JULY 2019 UPDATE
It’s been almost half a year since I wrote this piece and my God, how things have changed! Bitcoin has tripled in value, ETH is holding on for dear life, and people have started seeing XRP as a stablecoin!
Anyway, I’ve found another simple and easy way to mine cryptocurrency on your phone (without draining your battery or processing power).
You should definitely check out the Pi Network. Essentially, it wants to be the next Bitcoin. So far, it doesn’t have a concrete use case, but its developers are hoping that by onboarding enough people, they could create a useful alternative to Bitcoin!
Its advantage over BTC is that it can be mined on a smartphone and doesn’t require a bunch of expensive gear to run. Also, it has a great referral program, so the more people you bring in – the more you mine. Also, the more people join the network, the higher the value of the coin, so it’s a win-win for everybody.
If you decide to go for Pi, I highly recommend you use this link http://minepi.com/Journalancer and use my username (Journalancer) as your invitation code.
The more, the merrier!
Now (February 2019) is both the worst and the best time to discuss the topic of cryptocurrency. Worst because we’re in what seems the middle of a long and freezing crypto winter. Prices are depressingly low, interest in bitcoin has been dropping for a year.
It seems as nobody cares any more. You know what they say, you can’t have cryptocurrency without ‘cry’.
At the same time, it’s the best because (don’t make me have to convince you) cryptocurrency is here to stay, and from this point of view, it has nowhere to go but up. So that makes *right now* the best moment for you to reignite that interest and start stacking up!
And just in case you need extra convincing, this is what the interest in bitcoin looked like in the months before the famed bullrun of late 2017.
I get it, not everyone has the money, the time or the knowledge to get a miner up and running. But what if I told you that you’ve already invested in a solid miner, that’s been sitting in your pocket all this time? Even worse, you’ve been wasting it to text your ex and like pointless photos on Instagram.
Not to mention that your family has miners in their pockets, too. Some miners you probably have lying around the house collecting dust somewhere. Let me show you how you can earn cryptocurrency on your smartphone and not spend a dime in the process.
Install cryptocurrency-rewarding apps
The
The first way to earn tokens with a smartphone is to install and use an app that rewards you for doing specific tasks.
You can try it here.
Use the only legitimate mobile miner
If you Google mobile cryptocurrency miners, or search for such apps on play stores, you’ll find plenty of them. The sad thing is – almost none of them work. You see, mining is a complex, compute-heavy task, and you basically need a really, really powerful machine to do any meaningful mining. What you’ll find on the app store, in 99.99% of the cases are fakes, fraudulent apps that will trick you to install them just so they could show you an ad or two before you call their bluff and uninstall.
But there’s one miner that actually works, and works well. It’s called Electroneum, and the trick is – your smartphone isn’t actually doing any mining. The app simulates the process of mining on a smartphone, and rewards you accordingly just to keep the app running. It spends a negligible amount of battery, it doesn’t take up processing power and it’s not slowing the phone down – at all. Just let it sit in the background and get paid for it. The app is tried and tested – it’s legit.
It also has a great referral program. If you refer someone, you will be earning 5% of everything that the referred person has mined. Those that have been referred and are using your code will be earning 1% more. So, there’s incentive on both sides to use the referral program.
The app can be found here (Android only for the moment, iOS is in beta), and if you want to earn a bit extra, consider using my referral code, too: 299D24.
Play crypto-rewarding games
The third, and possibly the most entertaining way, is to play mobile games that pay you for playing in cryptocurrency. No, I don’t mean gambling, that’s lame. I mean real games where you actually get to have some fun and get paid a bit in the process, too.
There aren’t as many games of this type as I’d like, but I did try a few. So far, the best one is called Alien Run by Bitcoin Aliens. It’s a simple, 2D platformer game. I’d say it’s similar to the famous Flappy Bird but with far less frustration and a payment system that actually works.
You get paid in satoshis whenever you complete a level (it takes up to a minute to pass a level), making this game ideal while you’re in a line waiting somewhere, or on the toilet 😀
The game makes up for it by making you watch ads. It’s not ideal, but it’s a tradeoff I’m willing to accept. Other games are forcing me to watch ads anyway, might as well take a part of that pie myself, eh?
There is a catch, though. The app will pay out on your Coinbase account (hopefully you can register on that service), and it will only do so when you cross a 10K satoshi threshold. It will take you a while, but if there’s one game on your phone that helps you kill some time, might as well be this one.
You can download the game here.
Image Credit: Flickr / CreditRepairExpert
