Most assume the only way to get bitcoin is to buy it. However, as this guide will show, there is a multitude of ways to earn cryptocurrency as well. These include free methods like tasks, airdrops, faucets, and questionnaires- or more popularly, the modern gig economy paying for your time and services in cryptoasset coins and tokens.
Before reviewing the best ways to earn bitcoin in 2020 and get paid in cryptocurrency, it is important to remember how the value of bitcoin is calculated in USD and why making bitcoin profits is all about stacking satoshis. Even if our number one way to gain bitcoin is by using other people's money to buy bitcoin now versus later as many speculate and predict the price could see all time highs this year or next. Take a look at the OPM Wealth system after reading through the research on how to earn bitcoin online and start getting payments via cryptocurrencies instead of US dollars.
See the Number 1 Way to Earn Bitcoin in 2020
Contents
- 1 Top 27 Best Ways to Earn Bitcoin and Get Paid in Crypto
- 2 Earning Bitcoin vs Buying Fiat: Stacking Satoshis
- 3 How to Earn Bitcoin for Free
- 3.1 Airdrops
- 3.2 Crypto Freelance Marketplaces
- 3.3 Learn and Earn Crypto on Coinbase Earn
- 3.4 Micro-Earnings, Pay to Clicks, and Small Service Jobs
- 3.5 Faucets
- 3.6 Signature Campaigns and Bounties
- 3.7 Trade Crypto
- 3.8 Bitcoin Affiliate Programs
- 3.9 Gambling
- 3.10 Write About Bitcoin
- 3.11 Sell Crypto-Related Products or Services
- 3.12 Mine Bitcoin
- 3.13 Bitcoin Lending
- 3.14 HYIPs, Pyramid Schemes, and Coin Doublers
- 3.15 Bitcoin Forks and Other Crypto Forks
- 3.16 Trading Bots
- 3.17 Binary Options Trading
- 3.18 Futures Trading
- 3.19 Ask for Donations or Get Creative with your QR Code
- 3.20 Crypto Interest-Earning Savings Accounts
- 3.21 Get Cashback with Affiliated Retailers
- 3.22 Play Games to Earn Bitcoin
- 3.23 Start a Crypto YouTube Channel or Podcast
- 3.24 Build a Website and Sell Advertising Space
- 3.25 Become a Crypto Influencer
- 3.26 Work for Coins or Projects in Marketing/PR Roles
- 3.27 Exercise to Earn Crypto
- 4 The Downsides of Being Paid in Crypto
- 5 Tax Treatment by the IRS – How do they work?
- 6 Final Words
Top 27 Best Ways to Earn Bitcoin and Get Paid in Crypto
Once the world starts to transact in Bitcoin globally, the payment network aspect of it will continue to grow and people will start getting paid in cryptoassets by their employer or company. There is also the blossoming freelance market that has plenty of opportunity within the blockchain era dawning upon us all. Let's review the top 27 ways to get paid in bitcoin and gain more crypto by earning it rather than buying bitcoin through an exchange for USD. While there is nothing absolutely wrong at all to buy bitcoin outright in hopes it's BTC/USD exchange rate value rises, but others enjoy the opportunity to gain bitcoin rather than a charity case or having to exchange USD-based salaries and paychecks into cryptoassets.
Earning Bitcoin vs Buying Fiat: Stacking Satoshis
It helps people to think of cryptocurrency like a fiat currency – you can’t purchase or print your own paper money but you can earn it through trading skills, goods, services and time for money.
Fiat money is generally traded, not bought. BTC, on the other hand, is associated with being bought and that can be confusing for people looking into earning or acquiring free coin.
Beginner’s also have a habit of being overwhelmed by the cost of a single coin as they are not used to thinking of purchase or earning through the terms of micro-buying or micro-earning. In other words, most people do not acquire a whole coin outright and that understanding can have an impact on your success and results. For this reason, we break the coin down into satoshis, which is a basic unit of account. A satoshi is equal to 0.00000001 bitcoin. There are 100 million satoshis per bitcoin and there will only ever be 2 Quadrillion, or 100 Trillion, satoshis total.
Satoshi Nakamoto had the famous phase once when he alluded to the potential growth bitcoin has in the early days. Many believe the statement will continue to hold true and rise well into new heights in the next year or two. Bitcoin's whitepaper author and creator said:
“It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy” ~ Satoshi Nakamoto, Creator(s) of Bitcoin
Now that we have a base of understanding of the math baked into the bitcoin DNA of a satoshi unit of account, let us get into the 27 ways people can earn Bitcoin and its tax implications.
How to Earn Bitcoin for Free
To begin with, you need a digital currency wallet address to receive and store the bitcoin in. A free wallet is fine for beginners, but do research good ones beforehand. Many choose to buy bitcoin from exchanges, as it is an incredibly simple and reliable way to acquire it. If you have technical skills and the proper hardware, you can also mine it into your wallet. But the more creative way, and the primary focus of this guide, is earning it.
While the list does provide a plethora of opportunities and each has their own risk/reward profile, it does not rank them from most to least effective.
With that in mind, here are the methods in detail and how you can start earning bitcoin today!
Watch the Fastest Way to Gain Bitcoin in 2020
Airdrops
- Effort: Low
- Income: Low
- Risk: Low
Airdrops are basically free money that companies are giving away in order to entice people to their company and platforms. Think of it like a store rewarding you with samples for spending $10 or a bank rewarding you with $20 for free in order to open an account with them. A growing number of companies are participating in this for traction and publicity reasons.
Currently, there are hundreds of available airdrops throughout the crypto community on a monthly basis. It is important to note that a majority of these companies will most likely fail but you can still earn a decent amount doing this. And hey, free money giveaways!
BitcoinTalk.org and Reddit are the most well-known sites to check for latest airdrop announcements and giveaway but always google because there are others.
Earning Potential: Zero to $100
Crypto Freelance Marketplaces
- Effort: Medium to High
- Income: Medium to High
- Risk: Low
The following are some websites where you can freelance work for BTC online:
- Reddit’s r/Jobs4Bitcoin
- Bitwage
- Earn.com
- Angel’s List
- CryptoGrind
- CryptoJobs
- Bitfortip
- Coinality
Like with any “normal” job, these places all pay you to perform various jobs- only in Bitcoin. Some of these opportunities can be really small, for example Earn.com has opportunities to answer emails to earn bitcoin. The earning potential here is technically and virtually unlimited. It really just depends on how much you can and are willing to work.
Earning Potential: Unlimited
Learn and Earn Crypto on Coinbase Earn
- Effort: Medium
- Income: Low
- Risk: Low
Coinbase has recently launched a unique online training program where you can learn about specific crypto, take a test at the end of this training, and if you pass they pay in that coin. They have courses available in Dai, EOS and other major cryptocurrencies. To give an idea, they are currently paying $20 for the DAI course, $50 for the EOS course, and $50 for the XLM course, among many others.
These courses are fast, readily available, and relatively easy to participate in. They engage you with videos and then you completely a single quiz on hat you learned and receive crypto in your Coinbase wallet. It’s a lot of very easy and legitimately free money available to anyone able to open a wallet with them.
Earning Potential: $20 to $200
Micro-Earnings, Pay to Clicks, and Small Service Jobs
- Effort: High
- Income: Low
- Risk: Low
Micro-tasks are a cheap, easy, and low-risk way of making bitcoin online. That being said, it’s known for being boring and time consuming, plus you will never make that much at a time.
One example is a pay to click (PTC) website. PTC sites require you to visit, click ads or a button, and receive pennies in exchange. They make money through ad sales and are essentially giving you a small cut of those earnings.
There are also sites that want you to complete surveys or other small tasks in exchange for small amounts of money via cryptocurrency.
While it’s technically possible to make bitcoin online through these methods, it could be as little as $.25 an hour which would not be worth it to most people.
Earning Potential: $0.05 to $2 per hour
Faucets
- Effort: Low to Medium
- Income: Low to Medium
- Risk: Low
Bitcoin faucets are a system of bitcoin distribution where dozens of coin pieces are given away for free to anyone visiting a specific website every 30 minutes. It’s essentially a prize giveaway that you may or may not even win and they were very popular in the early days of bitcoin.
Currently, no such faucets for bitcoin even exist anymore because of the popularity and cost of the coin itself. However, there are faucets for smaller, lesser known coins. They have less value but they COULD be worth more someday and even if they never are, you can still sell them off asap for small amounts of money instead.
Faucets are pretty simple concepts. Whichever company creates them requires you to visit a website and then distribute these coin prizes every set period of time.
It’s not actually recommended to participate so much as to create your own. If you know how to, you can make a crypto faucet with ads and encourage others to use it. You have minimal effort after its creation and collect money through the ad revenue while paying others a small portion to participate.
Earning Potential: $1 per hour to $1,000 per month
Signature Campaigns and Bounties
- Effort: Low to Medium
- Income: Low
- Risk: Low
Signature campaigns and bounties are much less available today than they were during the ICO heyday of 2017 but you can still find them. Essentially, newer crypto companies will pay you to advertise for them online. For example, if you have a BitcoinTalk.org forum account, you can add a company’s name or imagine to your signature in exchange for small amounts of crypto (think how NASCAR drivers put logos on their cars and bodies).
There are also bounties available to find bugs in a start-up’s code or translating company website info into different languages and other such valuable tasks that do not technically require a whole job position to hire someone for. You may only receive coin compensation worth a few pennies today, but if their crypto start-up is successful, the value could significantly spike in the future or even just rise slowly.
Earning Potential: $0.01 to $500
Trade Crypto
- Effort: Medium to High
- Income: Low to High
- Risk: High
The most obvious way to make coin is to become a kind of day trader for it. This means buying coin with fiat currency and then selling it when it’s worth more. This can be done through any number of major exchanges and there are ways to research how to get the best prices or what to look out for.
Some people make it long term investments and some people are both lucky and smart enough to day-trade their way into crypto fortunes, though the latter is admittedly hard and rare.
You can also accept crypto for goods or services. A growing number of online retailers are doing this for example and it falls in line similarly with being paid online with crypto for online work, as was discussed earlier. This can be risky, however, as market for crypto are still very volatile and you probably have bills and other people you need to pay using fiat currency.
This is certainly a road you can only go down with the understanding of wild price fluctuation and if you have a really deep understanding of what you are doing. Otherwise, such a high-risk game is never going to be remotely worth it.
That being said, if you are able to buy low and sell high consistently, you will have the potential to pull in some serious cash using this method.
Earning Potential: Unlimited
Bitcoin Affiliate Programs
- Effort: Low
- Income: Low to Medium
- Risk: Low
Affiliate programs are when you share a link with friends or invite friends to sign up and the company you do it for rewards you if any of them do sign up. Many exchanges currently offer this type of program and reward with coin or pieces of coin (although some do pay in fiat currencies).
These affiliate programs could potentially earn you hundreds or even thousands a month on these exchanges if you can refer enough people to the exchange and those people are making multiple large trades per month. But even if your link is only ever used by a handful of small traders, you are still earning entirely free money through them.
There are online retailers that also offer affiliate programs that pay out in bitcoin but, at the very least, you can earn affiliate income just off of exchanges and convincing people on your list to join and use them.
Earning Potential: $5 to $1,000
Gambling
- Effort: Low
- Income: Low to High
- Risk: High
Gambling is always an option for earning money but what many people do not realize is you can gamble using cryptocurrency as well. It’s entirely possible you will end up with nothing but it’s also possible to double your bitcoin holdings all at once.
To do this, research for a provably fair bitcoin casino online and make a deposit to play around with on the site or platform. Most bitcoin casinos have a very small house edge of 51% which gives you a much better edge than you will find at any in-person casino for you to win something. What makes it even fairer is it’s easy to check if the algorithms are actually as fair as they are being advertised.
There are also bitcoin casino’s that are ridiculously basic, so they don’t require you to have to learn something more complicated like black jack or poker. This can include betting on whether the algorithm will produce a number from 0-100 that’s over or under the chose number which essentially gives you a 50/50 shot at winning. It comes with higher risk and higher rewards.
These ease of use, transparencies, and verifiable fairness makes it a much more recommended way to gamble then to actually go to a casino.
That being said, it’s not for everyone. If you need help with gambling addiction, please visit gamblingtherapy.org for more information on who can help near you and for programs and free advice.
Earning Potential: Zero to Unlimited
Write About Bitcoin
- Effort: Medium to High
- Income: Medium
- Risk: Low
There are currently dozens of news website, blogs, and other websites with a focus on cryptocurrency. If you know how to write decently well and you know a lot about bitcoin or other major cryptocurrencies and blockchain, this could be a great option for you. If you already have experience in writing, it would be even better.
There are currently crypto start-ups cropping up everywhere that are hiring for good bitcoin and crypto writers that just need competent individuals that can do things like write bitcoin blog posts, bitcoin social media posts, bitcoin0related press releases, and other bitcoin related content production.
Some of these jobs pay in USD (regardless of what country you live in) and other will pay in a cryptocurrency, it really just depends on the company. Sometimes it varies from the company itself, with some months having pay in crypto and others in USD fiat currency.
Earning Potential: $5 to $60 Per Hour
Sell Crypto-Related Products or Services
- Effort: Medium to High
- Income: Low to High
- Risk: Medium
Providing goods and services to people with in the crypto community is also a good way to expect pay in crypto itself as the people within this vast community obviously already have a store of cryptocurrency to work with. Some of these potential opportunities include:
- Building and selling crypto software
- Offering marketing services to crypto companies
- Acting as an escrow agent for bitcoin transactions
To accomplish this type of earning, think of what people within that community might need and try to be a person that can fill that need for them- simple enough.
Earning Potential: $0 to Unlimited
Mine Bitcoin
- Effort: High
- Income: Low to Medium
- Risk: High
These days, it is no longer feasible for hobby miners to just easily earn mining bitcoin and it has become difficult to profitably mine lesser-value cryptocurrencies. In the old days, anyone with a decent gaming GPU had the potential to earn money and coin by mining any number of cryptocurrencies, including and especially bitcoin.
Mining is very high-risk now. You would have to build a mining farm – people who are high end miners all mining at the same time – and do so in a place with a cheap energy source (less than $.05 per kWh) and even then, you may end up bankrupt and having to sell off your mining equipment.
For this reason, this option is best left to big players in the field.
Earning Potential: $0 to Unlimited
Bitcoin Lending
- Effort: Medium
- Income: Low to High
- Risk: High
You can currently lend bitcoin online through participation in P2P lending markets. Basically it connects you with people who would like to borrow bitcoin or other currencies and then they get charged interest on paying you back. You can do this yourself but there’s no guarantee that you’ll be paid back by your friend or family member, which could make for an awkward personal life.
That being said, lending always comes with its own risks. Small amount reap small rewards but alrge amounts would mean much bigger losses if something were to go wrong.
Always be wary with lending money online and ensure you have good collateral for incentive to actually be paid back.
Earning Potential: 15% Per Year
HYIPs, Pyramid Schemes, and Coin Doublers
- Effort: Low
- Income: Low
- Risk: High
High yield investment programs (HYIPs), pyramid schemes, and coin doublers were popular during the crypto boom of 2017, but they are technically still found online today.
All pyramid schemes, HYIPs and coin doublers are doomed to fail. The purpose is to make money from the last people to join the scheme so if you’re at the top then you will make money no matter what but if you’re the bottom 95%, you risk losing it all. It’s important to be very careful with this, morality of it aside.
Earning Potential: Zero to Unlimited
Bitcoin Forks and Other Crypto Forks
- Effort: Low
- Income: Low to Medium
- Risk: High
Cryptocurrency forks occur when members of a crypto community and its creators cannot agree on a rule change, causing the crypto to branch off in a different direction while still also remaining on the current direction. This essentially creates two different versions of the same coin. These forks have happened before with Ethereum (with ETH and ETC), bitcoin (with BTC and BCH), and with Bitcoin Cash (BCHABC and BCHSV).
This gives everyone on the cryptocurrency free crypto as you suddenly have the same amount of it on each path. For example, if you held ten bitcoin in July 2017, then you own 10 BTH and 10BTC after August 1, 2017 when their split occurred. You technically create crypto out of thin air, despite not being able to spend both at the same time.
These forks become a great opportunity as the price starts fluctuating wildly. BCH jumped from $100 to $1,000 in the first few hours on August 1st, and that could be a huge pay off should you sell at that moment. You could buy and sell the forked version of any popular crypto if that happens in order to make huge profits from that fluctuation period.
Earning Potential: Varies on new coin success
Trading Bots
- Effort: Low
- Income: Low to Medium
- Risk: High
Trading bots use algorithms to make trades based on the current market activity of the cryptocurrency you have it directed at. Good developers have created these bots using the history of crypto trading data and read market conditions of today to determine whether to buy or sell now. You can authorize bots to make trade on your behalf or alert you to ripe trades if you want to have the final say.
All of this being said, for every legitimate trading bot, there are 99 bots built to scam you out of money. Many bots guarantee daily profits and promise easy money where results simply do not stack up even remotely. We have reviewed on this site some good and popular trading bots based on ease of use and results, but none are ever a sure thing. The best results come from bots that allow for customization of settings which also requires you to know a certain amount of what you are doing anyway.
However, using a good trading bot can result in you easily making money with limited involvement. If you gave it $1000 to begin with, for example, you may have consistent money grow over time. But you could also end up having earned nothing.
Earning Potential: 0% to 100%
Binary Options Trading
- Effort: Medium
- Income: Low to High
- Risk: High
Most trading binary options are scams, just like with trading bots, but similar to the simple gambling sites, you either win or lose by guessing whether or not something is over or under a set price within a set amount of time. The number of scams present has, of course, giving them a bad reputation over the years. It does not mean it never works, however.
This is less investment-based, and more gambling based. The number of scams has also caused Canada to ban the option entirely as a means of protecting consumers. It’s a very high-risk way to make money but you can do it.
Earning Potential: Zero to Unlimited
Futures Trading
- Effort: Medium to High
- Income: Low to High
- Risk: High
Bitcoin futures trading is an investor option. You take a long or short term position on the futures of the coin via contract, with the long position buying at a specific date and the short-selling at a specific price. This obviously requires a good consistency at predicting future prices (good luck with that) in order to make money.
The first regulated bitcoin futures trading marketplace launch at the end of 2017, just before the all-time high bitcoin price of $20,000, and is now covered in regulations by the CFTC which gives them an extra layer of legitimacy as a market option. Learn from Bakkt for more information on this.
Earning Potential: Unlimited
Ask for Donations or Get Creative with your QR Code
- Effort: Low
- Income: Low
- Risk: Low
You can use QR codes and tip button options online as a means to ask people to donate money to you. For example, if your QR code gets featured in a public place, this could result in a lot of donations coming in. If you have a tip button for people who like what you had to say or advertisement that allows someone to donate or direct even pennies at the bottom of your page and millions of people visit, you suddenly have the potential to earn a lot of money.
Earning Potential: Low
Crypto Interest-Earning Savings Accounts
- Effort: Low
- Income: Low
- Risk: Medium
Wallet service providers have now begun to offer interest, similar to fiat currency banks. You allow your currency to sit with them for a set period of time, and they offer 1-5% interest over a year of time. While this requires you to lock your funds for that year, it is still free money. And the option of compounding interest maximizes possible returns.
Unfortunately, there are few guarantees that your money is 100% safe. The same can be said about banks but banks can often be bailed out by governments and have vast umbrella protections. Cryptocurrency holdings are known for being hacked (think on the number of markets that have been hacked over the years) and what’s more, companies in this sphere go belly up all the time.
Blockfi is currently one of the reputable providers of crypto savings accounts and offer interest rates as high as 6% per year for both BTC and ETH.
Earning Potential: 1% to 6%
Get Cashback with Affiliated Retailers
- Effort: Low
- Income: Low
- Risk: Low
There are a growing number of retailers that offer cashback in crypto for purchasing with them. Think about how ebates work. You buy from a big brand like Nike or best Buy or Groupon, then use the cashback extension of your choice to earn this kind of free money.
Lolli is one example of a crypto based service that does this. If you make purchases through them at any of the retailers they list, you can earn crypto back on that purchase. Some of those retailers give as high back as 9%. Pei is another one that allows for this, giving cashback in the form of giftcards, BTC, and USD.
If you are going to buy something from a company anyways, why not try to see if someone will give you cash back for doing so, right?
Earning Potential: 0.5% to 9% Per Purchase
Play Games to Earn Bitcoin
- Effort: Low
- Income: Low
- Risk: Low
Arguably the most fun way to earn bitcoin (or really any cryptocurrency) is through playing games.
Similar to faucets, some provide a trickle of currency to the people playing those games and also like a faucet, there were more of them that paid better during the early days of bitcoin.
Other games let you earn crypto be farming for rare loot or collectibles you can then sell in their online marketplace to other players.
Then there are the MMORPG style games that allow you to earn digital currency by completing various in-game tasks that then has real value on various cryptocurrency marketplaces.
Huntercoin, Steem Monsters, and Storm Play are 3 of the most popular coin earning games. None of them will earn you much profit but they are fun. If you’re going to “waste time” playing some games anyways, you may consider it useful to add one of them to the list.
Start a Crypto YouTube Channel or Podcast
- Effort: Medium to High
- Income: Unlimited
- Risk: Low
If you are the creative and endeavouring type, you can try to build your own corner in crypto medier via platforms like Youtube and podcasting. This won’t necessarily earn you cryptocurrency itself, but you can earn fiat money through advertising, referrals to crypto pages and platforms, affiliate sales, and QR codes or donations.
It would require building a dedicated following of people within the crypto community and a knowledge of the latest, best, and worst things within the crypto space or specific coin of your choosing.
This method is not an easy or quick by any means, but it does have unlimited earning potential and growth. During the height of the crypto boom, for example, some Youtubers were earning 6-figure incomes per month just in advertising revenue.
Build a Website and Sell Advertising Space
- Effort: Medium to High
- Income: Unlimited
- Risk: Low
Another option for the creative and endeavouring souls among you is the building of a crypto-focused website. Through it, you can sell advertising space to start-ups who will pay you in a significant portion of their own coin or to big players that will pay you to advertise for them in pieces of their coin.
This would require a knowledge of working advertisements platforms like Google AdSense and/or advertising networks. Once your site has a significant threshold of people visiting it, you will also find crypto companies approaching you with advertising offers.
Thousands of crypto websites exist out there currently with new ones attempting to create a space for themselves all the time, but that being said there are still plenty of niches not filled within the crypto space (or even the blockchain space). This becomes even truer for regional based. As the acceptance and use of crypto expands and companies expand worldwide, there will be a greater need for local based sites on the latest in crypto events, news, and offerings.
For example, you could make a site for regional discussions on a specific coin or all of cryptocurrency solely for Ethiopia. You could also consider writing product reviews, analysing investments, technical analysis, reviews of companies, and explanation pieces to draw people to your site.
Become a Crypto Influencer
- Effort: Medium
- Income: Medium to High
- Risk: Low
Social media influencers have a nearly limitless potential to make money from their following. If you have a large following and base your account around the crypto community, this niche could garner a very profitable situation. This will begin to get crypto companies to pay you just to tweet or post about them and it’s especially useful for start-up companies that need the publicity.
If you are able to build the following people based on the interest in crypto and/or blockchain, you will have the potential to leverage that following for your own financial gain.
Work for Coins or Projects in Marketing/PR Roles
- Effort: Medium to High
- Income: Low to High
- Risk: Medium
Marketing and PR jobs are a necessity for start-ups to have a chance at working. If you look for and take a job in that sphere, there is a good chance they will pay you in cryptocurrency.
Think about the early days of Google and Apple, when people were paid in mostly stock options because the companies could not afford to pay in a lot of USD. If the token or coin you are paid in explodes in growth, you are suddenly worth a lot of money and have a lot of money.
This role does not even require a lot of PR or marketing experience and could include things as simple as translating whitepapers into your language or having good social media experience. These jobs can range in importance and experience level from grunt tasks to executive management positions. Apply everywhere you can and flex your skills when possible if you wish to earn cryptocurrency this way.
Exercise to Earn Crypto
- Effort: Low to High
- Income: Low
- Risk: Low
Sweatcoin is an app on iOS and Android that allows participants to convert steps into cryptocurrency. The idea is a social experiment to see if people can be encouraged to exercise more if they got paid small amounts to do it. For every 1,000 steps, you earn about one Sweatcoin (SWC).
Currently, SWC has no value on exchanges, but it does have value within their own marketplace. They offer airline miles, video streaming subscriptions, ebooks, and even physical items like iPhones.
The Downsides of Being Paid in Crypto
Volatile: A volatile market makes the earning potential of being paid in a cryptocurrency a wary one. At any given moment, the worth of that coin could dive off a cliff. If your bills are also being paid in crypto, it is not as difficult to accomplish but if not, then it makes your income very unreliable.
Regulatory Changes: Currently, governments the world over are navigating how to label and regulate this unstable market in order to protect consumers and the world market. This has led some governments to ban cryptocurrency altogether. If you’re being paid in a digital token or coin and the government suddenly introduces strict regulations, it can have a nominal impact upon you and your earning potential.
Changing Tax Requirements: Just like with regulations, tax codes are also changing. The requirements per country are confusing and could land you in a lot of trouble if you don’t know what you are doing.
Crypto Payment Availability: If you make most or all of your money in cryptocurrency, it may require a steady stream of selling it off in order to live since most companies and people do not accept crypto payments for things like rent, mortgages, food, electricity etc.
These disadvantages are real considerations should you choose this path and it’s important to arm yourself with the knowledge necessary for a peaceful existence while making money this way.
Tax Treatment by the IRS – How do they work?
The US Government has had some measure of tax policies on bitcoin since 2014 and has treated the purchase of it as purchasing a property. This means any profits requires capital gains taxing.
Many people wrongly think there are no taxes involved in this sphere and that can cause you a lot of problems. If the IRS believes you have been earning significant money through crypto income, they can come after you. The fines alone can get quite expensive. Hiring a good accountant might be the best investment for you.
Here are two steps to take when dealing with cryptocurrency and taxes:
Calculate
Calculate how much profit you earned from selling cryptocurrency. This figure will be called your realized gain or profit or inversely, your realized loss. If you bought low and sold high, this number should reflect that. If you bought high and sold low, the number should be negative.
Dates
Note the dates in which you purchased and sold your crypto. The period between the two is called the holding period. If this period is a year or less, it will be considered a short term gain. If it is more than a year, it is considered a long term gain. This is important because the IRS charges taxes differently for long and short term gains.
Short term gains are treated more like ordinary incomes and added to the amount of money you made that year, making it already your standard tax rate. Long term gains are calculated as capital gains- meaning you pay a separate and special capital gains tax and not an income tax. This tax is generally lower and in the United States comes at three levels, depending on income and filing status (0%, 15%, and 20%).
After going through those two steps, you will be able to properly add the concluding information to your pay report and pay the lawful amount necessary.
Final Words
Bitcoin is just one offering as a unit of measurement, a medium exchange, and a store of value offers itself up as a unit of measurement, a medium of exchange and a store of wealth value, and has the potential to become the programmable money of the future.
Though purely speculative, the above list can lead you to make quite a profit via earning cryptocurrency. It should help you make the choices that best suit you in your endeavor to being a part of the blockchain revolution. With that in mind, earning crypto today could result in multiplied value should you hold onto it with market gains for that coin or token but is, at the very least, still useful income should you sell right away.
Follow the methods above to start generating your own bitcoin profits and join the revolution! What are you waiting for?