When you don’t have piles of cash, small earnings matter.
That’s where a lot of people start in crypto, earning $1 or a few cents from GPTs, airdrops, and faucets.
I’ve been thinking about what I decided to name “the small earnings dilemma”.
I’ve already pointed you to the three places I use (ref links, obvs):
- Cointiply for tasks, surveys, playing games
- Deservve for book reviews, surveys, social media things
- TrustDice for the no-betting-required high-paying faucet
Let’s assume you’ve earned a small amount – say, between $1 and $10 – on a faucet or GPT somewhere.
What can you do with that little bit of crypto?
And no, I’m not insulting your earning by calling it small. “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves,” as my father used to say.
Trade It
You may be able to trade it, depending on exchange limits.
Bigger exchanges often have a $5 minimum on trades, especially on the major pairs like BTC and ETH.
However, you might be able to trade in smaller-cap markets and start profiting.
Know nothing about trading? Join the club… but there’s a free technical analysis course over at IG that might help you start.
If you don’t have enough for the big exchanges, the low-volume StakeCube might work, trading SCC or shitcoins. Be aware of the debt history before you trust them, though. Don’t just take my word for it.
The Web3 exchangers – PancakeSwap, Uniswap and so on – might work, too, though I suspect that will depend on what you want to trade. I don’t do Web3, so I can’t help much there.
Copy Trade It
Copy Trading’s out because MEXC’s minimum is $50 now.
It’s mostly shit, anyway, so no big loss!
Bank It
Banking might work – especially if you’ve done KYC – but, again, most places want a minimum of $10 (or ten times that for BTC or ETH).
SOL usually has lower limits for both banking and staking, often at around 0.1 SOL, but that’s still at the higher end of our $1-$10 earning.
MEXC’s “Futures Earn” gives interest on held USDT and USDC, starting at $0.10. Bear in mind that they’re forcing KYC more often than I like.
You could trade your earnings for a staking coin, move it to your own wallet, and stake it there. You’d have to run the wallet 24/7 unless your chosen coin does cold staking (e.g. SOL, PIVX). There’s rarely a minimum stake from your own wallet, though you’re likely to get very small returns because whales get more hits/stakes.
You could trade your earnings for a staking coin, and move it to StakeCube. They started as a staking pool and still do it. Again, very low earnings because the pool’s big… but you don’t have to run your own wallet or wait a month to get a hit and earn a stake. You get daily earnings on held coins with no lockup (assuming the coin’s in their “Earn” list, of course). I’d go for DASH in this case: easy to exchange, very cheap to move, earns stakes, coin’s not gonna disappear.
Bet It
You could also bet your earnings. Most places have a crash or hi-lo game built into their site, so there are potential winnings there.
This is obviously the riskiest of choices.
I did this with an account that was miles away from payout on a site I wanted to drop recently. Did 3 crashes in a row at 2x plus, won them all, cashed out, closed the account. Nice.
That doesn’t happen often, of course.
It’s more likely you’re burn through your earnings and hand it all back to where it came from.
Sports bets are also possible, though again it’s risky. Even riskier, perhaps, since it’s real-world stuff rather than a predetermined algorithm.
I have a system I use on TrustDice where I find sports matches with no draws (tennis, soccer, badminton, basketball, baseball, etc.) and a really close matchup that has live betting. The same odds on both sides is best, usually at 1.82 or 1.87 (European style odds).
I don’t care what the sport is or who wins because, well, I’m a computer geek and I don’t give a hoot about sport.
Then I sit and watch the match on their doohicky that shows what’s going on without being video.
When one side goes over 2.00 odds, I throw in a bet. Then I wait for them to fight back and for the other side to go over 2.00, throw in a bet.
One each side, both earning more than 2x, can’t lose unless one side dominates and never goes over 2.0 but at the worst I can catch that at around 1.75 and not lose too much.
Minimum USDT bet is $1. Minimum BTC is 10k sats. That’s quite a range. They also have casino and table games and stuff if that’s your bag.
Don’t knock it. It gives my brain something to do that’s less expensive than screwing with my main setup!
Save It
You don’t have to cash out as soon as you hit the minimum.
Places like Cointiply will give you 5% interest on your earnings if you hold more than $3 (paid every Sunday, I think).
The downside to that is that you’re effectively holding cash/dollars, not crypto.
So you don’t earn when prices go up. Though you don’t lose when they dip, either.
You can hold your earnings until you reach a bigger number, then fit it into one of the other options.
How about you? Can you think of other choices with small earnings? I’d love to hear them!
