🔎3 ways to earn in crypto
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In today’s newsletter:
🔎3 ways to make money in crypto
📊On-chain alpha
😂Crypto meme of the week
🗞️The latest DeFi news
🔎3 ways to make money in crypto
The past few weeks have been pretty rough for crypto.
But even in times like this, there are many ways to make money in this market that don’t require buying tokens that hopefully will go up.
Traders and investors are not the only ones that got rich in this space.
Here are 3 ways to earn in crypto that don’t depend on the market conditions:
1. Airdrop & Yield Farming
There are now more airdrop and yield opportunities for bluechips like BTC, ETH, SOL, and stablecoins than ever before.
For instance, on Pendle you can easily lock in a 19% fixed annual yield on stablecoins or a 12% fixed annual yield on BTC in just a few clicks.
If you’re willing to put some effort in, you can even earn up to 50-80% APR on stables.
If you’re interested in airdrop farming but unsure where to start, I suggest you follow the list below which includes the X content of the most popular airdrop farmers:
https://twitter.com/i/lists/1749495881814933936?s=20
I also wrote a thread on my favorite airdrop strategies a few weeks ago:
2. Short new high FDV tokens
The image above includes the charts of the new tokens recently listed on Binance.
As you can see there, every single one of them performed poorly since their TGE. I believe there are two main reasons for this:
Altcoin Dispersion - Dozens of thousands of tokens are being launched every day
Unsustainable valuations - Lots of projects are trying to launch their tokens at very high valuations to make their early investors rich
Yet there’s a popular saying: "In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity."
You can take advantage of unsuccessful token launches by shorting them.
Hyperliquid is known for its very fast perp listings of new tokens.
Obviously, shorting new high FDV tokens is not risk-free, as you can easily get liquidated given that most new tokens are generally highly volatile.
But if you manage your risk well and use low leverage, this can pay off big time.
If you want to try this, start with a small amount to gain experience first.
3. Funding rate arbitrage (Delta-neutral strategies)
Funding rates are periodic payments made between long traders (buyers) and short traders (sellers) in perpetual futures markets.
Every major exchange uses funding rates to maintain market stability.
If funding rates are positive, longs pay shorts.
If funding rates are negative, shorts pay longs.
You can use this to your advantage by building delta-neutral positions in order to capture yields from funding rates.
e.g. buy $1000 of BTC and short $1000 of BTC when the funding rates are highly positive (you can track them on Coinglass)
Through strategies like this, you can consistently earn very high yields on stablecoins, although this requires active management.
Nowadays, there are also many protocols like Ethena & Resolv which automatically arbitrage funding rates on the behalf of their users in order to generate a yield.
However, if you do it manually and for a wide range of altcoin pairs, you can earn way higher yields. (even though it’s time-consuming)
Hyperliquid built an interesting dashboard called “Funding Comparison” where you can find funding rate arbitrage opportunities.
Stephen wrote a great thread on funding rates arbitrage a long time ago:
Even during market downtrends, there are still many opportunities in this space.
Contrary to popular belief, crypto is still a highly inefficient market and there are several ways (as shown above) how you can capitalize on this.
What I highly recommend to everyone is this:
Find a crypto activity that you enjoy doing and can make you money, and strive to become the best at it.
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On-chain Alpha🔎
Ethereum’s gas fees have reached a five-year low
Crypto Meme😂
The latest developments in DeFi
21Shares proposed staking for Ethereum ETFs
Uniswap released the mainnet for Unichain, its own Ethereum L2
Lido introduced Lido V3, allowing builders to create institutional staking solutions and implement leveraged staking strategies
Ondo Finance announced Ondo Chain, a new L1 built for institutional-grade RWAs
Hey Anon released the public beta for its AI-powered DeFAI platform
AAVE expanded its native stablecoin called GHO to Base
Avalon launched its token $AVL. 20% of AVL’s total supply is allocated to airdrops
Mantle announced that its S2 Methamorphosis Points Program ends on Feb. 16. On top of this, funny.money, a new AI Agent platform on Mantle, released its referral program
Arbitrum released BoLD, enabling permissionless validation on its L2s
Frax Finance launched frxUSD, its new flagship stablecoin. $sfrxUSD, frxUSD’s staked version, will offer high-risk-adjust savings yields
Story Protocol, a new IP L1 blockchain, launched its public mainnet
NEAR Protocol introduced its $20M AI Agent Fund
Virtuals Protocol has officially launched on Solana
Solayer released its token $LAYER on Solana
Peapods Finance released the public beta for leveraged volatility farming
Franklin Templeton expanded its money market fund to Solana
That’s all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
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