including, long-term investments, day-trading, arbitrage etc. A little known fact (especially for newcomers), is that certain cryptocurrencies allow you to earn a passive income; merely money that you earn without doing much to earn it. In this post, I will highlight 3 cryptocurrencies that allow you to do exactly this. Before proceeding, I’d like to quote Warren Buffett — “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die”.
NEO
I truly believe NEO’s future is very bright, as featured in my 3 Coins to Watch in 2018 blog post, which you can find here. NEO has been going from strength to strength and has been holding exceptionally well during this market turmoil.
NEO uses a consensus mechanism called Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT).
… It is a consensus mechanism that enables large-scale participation in consensus through proxy voting. The holder of the NEO token can, by voting, pick the bookkeeper it supports. The selected group of bookkeepers, through the BFT algorithm, reach a consensus and generate new blocks. In dBFT, 2/3 of all bookkeepers will agree on what goes in each block.
You can find more information on dBFT, what bookkeepers do, etc. here.
In essence, NEO acts like a share and by owning it, you own a part of the blockchain. Additionally, by owning and holding NEO, you passively earn GAS; the token used as fuel on the NEO blockchain. For example, GAS is used to deploy smart contracts, vote on the network, etc.
In order to earn GAS, you simply need to hold NEO in your wallet and GAS will accumulate over time. There is very little effort involved on your part. Holding it in exchanges will not yield you GAS, with the exception of Binance and KuCoin. To get an idea of how much GAS you generate, based on how many NEO you hold, click here.
You can purchase NEO and GAS on Binance, Gate.io, KuCoin and many others.
VeChain Thor (VET)
Although still a work in progress, I couldn’t ignore VeChain Thor (VeChain’s pivot & re-branding); a project that has been making waves in the space as of late. VeChain Thor is going to move beyond the supply chain, and into Enterprise Decentralized Application (dApp) solutions. I will not discuss how VeChain currently works, but will focus on VeChain Thor.
VeChain Thor will introduce two new tokens:
- VeChain Tokens (VET) will act as the smart payment currency in order to enable rapid value circulation within the ecosystem based on the VeChain Blockchain. VET represents the right and privilege to occupy and use the public blockchain resources. The more VET one holds, the more rights and higher priority they have (to use the blockchain).
- THOR Power (THOR) will be the fuel on the blockchain and will be consumed/burnt after certain operations are performed, such as transferring VET or executing smart contracts.
The VeChain Blockchain will be secured by 4 different types of nodes. There are some minimum requirements in order to become a node. Node types are determined by the amount of VET they hold and maturity date. You can find more details here.
All VET holders (regardless if they are a node) will passively earn THOR by holding VET in their wallets. Nodes (which inherently hold more VET), as a reward for securing the network, will have a higher percentage of THOR paid out to them.
To see how much THOR you could be passively earning, based on how many VET you hold, click here.
VeChain (VEN), the predecessor of VET, can be purchased on Binance, Gate.io, COSS and many others.
ARK
ARK uses a consensus mechanism called Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS). This mechanism requires coin holders to vote for delegates, who are responsible for validating transactions and maintaining the blockchain. It is quite similar to dBFT with the major difference that in DPoS only one delegate verifies the block, whereas in dBFT, 2/3 of the bookkeepers have to reach a consensus and generate new blocks. You can find more details about DPoS and delegates, here.
As with the previous two cryptocurrencies, there is very little effort required to passively earn ARK. The steps are pretty simple — set up an ARK account and cast your delegate vote. You will then receive a payout through the delegate as a reward for voting for them. A detailed tutorial on how to vote for a delegate can be found here. To get an idea how much you could be passively earning by voting for delegates, click here.
ARK can be purchased on Binance, Bittrex, COSS and some others.