As we mentioned in our mining guide, gone are the days that the average user can simply run software on their laptops and be rewarded with freshly created Bitcoins. Instead, we recommend that buying bitcoins is a better investment than buying bitcoin mining hardware. That said, there are other ways to earn bitcoins outside of mining for them.
Bitcoin, like every other currency in the world, ultimately represents value. Value of work or products. So, if you don’t want to purchase bitcoin, you can earn it by providing goods or services.
There are several job boards out there that have a focus on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency related jobs. A lot of them will pay their contractors and employees with Bitcoin upon request. The most popular is Coinality and it generally has a few postings added every month. Another resource along the same lines is the subreddit r/jobs4bitcoin.
XBTFreelancer is a growing platform that works much the same as Coinality, but allows contractors to bid on projects, not unlike the popular site Freelancer, but with a Bitcoin functionality and focus.
Another option is to seek out work on traditional job boards like Indeed.com and search “bitcoin”. While this won’t be true for every job you find with a cryptocurrency or bitcoin focus, some of them will offer payment in bitcoin.
The most sought-after professions are coders, writers, artists and community managers. But any job that lends itself to freelance work will likely be able to find some work within the crypto community.
If you own your own business, even better. Simply add bitcoin as a payment option and allow your customers to pay you in the cryptocurrency you really want.
If you don’t own your own business and you don’t have any in-demand skills suitable for freelancing, you can always sell something online. Open Bazaar is decentralized software (not unlike bitcoin itself) that allows users to open their own storefronts and accept bitcoin. It does require downloading software and a bit of work, but it is a straight-forward way of offering products for sale in an Amazon-like fashion with cryptocurrency support.
The one thing you shouldn’t do is try cloud mining. You are more likely to have your money stolen than you are to get any bitcoin.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have created their own little economies and ecosystems. As such, outside of a few niches, it is difficult to earn bitcoin in the same way one would earn USD. McDonald’s isn’t going to be paying their employees with bitcoin anytime soon. However, you can use a service like Bitwage. It works just as direct deposit does, and from your employer’s perspective, it is identical. However, you can choose to have a certain percentage of your paycheck turned into bitcoin and deposited into a bitcoin wallet of your choice.
While not technically “earning” bitcoin, it is perhaps the easiest way to consistently gain bitcoin without having to go out on an exchange and buying it, even if technically, Bitwage is doing that for you. It should be noted that they offer Job finding services as well.