"My investments are doing great! HODL!" You say, trying to hold back the tears. The reality is holding is pretty damn hard when things are going down, and you are starting to wonder exactly how low your portfolio can dip. Some of mine are looking that way. In fact the only positive in my portfolio is the ability for me to mint new coins. This at least means I'm still making progress even if the prices are stagnant or still receding.
I don't own any antminers, and my computer is about 6 years old. So, how do you mine cryptocurrency if you don't have, or don't care to purchase hardware. The answer is proof of stake coins. These nifty little coins will pay you an awesome dividend so to speak for holding them. Some coins are actually dual purpose and can be both mined and staked, but others are purely POS minting. All you need to do is hold them in a desktop wallet that's unlocked for staking.
This is a great way to add some passive income to your portfolio, and to squeeze a little more out of coins that are currently not going anywhere. It's also a super awesome time to buy them as a lot of them are on sale! That means you can be ahead of the game when the market kicks back into high gear and not only pick up some gains on the coins themselves, but you can also establish a great staking weight to mint more coins for even cheaper than some long term holders.
How do you mint proof of stake coins though? First, you'll need to download the official wallet from your coin's website. Don't keep them on an exchange or use any other wallets, because then you will most likely not be eligible for staking rewards. Leaving coins on exchanges is a bad idea anyway, and a lot of people saw their coins vanish this way. Next you'll need to buy some coins on an exchange, and send them to your wallet. How many you need will depend on the coin itself and how many other people are staking. Usually you can get an idea about this by visiting the corresponding bitcointalk threads for the coin. Most likely somebody has already asked this, but if not typically people are happy to answer you.
Before you forget about it make sure to encrypt and backup your wallet file, and then unlock it for staking. Your wallet will now begin minting coins for you. Yep, that's it. If your wallet is having trouble getting connections make sure your firewall or anti-virus is not blocking it. If you're still having trouble you'll need to refer to a support channel for the coin in question as you may need a solution specific to the coin.
These are the staking coins I'm currently in, but I'm always looking to add more good ones to my list.
One of my newer coins, and one I was happy to pick up at a nice discount. This coin has a large community of supporters, and they've achieved a lot in a short time. If you want a staking coin, but you don't have much to invest this one also has the benefit of having a free airdrop for a few more weeks, and there's also tons of opportunities to win free $ONIONS in contests on their forums. It's also a privacy coin which will be very important in the future. The staking return is not as high as my first coin, but that will most likely make them more valuable in the long run. They've already achieved an ATH price of over $18. I'm working on getting enough $ONIONS to stake everyday as that will be extremely valuable when the price starts going back up.
This is honestly my best paying coin. I got into Syndicate after the developers had abandoned it, and nobody wanted it. I bought a few thousand coins pretty cheaply, and not only did I make some good gains on the coins, but I also get great staking income from it. A community team has picked up the development and Syndicate is growing. It's reliable, well paying coin that also has masternodes if you want to run one. Most information about it is through the official telegram if you want to contact the devs.
I learned about this one from the above mentioned DeepOnion forum. It's my newest addition, and I'll slowly be building my stack, and fortunately it's pretty cheap to get into right now. I expect it to be my second best earner after Syndicate due to the high rate of return. It's the most expensive coin on the list, but you don't need very many of them to start staking. It also has an ATH price of $42 which makes paying $5 for it seem like a much better deal! I'm hoping to pick up some nice gains on this coin when the crypto prices pick back up. They have a large community on discord, and the coin also has a very low supply which raises the price when more people catch on to it and want to stake as well. You can also create a masternode if you have 3,000 coins. See masternodes.pro to compare masternode returns.
This one is honestly one of my few regrettable purchases. I FOMO'd into this one a little bit, and even though I didn't spend much to acquire my coins since it was so cheap I still could've gotten a lot more for what I paid. I'm planning to hold what I've got until I make a decent return, however, I will say this is the worst staking coin I have. You need a lot of coins to stake. I have over 200,000 coins, and I've not gotten a stake still. I've been staking since January 2nd!
This one is more of a speculative play than an income producing asset. While it is advertised that you get 50% staking rewards good luck getting it. The price of the coin has also been negatively effected by a debacle with the primary exchange for this coin, CoinsMarket. The site went down unexpectedly, trapping many investors coins for a long while, and it has not yet recovered. It's not Electra's fault, but people aren't sensible so I could be holding this one for a long time. They are making some nice developments though, and making some strides toward payment processors and adoption. My only worry with this coin is that the supply is very large which makes it hard for it to gain value.