Since bitcoin’s recent highs, the cryptocurrency has once again awoken the interest of the media, regulators, and speculators. Both the reputation and the regulatory environment for bitcoin is turning for the positive around the globally and speculators are once again investing heavily in the world’s first decentralised digital currency. In this post, you will discover 3 ways to make money with bitcoin to help you get started with becoming a part of the bitcoin community or, at the very least, earn a bit of extra money by leveraging everyone’s favourite cryptocurrency.
Buying and Holding Bitcoins
If you want to start earning bitcoin you first need to obtain a bitcoin wallet, which is used to send, receive and store your bitcoins. You can obtain one from an online based service such as Coinbase or Blockchain.info. These are two of the most used bitcoin wallet and come with an online and a mobile version. Having said that, the safest way to store your bitcoins would be offline. For that, you could use a so-called “cold wallet” such as Trezor.
Once you have a wallet service, you can establish multiple bitcoin addresses, which allow you to receive bitcoins from others. No real life addresses are necessary, just your bitcoin address will suffice for any digital currency transfers. All transaction can then be viewed on the blockchain at Blockchain.info. This is why bitcoin is considered as a semi-anonymous digital currency as transactions are linked to bitcoin addresses but who is behind those addresses is unknown.
Bitcoin Mining
Mining bitcoins can be quite complex and is usually not recommended for beginners. The process entails the use of sophisticated machines that are expensive and consume quite a lot of electricity to solve mathematical algorithms in exchange for bitcoins. Bitcoin miners enable bitcoin transactions by sharing their processing power. In exchange for enabling the bitcoin network to function, they are rewarding with new bitcoins. This is what “mining” refers to.
Having said that, it is no longer considered lucrative for individuals to mine at home using mining equipment and the shift is being made towards more large-scale operations.
If you do want to engage in bitcoin mining and are willing to invest in expensive mining hardware, it is strongly advisable to join a mining pool. In a mining pool, miners pool their resources together and share their hashing power with the aim of solving a block and dividing the reward equally, depending on the number of shares contributed by each person. It is an effective way to motivate small-scale miners to continue their involvement in mining activities. Some popular mining pools are:
Bitcoin Cloud Mining
Alternatively, you could engage in bitcoin cloud mining. Bitcoin cloud mining is the process of mining bitcoins using a remote datacenter with shared processing power. Cloud mining is beneficial to individuals as it allows them to carry out their mining activities without having to manage the mining hardware.
It enables you to earn bitcoins without mining software, mining hardware, bandwidth, electricity or other offline issues. However, there is a cost associated with cloud mining as a service and this will have an effect on your bottom line.
The most reputable cloud mining company is Genesis Mining. I personally have a small bitcoin mining contract running with them. Having said that, the time it will take you to break even on bitcoin cloud mining can easily take well over a year and that is assuming the price of bitcoin doesn’t drop. If you want to play your part in the bitcoin network and want to mine at a low cost, then cloud mining is a good option. If you are looking for a lucrative investment, however, you are much better off just buying the cryptocurrency itself or engaging in peer-to-peer bitcoin lending.
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