Disclaimer: This blog does not contain any financial advise, I am not a broker or financial expert of any kind, heck I failed Accounting in High School. So please do not take financial advise from me. Anything you read in this blog is my own thoughts and opinions.

If you are like me you've probably never given any thought to crypto currencies and maybe have heard about Bitcoin and Doge since they seem to be all over the news these days. Before a month ago the only thing I knew about crypto currency was that  you could mine your own Bitcoin but have always heard the horror stories of cost of electricity doesn't offset the value and the guy that bought a pizza in BitCoin that later turned into a $30,000 purchase, so I honestly never looked into it.

Somewhere over the last year, and to be honest I'm not even sure where I heard about a game called Coin Hunt World. At some point I had downloaded it to my phone but never played it and knew nothing much about it. I imagine it was one of those moments where I was searching the App Store for a new game to play, saw it and downloaded it. So anyway, about a month ago I noticed the app still on my phone and decided to open it. There wasn't really any instructions or walk-thru to tell you how to play. It seemed like some sort of GeoLocation type game kinda like Pokemon Go.

So I Google'd the game name and found a bit of info, the idea of the game at a high-level is to get out and go find keys to open vaults. When you open a vault you are presented with different trivia topics. You select a topic and answer a trivia question related to that topic, answer correctly and you collect anywhere from $.10 - $1000 in crypto currency that you can collect and use in the real-world. I

thought the idea was interesting but wondered "How much?", how much can you actually make by playing a game. Is it possible to secure your crypto outside the game where you can sell/trade for other crypto or USD or will there be some sort of fee or astronomical amount you have to collect before you can transfer out.

So I decided to play the game casually and see how much I could collect in a month. When I say casually, I mean I only played when I was a passenger in a car and going somewhere and there happened to be keys or vaults that I could grab without going out of my way. Since I work from home this means I only played when I went to the store or out for dinner. 

The game offers the ability to link to an Uphold account and automatically transfers your earned crypto to your Uphold account every week. This is a great feature that you don't have to worry about all the crypto you collected just being in the game somewhere with potential for loss or that you have to remember to transfer it out. According to the developers of the game more options for different wallets may be offered in future releases.

The game, Coin Hunt World, is just coming out of beta at the time of this writing so the game developers are still very much building their user base and making changes to the game based on feedback. The game uses Discord as the "in-game chat", where you can report bugs, issues, find buddies to do quests with or just talk to others playing the game.

So the moment you've waited for........how much did I make by the end of the month? 

During the month I only found vaults that contained the smallest amount of crypto that the game offers and each time I opened one of the vaults it gave me a small amount of either Bitcoin or Ethereum. I wasn't able to capitalize on any of the in-game events that can increase the amounts you could collect. At the end of the month I had earned roughly $20 in crypto for not much effort.

One of the things I was curious about and I couldn't find it documented anywhere is how the payout amount in crypto was determined. So as I mentioned each vault has a value that it pays out, for example a blue vault will pay out ~$.10 but with the ever changing value of any cryptocurrency how is it determined? I mean will I get $.02 one day and $.10 the next?

So I decided to start tracking the amount of crypto it gave me and how much that coin was worth at the time in USD. I immediately noticed the coin amounts were always different. One vault I opened I received 299.7 Satoshis, Satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, and another I received 307.2 Satoshi on a different day. When I opened a vault and answered the question correctly and received an amount I immediately checked the value of that amount. Each time I checked the value for blue vaults was always $.10. This is actually pretty awesome as it means the game is checking market values and adjusting vault amounts based on the market. 

In short, if you are serious about playing this game, you want to get out and collect more aggressively when the markets are down. This will yield you a higher amount of BTC and/or ETH which will be worth more when the markets rebound.

I mentioned this to one of my friends and they quickly balked at it and laughed that the amount was so low. The one thing that interests me is if I had spent the month playing more aggressively how much more could I have made? Don't get me wrong, I have no delusions that playing this game could earn you enough to make you rich or quit your day job but what if you could spend a few hours a month playing and earn around $200. 

If you are just starting playing, please use my referral link here.

This got me wondering, what else is out there that will give you free crypto or the ability to earn crypto?

Other Games and Apps

There are a lot of games in the App Store, many in my opinion simply aren't worth it. I tried playing an arcade game that pays Ethereum and also uses an Uphold account to transfer your earned crypto out. There were soooo many ads you end up spending more time watching ads than you do playing the game. After a couple hours I earned barely $.01.  You would literally have to play all day every day for weeks to accumulate a couple dollars worth, and yes, I did transfer out my $.01 of Ether before deleting that game :) .

Other games or apps give you in-game tokens for watching ads or doing other activities to earn these in-game tokens, many of them require you to collect thousands of these tokens before you can trade them for a small amount of crypto. Again, in my opinion many of these aren't worth it either. There's an old phrase "Time is money"; you have to stop and ask yourself "How much is my time worth?"  because realistically your time and attention is what is generating revenue for these apps.  However, if you enjoy playing the games or using those apps and feel the ads aren't too bad then why not get paid for your time. Most "free" games display ads anyways unless you purchase the ability to turn them off.

What about these crypto exchanges that promise free money just for creating an account. I mean this means of marketing is nothing new, banks and stock exchange apps often do this for customers that open a new accounts. 

Coinbase

Coinbase is an exchange that allows you to buy/sell/trade crypto currencies and supports 1000s of cryptos. They do currently promise $5 in Bitcoin just for creating and verifying an account. Other exchanges offer free crypto as well but usually only pay out once you have bought or traded $100 worth first. Coinbase pays out immediately with no-purchase. 

Ok, so $5 isn't much I mean its barely a 6-piece nuggets, and that doesn't include a drink or fries. 

One of the more unique things about Coinbase is once you have verified your account they give you the opportunity to earn additional crypto by watching short videos and learning about crypto. You can earn up-to $30 in crypto that is yours to trade/sell or move to your wallet. These will usually be anywhere between $3 - $9 in different cryptocurrencies, but if your new to cryptocurrency and don't know where to start, this can be a great place to begin as the interface is pretty simple and if you watch the videos you can earn different coins to start your investments.

I did test exchanging some of my free crypto Coinbase gave me for a different coin and was able to successfully exchange it with no issues. This was sorta my test of is the money really yours or are there restrictions on it. So far the coins they gave me have proven to be mine and I can do as I wish, exchange, sell, or hodl. 

UPDATE 9/5/2021:

I've held my Coinbase account for a few months now, still have not put any of my own money in it but just periodically checking for new videos and ways to earn. With the additional opportunities to earn more coins and with the market fluctuations, my portfolio on Coinbase has grown to just under $84. I've since converted some of my free coins to ATOM, ALGO, and ETH and am now earning 5% interest on those coins.

At the end of my one month experiment into crypto I have accumulated $50 in about 8 different varying crypto currencies with very little effort. One important fact I keep reminding myself is this $50 is the current value, since I have left my currencies on an exchange if the price of those cryptos goes up so does my $50 value. So there is potential for that initial $50 to become a lot more or a lot less.

I'm sure this may be just the tip of the iceberg and there may be many other ways to earn additional crypto without the costs and overhead of mining it ourselves.  As I uncover additional ways that meet my criteria for being worth my time I'll plan to update this blog and include those as well.