Soon I'll complete a full year in the exciting world of cryptocurrencies, but only recently I decided to try and build a passive income based on crypto.

First, let's establish some basic rules:

• Funds should be available at any given moment, so no locking, no time restrictions when unstacking/unbonding etc.
• Minimum time and effort requirements. Set it up and then sit back and enjoy the earnings. That means, activities like active gaming and blogging are excluded from this list.
• I won't get involved with projects that offer absurd 3-digit apy. They seem too risky for my taste.
• Although I'll be using centralized services, like exchanges and lending platforms, the funds there will never exceed 25% of my portfolio ("Not your keys, not your crypto"). 

So let's start:

1) Crypto Staking

After looking into a variety of coins, 3 projects stood out that fulfill my rules and at the same time seem worth for long-term investing, VeChain(VET), Cardano(ADA) and Tezos(XTZ). The first gives a low apy, considering the industry standards, of around 1.5% and it pays in VeThor(VTHO), the blockchain's gas token. ADA and XTZ, on the other hand, pay in their native token and with rates of approximately 5% and 6% respectively. 

2) Centralized Services

When using centralized services you always have to consider the risk involved by not owning your private keys. After some research, I ended up with Binance and Celsius Wallet. In Binance I can deposit funds into flexible savings or launchpool projects and get a decent return out of them, while having the option to instantly move these funds into my card wallet and start spending.Although Celsius doesn't offer the convenience of immediate spending, you can withdraw to your wallet without paying any fees. In addition, it offers really good staking rewards for a wide variety of cryptocurrencies, which you can either get in the coin you stake or in the form of CEL tokens. CEL tokens, can be staked and also give you incentives for holding them.

The following two methods are purely for fun. I don't really expect any gains from them. But since they are free to use anyone can give them a try.

3) Crypto Idle Miner Game

Pretty straightforward idle mobile game that rewards you with HORA tokens. I spent some days unlocking stuff and buildings and now I just log in once in a while to withdraw the tokens, which I swap for Tron (TRX).

4) Pi Network

Now this one I am not sure if it's a legit project or some kind of social experiment/pyramid scheme. All you have to do is log in once per day and press a button. For the next 24 hours you'll gain pi tokens based on the number of members you've added to the app. The project aims to create a digital marketplace, where pi tokens will be used on peer to peer transactions. It has a promising team and really hope it succeeds, but for now it's just numbers on a screen. 

Well that's it! If I missed other means of crypto passive income or ways to improve the aforementioned methods comment below. I'm always open to suggestions!

Thank you for reading!

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