayed wallets by typing into the search box the name or description of the coin. In my case bitcoin cash or BCH. If you then click on BCH, you will be forwarded to the actual wallet with overview and such:
And as any other wallet you click on deposit and it will show you the wallet's address:
As you can see, the addresses that Binance is using does not include the address type that I am used to, which is the cash address that starts with "bitcoincash:xxxx". Fret not, because there's a tool in bitcoin.com that solves this issue : https://tools.bitcoin.com/cash-address-converter/. The tool converts a legacy address to the new cash address and vice versa. And I had to censor my address because I do not want you sending me BCH accidentally, but if you really want to we can talk about that. :)
Staking Type
So I had transferred several fractions of my BCH to Binance wallet. For this purpose only, I decided to stake BNB, Binance's own coin. So the next step that I needed to to was to convert my BCH funds to BNB. Going back to the "Spot" page, there's a link there that says "convert small assets to BNB" you just have to click that and select BCH wallet and convert. And with those steps I have already converted my BCH funds to BNB and I am ready to stake. For the purpose of this experiment I just transferred a small amount to Binance, it's around $33 I guess.
To start the staking process, I went back to the application home and selected "More" and I was then taken to this page where I needed to select "Staking" :
If you click on that, you will be taken to another page again showing the available coins to stake and the periods that are still available.
At the time of this trial, the only available option in staking BNB is 30 days. Meaning, for 30 days, I cannot use, or move the amount of coins that I am staking. I will only regain power over it when the 30 day period ends. You can select the duration of the stake from 30,60, or 90 days. Once you've decided on how long you are willing to stake the coins, you can click "Stake Now".
You will then be asked to enter the amount of coins you want to stake. As you can see, there is a required minimum amount of resources that is needed to proceed with the transaction. And for a bit of testing, I found it to be a little high so I tried another way of staking coins in Binance. They are offering a staking feature with a little bit more flexible terms. There's no lock in period and the minimum amount required is fairly low. So I chose that instead. I went back to home and click "More" again. This time instead of choosing "Stake" I chose "BNB Vault":
Upon entering the vault, you can easily stake your BNB coins by choosing "Stake Now".
When you click on Stake Now, you will then enter another page that will ask you for the amount of coins you are going to stake. And as usual, you will see that there is a minimum required by the system before you can start staking.
As you can see, the minimum amount is not that high compared to the normal staking. The difference between this staking and the first option is, this staking feature is flexible. You can withdraw your funds anytime, you can choose how much you want to stake, and you can add to it anytime too. The rewards you can get from this feature are in different cryptocurrencies. As seen in one of the photos above, I have already earned rewards in Alien Worlds (TLM) aside from the BNB rewards that I have incurred.
Conclusion
As you can see from the second to the last photo. The amount of rewards that I was able to collect is just minimal, but that is just expected and fair. The amount I have staked is also minimal. But overall I believe that staking is a more secure way of earning in crypto instead of trading. But of course, the smaller the risk the smaller the gain and profit.
But again, as the pros will tell you, before venturing in anything crypto related, always do your own research (DYOR).