The Best Ways To Make Money With Crypto. Part 1

The original purpose of crypto was storing and protecting information. However, it also turned out to be an instrument for earning money. Yes, now it is one of the most volatile assets on the financial market, but it is still a good opportunity to make a profit. In this article, we explain the main ways to make money with crypto.

Disclaimer: Crypto is a high-risk asset class. This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. You could lose all of your capital.

Key Takeaways

⭐ Investing: Suitable for a long-term strategy. You can start with small amounts, and it requires almost no daily involvement. The potential profit can be significant, but the risks are high due to volatility (drawdowns of 50–90%).

⭐ Trading: Active speculation (day trading, swing trading, arbitrage). The earning potential is high, but most beginners lose money. Requires time, technical analysis skills, and strict risk management discipline.

⭐ Staking: Passive income of 3–20% annually. Easy to use, but it limits liquidity and is exposed to coin price drops. Best for those who want a “crypto savings account.”

⭐ Farming: Yields can be higher (sometimes hundreds of percent annually at the start of projects), but the risks of smart contract bugs, scams, and impermanent loss make it more dangerous.

⭐ Mining: Coin generation using specialized hardware. Can provide steady income, but demands significant investments in ASICs/GPUs, cheap electricity, technical skills, and physical space.

1. Investing In Cryptocurrencies

Historically, major cryptocurrencies have shown high returns — for example, Bitcoin and Ether have multiplied in value in recent years. A long-term investor who regularly added to their investments from 2021 to 2024 could likely have tripled their capital thanks to market growth.

However, the risks are also significant: the market is extremely volatile, and prices can fall by 50–90% during downturns. There is no guarantee of profit — the project you invest in may lose value due to competition, hacks, or regulatory bans. When investing for the long term, you need to be prepared for extended periods of drawdown.

Starting Requirements

📌 Time: this method requires almost no daily involvement — you just need to set aside time to study the market and purchase assets, and then the main task is simply to wait. The investment horizon is usually several years.

📌 Money: you can start with a small amount (even $100 or less), as many exchanges allow you to buy fractional parts of coins. However, significant profits in absolute terms require either substantial capital or regular investments.

📌 Knowledge and skills: a basic understanding of cryptocurrencies and the ability to use an exchange or wallet. It is important to know how to ensure security (storing private keys, enabling two-factor authentication). It is also useful to understand the fundamental indicators of projects in order to select promising coins.

2. Trading: Day Trading, Swing Trading, And Arbitrage

Trading is active speculation, earning money on price fluctuations. Unlike investors, traders hold positions for a short time: from a few hours to a few days. The goal is to buy low and sell high in a relatively short time frame.

• Swing trading involves holding a trade for several days or weeks to catch a medium-term trend.
• Day trading (intraday) involves opening and closing multiple positions during the day, without carrying them overnight.
• Arbitrage is a type of trading where profits are made on the price difference of the same asset on different platforms (for example, buying Bitcoin on an exchange where it is cheaper and immediately selling it where it is more expensive).

In general, trading requires constant market analysis, quick reactions, and strong risk management skills. Speculators are less concerned with the technology of a project and more with price volatility — it is important to enter and exit trades at the right time.

A successful trader can earn very high returns — up to tens of percent per month or more. However, such cases are rare. The risks in trading are extremely high: most novice traders lose money. The price may move against the position, and without a proper stop-loss, losses can quickly accumulate.

Starting Requirements

📌 Time: active trading requires a significant time commitment. Day traders must constantly monitor charts during trading hours and react quickly to changes. Swing trading is less intensive but still requires daily monitoring of positions. Arbitrage traders must also act quickly when opportunities arise.

📌 Money: you can start with a small amount of capital (a few hundred dollars), but you need to take into account exchange and network commissions. For significant profits in absolute terms, more capital is required. It is also important to have reserve capital to maintain margin positions and diversify risks.

📌 Knowledge and skills: technical analysis skills (reading charts, indicators) and an understanding of the basics of market trading (orders, spreads, liquidity) are necessary. A trader must be able to develop a strategy and stick to it. Knowledge of news and the ability to assess how events affect the market are also useful. For arbitrage, knowledge of deposit and withdrawal processes on different exchanges, transaction speeds, and commission accounting is required.

3. Staking And Farming

Staking and farming are ways to earn passive income from holding cryptocurrency.

Staking

Staking is similar to a bank deposit: you lock your cryptocurrency (usually based on the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm) in a wallet or on a platform that supports staking, and receive a reward in the form of new coins. These coins come either from network inflation or are paid out of commissions. In essence, you support the blockchain by confirming transactions, and the network pays you interest.

Read more: How to Stake Ethereum for Maximum Returns in 2025

Staking yields are moderate: typically 3–20% per year, depending on the coin and platform. For example, Ethereum staking yields 4–8% per year, Solana yields 6–7%, and Cosmos or some new chains (Celestia, Sui) can yield around 15–20%. These returns are more stable than in farming, but the main risk of staking is the decline in the price of the coin itself: if the token price falls sharply during the lock-up period, the interest earned will not cover the loss from the price drop. In addition, staking has a lock-up period — coins cannot be withdrawn instantly, and you may have to wait (from several days to weeks), which reduces your liquidity.

Farming

Farming (yield farming) is a broader term, usually referring to earning income in the DeFi sector. It includes liquidity mining — providing your coins to liquidity pools on decentralized platforms (DEXs, lending protocols) in exchange for interest and new tokens. In effect, you are a “farmer” who “plants” your crypto assets in various protocols and “harvests” rewards.

For example, you can contribute tokens to a liquidity pool on Uniswap or PancakeSwap and receive commissions from trades, or invest tokens in a special farm contract of a new project and receive its newly issued tokens. Farming usually offers higher interest rates than staking, but it comes with increased risks (volatility, scams, and bugs in smart contracts).

Yield farming can be very profitable at the start of projects — new DeFi pools often promise hundreds or even thousands of percent per year. For example, in the early days of launch, some yield farming platforms offered over 1,000% APY. However, such returns quickly fall: farmers receive reward tokens and sell them, causing the price to plummet, and then the yield decreases. An example is the Spaghetti Money platform: it offered 35,000% per year on the first day, but after a week, the yield fell below 50%.

The risks of farming are significantly higher: smart contracts may contain vulnerabilities (leading to theft of funds), and developers may turn out to be fraudsters (taking away users’ money). There is also the risk of impermanent loss: when you provide paired liquidity, a significant change in the price ratio of two tokens in the pool can lead to a loss compared to simply holding these coins.

Starting Requirements For Staking And Farming

📌 Time: staking does not require any time — once you set it up, you can forget about your coins and receive passive income. Farming requires a bit more attention: you need to monitor the current returns in different pools and sometimes move your funds to where the yield is higher.

📌 Money: for staking, even a small number of coins is enough to meet the minimum threshold. In farming, it is better to have capital comparable to the cost of network commissions — on Ethereum, where gas is expensive, it makes sense to invest thousands of dollars, while on cheaper networks (BSC, Polygon) you can invest smaller amounts.

📌 Knowledge and skills: to use both methods, you need to understand how coin locking, consensus algorithms, liquidity pools, and crypto project documentation work.

4. Mining

Mining is the process of generating new coins and confirming transactions using computing power. It works for cryptocurrencies based on the Proof-of-Work algorithm, such as Bitcoin. Miners around the world use specialized devices to solve complex mathematical problems. At each moment in time, the network organizes a kind of competition: the computer that first finds the correct hash of a new block receives a reward (new coins plus the transaction fees in that block).

Read more: How to Mine Bitcoin in 2025: A Complete Beginner’s Guide

In this way, miners ensure the security of the blockchain, and the network pays them for this work with cryptocurrency. It is important to note that miners do not buy coins but generate them by spending resources (electricity, equipment).

Over time, the complexity of the tasks increases, and more powerful and energy-efficient devices are required for successful mining.

Special Platforms And Equipment

For Bitcoin and some other major PoW coins, ASIC miners are used — specialized chips (for example, Bitmain Antminer). For some altcoins, it is still possible to mine on GPUs (graphics processing units) — universal video cards combined into “rigs.” It is usually unprofitable for beginners to mine alone, so there are mining pools (AntPool, F2Pool, ViaBTC, and others) where participants collectively mine blocks and divide the reward in proportion to the power they contribute.

Starting Requirements

📌 Time: time is required for assembling and configuring equipment as well as periodic monitoring. The miner needs to monitor temperature and performance and restart the system in case of crashes.

📌 Money: the initial investment in equipment can be substantial. ASIC miners cost from several hundred to tens of thousands of dollars (depending on power), and video cards are also expensive, especially during a mining boom. You also need to consider the cost of electricity in your region, as it directly affects your profits. Funds are also required for related items such as power supplies, cooling (ventilation or air conditioning), and cases or racks for the devices.

📌 Knowledge and skills: you need to understand hardware, install mining programs, and set up wallets to receive rewards. Basic electrical engineering skills are also useful — to organize the power supply correctly, avoid overloading the network, and ensure safety (large farms consume a lot of kilowatts).

📌 Space: mining equipment is noisy and generates a lot of heat. You need a place with good ventilation and electrical wiring designed for high consumption. Many people place farms in garages, basements, or warehouses. It is almost impossible to keep ASICs in a living room because of the noise (70–80 dB). Physical security is also important — to prevent unauthorized access to the equipment.

How to Choose a Suitable Way to Make Money

The choice of how to earn money in crypto is always personal: base your decision on your goals, risk tolerance, free time, skills, and available resources. If you want minimal stress and involvement, long-term investments and staking are suitable. If you are interested in an active process and studying markets, try trading.

If you are ready to take DeFi risks for higher returns, carefully test farming. If you have cheap electricity and equipment, consider the economics of mining. The main thing is to start with small amounts, follow safety and risk management plans, record your results, and choose what really interests you and fits your abilities.

In the next article, we are going to discuss earning from NFT games, airdrops and bounty programs, and creating your own tokens.