If you are like me, you like crypto. You are fascinated by the idea that there is digital machinery that can churn out digital coins and tokens to actually buy stuff. How cool would it be to be able to do that as well, at home? 

If you are also like me, you don't have the "time" to buy a half-decent mining rig. More likely, you are rather shocked by todays prices for this kind of kit. Let alone the required amount of cable management...

So, you'll be looking around for different ways to earn you some of that crypto. Ideally, this would include next to no work or fiat.

We're much alike 😉

Suiting your lazy ways I went ahead and did the research for you. Or rather - us.

No sweet without sweat

If your grandma is like mine, you heard the "no pain, no gain" line once or twice in your life. Same goes for earning crypto passively. It's possible, but since we don't want to put too much effort in it, the yield of our digital crops will be similar to the amount of work we are willing to put into. Which is little to very little. But, one of the beauties of laziness is the utter amount of imagination and creativity that comes with it. Whatever reason speaks against earning crypto passively, the lazy brain outweighs it with counter-arguments like "yeah, but it's fun!" 

So let's dive in. I tell you the five ways I use to collect crypto crumbs.

Presearch

I am one search query away from replacing "Let me google that for you" with "Let me do some presearch for you". That's how much www.presearch.org has taken its top position in my search engines of choice. Why? Every search query is not only rewarded with quality results but also with free crypto. 

Yes, you read that correctly. You "google" with Presearch and watch your PRE counter grow. It's that easy. PRE is Presearchs token and you get a maximum of 3 PRE per day, translating in 30 "paid" searches. You can go on presearching of course, but 3 PRE is your daily cap.

Not bad for something you do anyway, everyday day? And if you want to step up your game, you can even run a node for presearch, which takes a bit more effort, but also yields you more gains. But, oh, sorry, I almost forgot... we wanted to keep things strictly low effort 😉

Brave Browser

Speaking of low effort - what if I told you that you could earn crypto by literally just looking at your computer screen? That might seem like a bold, even brave statement (see what I did there?) but that's where the Brave browser comes in. In exchange for looking at unintrusive little ads, served in convenient notification style, you earn some small amount of BAT, their native token. 

Brave is a chrome based browser, giving you all the advantages you know from Googles original, extensions and stuff. Plus it heavily supports privacy features, including a tor/onion browser integration. It also has a built in news feed helping you to spare even more brain capacity to find something to browse to. And visiting those pages can earn you even more BAT. 

So, what's not to like about Brave? Have a look yourself at www.brave.com 

Unmineable

Now, instead of cognitive work, can't we use something that uses the power of a computer? Like, what about that mining thing? What about setting up a computer, fiddle some buttons and away it goes, mining crypto? Well, we already know that mining today is very hardware/cost intensive, looks complicated to set up properly and burns electrical power like you don't really want to think about it.

Still, what about that retired Laptop(s) lying around? Instead of collecting dust, couldn't they collect coins?

Well, more no than yes. Any old Macbook will start crying bitter tears and shut itself down immediately confronted with the dreadful thought of becoming a bitcoin mining rig. It's just no longer possible.

But there's www.unmineable.com. In a nutshell, you can use unmineable.com to point your mining algorithms to their pools and thus "mine" coins and tokens you wouldn't be able to mine otherwise. In fact, you don't actually mine those coins, but BTC or ETH, which they will exchange to the coins or tokens you want to mine.

Although this isn't strictly complying with our "low effort" policy here, I tried it with some old machinery I had lying around. And that was exactly why I stopped it again shortly after. Old machinery is only able to impress in terms of fan speed and noise when it's coming to mining. Those things were sounding like vacuum cleaners on steroids. And the mining results were far from what I had in mind. Even according to my low standards...

But if you have a halfway decent machine idling in your gaming room, why not try and let it puff away at Unmineable while you're doing other things? 

Theta 

So, now we established that "real" mining is not for us, is there anything crypto-related to do for our old hardware? We already talked about setting up nodes, like a Presearch node. But that is not something for us everyday users. Maybe there is something more like installing an app on your computer? Yes, there is. Have you ever heard of Theta?

Theta aims to be a fully decentralized video streaming infrastructure. They offer their own www.theta.tv, where you can watch videos and earn some  TFUEL token. Wait, what? Remember Brave and just looking at things to earn crypto? Now, open your Brave browser, presearch for "theta tv" and watch videos on Theta. You earned BAT, PRE and TFUEL in one sitting! See how this is panning out?

You can join the Theta network by downloading one of their Theta Nodes. I use the Theta Edge Node. And it's just that. You download and install the app to your machine, run it and - voila, you start earning TFUEL. You don't even have to set up a wallet, it's already in there, done for you. How does that not suit us lazy crypto geeks? 

What you do in exchange for TFUEL is sharing your bandwith and unused computing power to help out the Theta ecosystem. Your node will be "Folding@Home" and sometimes help to encode a video. Nothing more to do for you than have an eye on the slowly but steadily growing earnings.

Have a look for yourself at www.thetatoken.org 

Pi Network

Leaving browsers and old computers behind, let's look at our mobile. Although Apple and others banned mining apps from their respective stores, there is a "social network" (as they categorize themselves) called Pi. It's basically an app which mines their Pi token. Pi is not yet released into the wild and can't be traded.  

Pi certainly qualifies regarding our "do next to nothing and earn crypto" axiom. All you do is install the app on your phone (listed as Pi Network in your app store of choice) and tap a button daily to confirm you're not (yet) a robot. They employ a kind of affiliate or reccommendation system to grow their user base which got them some scam/ponzi flak, but as of today I cannot see how they are ripping me of in any way. Instead, after tapping for 365+ days, I marvel at a nice number at the top of my app screen. 

But... what about..?

Yes. I know. We're talking fragments of coins here. There are possibly a lot more ideas and better, faster or rewarding ways to earn you some cheap crypto. I excluded most of them because they require more time and effort (like writing blog posts 😉) or money than the average lazy cryptist is willing or able to invest. Like Staking. We don't have that much "time" to invest tokens before starting to earn. But yes, very valid point, staking.

Yes, but.

Looking at Theta or Unmineable, the one and only real question for you remains: How much crypto can you mine and how does it compare with your electricity bill?

Aside from power cost, there's another downer, and that's withdrawal minimums... I get the point about them, but still, they are something to consider. Let's take Presearch as an example. Their maximum is 3 PRE a day. Given that you need a 1.000 PRE minimum to be able to withdraw, that's about 334 days to reach that minimum. Almost a whole year.

And once you're eligible to withdraw - where to? Some assests are pretty, say, exclusive and there are only few wallets that can store them, if at all. TFUEL and Pi are not (yet?) able to be withdrawn or transferred. But before you shake your head and close the lid of your laptop, here's what the lazy brain does to keep you motivated: What if your little crypto pennies will go to $1? Or even just $0,5? Or 10$? Or... Depending on how long you manage to at least do a search, tap a button or just look at your screen, things might work out for the best. 

Plus, the feeling when your once hibernating hardware is now happily chugging away at the Theta node or Unmineable to procure you some crypto, is actually great. Again, there is always the small chance of a "second bitcoin". Maybe, maybe, just maybe one of your tokens & coins will go to the moon eventually. As we've seen in all examples, the key is persistence and time. And it's fun, remember?

Thanks for reading this far, much appreciated. Or even if just scrolled down to the tipping box, thank you.

I am very happy to hear about your ideas to combine the best of bost worlds, the lazy and the greedy 😄 

Please let me know about your greatest lazy ways to passively earn crypto in the comments below.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels