The world of today is one where one needs multiple streams of income. Just saving some money in a bank account is no longer sufficient to guarantee financial safety. This is due to the low-interest rates across all countries of the world. Regular savings account with low-interest payments could ironically be losing money due to inflation.
This is where cryptocurrencies and the world of Blockchain at large can help. There are numerous opportunities in it to make some money on the side without having to risk income trading. These types of strategies give a return without active participation by the user.
This is the world of passive income, a stream of money that is accumulated over time regardless of the actions of the user. There are many protocols and services in the crypto space that offer possibilities to make money passively.
As the world is faced with the COVID-19 crisis and the Central Banks of the world print money, inflation is a big threat to developing nations. Nigeria is no exception. The latest figure of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is 12.5% for July. This, coupled with the average APY for a savings account being 4.2%, means any regular saver in the country is losing money with a savings account.
Before we continue, check out this analysis of Bitcoin’s performance during this COVID-19 pandemic posted on Remitano.
This is why every Nigerian needs to research and be involved in passive income strategies. The future of the old financial system is in question while the crypto economy is growing. We just saw a bull run while the global economy is in crisis. The strategies outlined here, plus others out there can be a critical tool to achieve financial independence.
First Staking
The current trend in Blockchain protocols is to move away from Proof of Work (PoW) towards Proof of Stake (PoS). This has to do with the high costs of mining hardware, risks of centralization, and scalability limitations of the Proof of Work consensus algorithm. This made many old and new protocols move away from PoW and adopt PoS in their blockchains.
The Proof of Stake algorithm works, as the name suggests, by forcing those nodes looking to get rewards from validating transactions to lock some funds in the network to do so. This is known as staking, the nodes that meet the requirement enter a lottery to become the origin of the next block. Once the block has been propagated successfully, the node receives a reward in the native cryptocurrency of the network.
One way to do this is to set up a node by yourself and stake some crypto to become a validator. This, however, is not without risk. A node has a set of responsibilities in the network, such as staying online 24 hours a day. If a node fails in those responsibilities, it losses part or all of the locked funds. This is done to encourage nodes to play an optimal role in the Blockchain.
This means that running a full node alone is risky, and it could be a little expensive. Not as expensive as a mining farm, but above one thousand dollars. This is where stake pools become attractive. A stake pool is where a group of users delegates their cryptocurrency to a node in exchange for some of the rewards it gets when validating a block.
The pool operator gets a higher percentage of the rewards and the possibility of becoming a validator more often. The lottery is not purely random. The more a node stakes in the network, the higher the chances of validating the next block. So, pool operators have the incentive of attracting many stakeholders to make their chances better.
Some of the protocols offering stakeholding are Algorand, Vchain, Tezos, Tron, Cardano, and some others.
Cardano is the latest to offer stake pools with its after launching its mainnet on July 29th. Unlike Ethereum, there is no limit to how little a person can stake in the network. This makes it an invaluable tool for passive income strategies.
Second Crypto Saving
Crypto saving is a new example of the traditional savings account in the world of Blockchain. Cryptocurrency exchanges are in constant need of liquidity for coins and tokens on their platforms. This means that a user holding some coin or token lets us say Tether (USDT) can loan this token by depositing it in a liquidity pool for others to borrow. The people on the other side of the operation have to pay interest, and part of that interest is given back to the depositor.
The most popular services for this type of strategy are found in Ethereum. This is because most DeFi products are in that Blockchain. These pools include Compound, Aave, Uniswap, and dy/dx. Additionally, users of the Argent mobile wallet can directly connect to these protocols from the app on their phones.
The interests are standard annual returns. These range from 3% to 5%, except in Compound. In it, the interest rate varies daily and also changes per token. On some days, DAI may have a higher return than USDT, while on other days, the trend can reverse to favor the second. The interest earned is calculated daily, and the savings can be taken out at any time.
This makes it the easiest choice to earn passive income in the Blockchain right now. The limitation is that, for now, it mainly works in the Ethereum network. The variety of tokens that can be used to make deposits is restricted to those issued in Ethereum. Some examples are Tether, USDC, Basic Attention Token, DAI, Wrapped Bitcoin, and others.
There is no boundary to how much money a person can deposit in these protocols. It can be as little as one dollar of some stable coin such as Tether or DAI. This is great for people looking to save in the Nigerian market. Instead of using bank’s savings accounts, which lose to inflation, a savings pool like Compound can return a higher interest rate in a year than any commercial banks could under the present economic conditions.
Finally Affiliate Rewards
Many exchanges, protocols, and other blockchain projects rely on affiliate marketing. They need happy and engaged users to drive traffic towards them and boost organic growth. Of course, this demands that the user has some platform, Twitter account, YouTube Chanel, etc., to reach an audience. So, it is not entirely passive.
Of course, rewards accumulate over time. It is unnecessary for a promoter to constantly post on social networks to achieve a steady stream of income. One of the most advantageous affiliate programs is the one offered by Remitano. This affiliate program not only gives rewards on direct referrals but also on referrals of downliners. All commissions are on a recurring basis.
Click this link to learn more about the Remitano affiliate program, the best affiliate program in the crypto space.
The world of cryptocurrencies grows by the day. The opportunities to cultivate multiple streams of income are only increasing in Blockchain. Now is the time to enter the wagon of the Blockchain and Decentralize Finance wave.
This is an especially powerful tool for Nigerians and citizens of developing nations. Before, we were limited by those financial institutions running in our countries, but the crypto economy is global. Blockchain has eliminated all the limitations of trading, savings accounts, investing, and other services, which in the past were only available in developed countries. Blockchain has opened the doors to financial freedom, and it is up to each of us to go through them.