5 easy ways crypto investors can make money without needing to trade

Large price jumps and 100x gains get a lot of attention from pundits and influencers in the cryptocurrency community because they offer the hope of overnight riches.

In reality, these opportunities are few and far between. Not to mention, only a handful of traders actually manage to catch these waves and cash out in time to lock in life-changing money. 

Fortunately, catching a large price surge is far from being the only way for crypto investors to make a buck, and the recent rise of decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and the slow march of mainstream crypto adoption provides a near endless stream of investment opportunities.

Let’s have a look at five different ways crypto holders can make an easy buck without actually having to trade.

Staking

Staking, which rewards users for locking tokens on a protocol as collateral for transaction validation, is one of the best ways to earn a yield on assets held in a crypto-based portfolio.

In August, the Ethereum network will switch from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus model to a proof-of-stake (POS) model, and Ether (ETH) holders who stake in the Eth2 contract can earn up to 5.83%.

Under this new PoS system, token holders actively participate in transaction validation by locking their coins in nodes on the network that then vie for a chance to verify transactions, create new blocks and receive the rewards that come along with it.

Data from Staking Rewards shows that a stake of 10 Ether currently results in a weekly earning of 0.0075 ETH, worth $17.96 at current prices, and a yearly earning of 0.3876 ETH which is currently worth $933.69.

The percentage yield for Ether decreases as more tokens are locked on the network so the final earnings may change.

Currently, the top five crypto assets by staked value are Cardano’s ADA, Ether, Solana (SOL), USD Coin (USDC) and Polkadot (DOT).

All things considered, staking provides one of the best low-risk opportunities in crypto to gain a bigger stack regardless of market sentiment or performance, while also helping to support the network through transaction validation.

Lend crypto for low-risk yields

The growth of the DeFi sector led to the development of a diverse crypto lending ecosystem, where users can deposit their cryptocurrencies to various lending protocols in exchange for rewards in the underlying token or in different assets like Bitcoin (BTC), Ether and various altcoins.

Aave is the top lending protocol at the moment and the platform offers yield opportunities for tokens on the Ethereum and Polygon network with its native coin MATIC.

The chart above shows the top seven lending pools available through the AAVE protocol on Polygon and rewards are paid in Wrapped MATIC (WMATIC), with the current deposit annual percentage yield (APY) being 1.92% and a yearly estimated APY of 6.1%.

Other top lending protocols include Curve (CRV), Compound (COMP), MakerDAO (MKR) and Yearn.finance (YFI).

Lending offers another low-risk way to earn a decent yield, in both bull and bear markets, on tokens that don’t offer user-controlled rewards like staking.

Earn fees and tokens from providing liquidity

Liquidity provision is one of the primary components of a DeFi platform, and investors who choose to provide funds to emerging platforms are often rewarded with high percentage returns on the amount staked, as well as a percentage of the fees generated by transactions within the pool.

As seen in the image above, providing liquidity to an Ether/USDC pool on QuickSwap will entitle an investor with a percentage of the $23,098 in total daily distributed rewards and a fee APY of 33.81%.

Ideally, long term investors would be wise to research the available pools on the market, and if a liquidity pair…