You’ve heard that trading is the only way to get ahead with crypto.

It’s not true. Below, I’ll share an easy, relatively safe way to make money without trading or gambling:

Staking.

Rewards you can cash out any time

With staking, sometimes called bonding or locking-up tokens, you leave your altcoins with the protocol in return for rewards. It’s like passive income, paid in crypto.

One of the easiest cryptos to stake is ATOM, the token of the Cosmos Hub blockchain.

***Disclaimer — I hold a small amount of ATOM to cover fees for using the blockchain. It is not an investment asset for me.***

With ATOM, you can earn $1,000 or more each month, free and clear, directly into your possession. Other crypto offer larger rewards, but this one is very easy to stake.

Two options:

1. Let a crypto exchange do this for you. The exchange will take a hefty cut of your rewards but you won’t need to learn how to do anything new. Look for the option at whatever crypto exchange you use. For example, under the Coinbase “Earn” menu, you can get 13% rewards for letting Coinbase stake your ATOM tokens.
2. Deposit your tokens into a smart contract using your crypto wallet. For ATOM, you’ll use the Keplr wallet. Once you create your wallet and deposit tokens, you will see a “stake” button. That button will deposit your tokens into the staking smart contract. Soon enough, you will start getting free crypto.

Note, Keplr doesn’t support every crypto. Also, some crypto wallets don’t support ATOM. Use CoinGecko to figure out which wallet to use for your chosen token.

Many cryptocurrencies offer staking rewards. You can see a complete list at stakingrewards.com.

How to get $1,000 each month

Using ATOM as our example, you would buy 20,000 ATOM tokens at today’s $4 price. At today’s 15% rate, this would generate 250 ATOM tokens each month, equivalent to $1,000.

The more tokens you start with, the more rewards you get.

If $80,000 seems steep as a starting point, put in whatever you feel comfortable with. As with trading and every other form of investing, the more you put in, the more you get out.

(And the more you might lose!)

Bonus: you don’t need to cash out your rewards.

If you choose to put your staking rewards back into the protocol, you can supercharge the growth of your investment. Each time you collect tokens, recycle them back into your account. You’ll get compound returns, like a savings account.

Some protocols do this automatically as auto-compounding. Cardano (ADA) is one example of a protocol that does this.

With ATOM, you’ll need to collect your rewards manually and then restake them.

Free crypto, not risk-free crypto

While this is free crypto, it’s not risk-free crypto. You still have to worry about:

• Smart contract failure that traps your tokens.
• Scam projects.
• Token creation policies that generate more inflation than rewards. In other words, the token supply grows faster than your rewards, which reduces your purchasing power. ATOM is not one of those projects, but you’ll find many if you look around.
• Changes in price, including a drop to zero. In that case, your rewards will be worthless (or, less than you expected). On the flipside, this can also work in your favor if the market goes up. The value of your rewards will go up, too.

For more on this topic, read a related article, Altcoins: Stake Now or Forever Hold Your Peace.

Mark Helfman publishes the Crypto is Easy newsletter. He is also the author of three books and a top Bitcoin writer on Medium and Hacker Noon. Learn more about him in his bio and connect with him on Tealfeed.