I want to start by saying that at this point I have taken out most of the money out of Crypto. However, the methods I use to obtain Bitcoin (BTC) have little to no risk so they are worth going over. Furthermore, the leftover BTC I hold is tends to get treated as a monopoly money i.e. I just treat it as a number on the screen. Numbers go up. Numbers go down. Sometimes I may swap it for another number and then back to BTC numbers.
Anyway, here are three main methods I use to get crypto at little to no risk:
Signup Bonuses
Comparison to Traditional Checking/Saving Signup Bonus
The great thing about crypto signup bonuses is that there is no credit check or chexsystems. Some platforms will happily give you signup bonus just for depositing crypto or even USD. This means, you can cycle same crypto (at least in value) different platforms and keep collecting signup bonus. Furthermore, you could potentially cycle the same crypto (at least in value) across various family members account and collect even more signup bonus.
The lock period to qualify for the signup bonus also tends to be relatively small, like 30 days, or in some cases nonexistent. This is a much welcome over 3 months or whatever it may take you to get signup bonus for opening a traditional checking account. Oh and there is no claw back for cleaning out your account afterward. Remember that some banks will claw back signup bonus on checking accounts if said checking account is closed within 6, 12, etc month. There is also no minimum balance you need to hold to not get hit with a monthly maintenance fee. For example, I recently opened a Chase business account, got $800 bonus, but I can’t close the account because doing so will lead to a claw back of my signup bonus. Furthermore, I am parking $2k in this Chase business account just to waive monthly maintenance fee.
Obviously the major drawback is that crypto signup bonus are much smaller in value. As of writing this article, I would say $40-50 is a high signup bonus as far as crypto is concerned.
Various Existing Signup Bonuses
These signup bonus will generally require you to buy crypto or at the very minimum deposit USD into your account. Typically almost all of the signup bonuses (at least all amongst the ones listed below) can be satisfied by purchasing a stablecoin. Once you have the signup bonus, you can sell the stablecoin for the same amount you put in minus some platform fees.
I typically move the same money/crypto from one platform to another. This may allows me to get signup bonus with same initial investment. This may also allows me to easily get signup bonuses on family members account (I just deposit my crypto into theirs). Some platforms (namely Celsius) do not take it kindly when try to grab bonuses by moving move same crypto from one account in their platform to another account within the same platform. However, you can avoid this issue by transferring money out to a different platform and then transferring back into a different account (this is where platforms that provide free withdrawal come in handy).
The following are/were attractive signup bonuses:
- Celsius, by far, has the best signup bonuses. It should not be difficult to net at least $110 bonus [link to blog post].
- OkCoin has an excellent $50 signup bonus [link to blog post]
- EriX also has an excellent $50 signup bonus [link to blog post]
- Abra has $50+ signup bonus [link to blog post]
- Ledn has a limited time super easy $50 signup bonus [link to blog post]
- Blockchain.com had an excellent $50 signup bonus [link to blog post]
You also want to signup for prominent exchanges. Here are the two I recommend:
- Coinbase is a US based publicly traded company. You can get $10 in BTC after trading $100 in crypto. Then by purchasing $50 or more through “recurring buy” promo you can get $10 after both 4th and 8th promo. Coinbase pro (no additional account or membership cost required) has a fee of 0.5% [referral link]
- Binance US has the lowest trading fee (0.1%) out there [referral link]
You may wish to earn high APY on crypto that you hold while also getting the ability to withdraw your crypto at no cost. I have written a dedicated article on crypto platforms that provide free withdrawal but here is a brief summary of signup bonuses you can have through them:
- Celsius, by far, has the best signup bonuses. It should not be difficult to net at least $110 bonus [link to blog post].
- Nexo currently has an elevated $25 signup bonus for funding your account with $100 [referral link]
- Hodlnaut has the best APY out there and you get $20 signup bonus [referral link]
- BlockFi is a well established platform and they have $10 signup bonus [referral link]
- Gemini is probably the most regulated one in this list and has $10 signup bonus [referral link]
But of course there are other platforms that provide high APY while not providing free withdrawal. The ones that are worth signup up are:
- Crypto.com is pretty much a jack of all trade platform as they do just about everything [my thorough review]
- Voyager is a publicly traded company with its stock listed in Canadian Stock Exchange (CSE). They have excellent APY, an interesting loyalty program, and will soon be releasing a debit card [referral link]
- CoinZoom is a US based exchange that almost nobody knows about [my thorough review]
Crypto Cashback
Crypto cashback is insane to a point that some of the crypto cards continue to find place in my wallet. A great entry level crypto card is the 4% cashback earning Coinbase debit card which I have coined a “must have“.
However, my favorite way of earning BTC is through the Fold card. I have been able to earn as high as 10% cashback in Amazon. One of the great thing about Fold card is that there is no withdrawal fee. Because I can earn as high as 7.25% APY on BTC, I tend to withdraw from Fold whenever I meet minimum balance for withdrawal.
Both Coinbase and Fold card don’t require you to hold coin to get reasonably good cashback. However, there are other cards namely that of CoinZoom (1-5% cashback), Crypto.com (1-8% cashback), and Ternio/Unbanked (1-6% cashback) that require you to hold their native currency in order to get attractive cashback. I have thoroughly reviewed all of these cards so if you are interested in them, click the provided links to read more. Having said that, if you’re a complete newbie to crypto cards, I recommend you stick with Coinbase and the Fold card as both of them can be free of charge.
As far as signup bonus goes, these days a maximum signup bonus on a crypto cards (or their platform) is typically $25 with several of them having a signup bonus of $10 only.
Coinbase Earn
As far as I recall Coinbase’s signup bonus has always been weak but the real gem is their Earn feature as well as their debit card (which I will briefly talk about later).
Coinbase Earn essentially gives you free crypto for going through their short brouchers where you learn about some crypto. Some of them may require you to answer questions but you can easily google the answers. In fact, you can google posts that have answers for all Earn questions in one place.
It is worth pointing out that CoinMarketCap also has a Earn feature but some people claim they never got crypto through them.
Other Methods
There are few other alternatives but I don’t use them. However, I will briefly mention them:
- Earning BAT token through Brave browser. I use the Brave browser but I don’t like ads, okay?
- Using cashback portal like Lolli [referral link] but usually my ebates portal + ebates card + membership rewards combo is vastly superior? And if it isn’t, I can almost always find something better and reliable at cashbackmonitor.
- Perhaps more interesting crypto portal is that of StormX. I thin it is interesting mostly because of (a) coin’s upside potential (flip a coin brother) and (b) ability to boost crypto cashback by up to 3.5x with their upcoming card. I briefly talk about StormX in this post [referral link].
Do You Sell or HODL Signup Bonus?
Obviously I don’t HODL all signup bonuses. I sell some of them. After all, I need to make some actual money along the way.
If a platform allows for free withdrawal of BTC then I typically send BTC earned through SUB on these platform to wherever I am holding my BTC. There are various platforms that have free withdrawal and I have listed and detailed them here.
If a platform allows for easy swap to XLM/LTC and easy withdrawal of XLM/LTC then I might go through that just to convert to BTC on another platform that allows for free withdrawal.
Sooo, How Much BTC do You HODL?
This is a risky thing to disclose but okay fine, whatever. As I said, I cash out all the time, but the BTC I have is currently held on Hodlnaut (see left screenshot below). I occasionally add small chunk of cashback from Fold (right screenshot below) to Hodlnaut and that’s about it.
I do not buy BTC with my bank money and probably never will. Actually, I lied, I once bought $20 worth of BTC but it was because the platform was paying $20 for buying $20 BTC.
Closing Thoughts
As you can see, the land of crypto doesn’t have to be “high risk high reward” like everyone keeps saying. You can indeed get crypto at little to no risk. You can earn crypto just by watching some animations in Coinbase Earn and googling the answer. Alternatively, you can earn crypto by choosing to get cards that earn crypto cashback as opposed to traditional cashback/points. Last but not least, you can also accumulate crypto by chasing various signup bonuses.
Now, it is worth pointing out that there are obvious risk in using debit card over credit card. It is PITA when debit card information gets stolen but almost painless when it happens on a credit card. It is also worth pointing out that crypto does not come with the luxury of FDIC insurance, however USD held in most crypto platform tend to have FDIC insurance. I highly recommend you to use different passwords and if possible different email (maybe even use + and . gmail tricks). Also, it is an excellent idea to use 2FA protection (eg. Google Authenticator).
