2 Ways to Scrap Stress & Make Money on Blockchain during Lockdown
Welcome to our timeline.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put the world in shelter-at-home lockdown, nearly half of low-income US households have suffered job loss or loss of income, and the President of the United States has suggested people should inject bleach-based cleaning projects (he has subsequently said that’s his attempt at sarcasm. He must have a different definition of sarcasm).
In addition to a public health crisis, people are facing a very real crisis of boredom and isolation.
Medical professionals will (hopefully) guide us in how to handle the actual virus — but the existential crisis of boredom is its own problem.
It’s not just that people have nothing to do — if it was a matter of being entertained alone, Animal Crossing New Horizons is clearly there to fill the gap. In fact, the self-contained world of whimsy blissfully free of viruses but full of demanding animals who want furniture and fruit is the best selling game of the series. It became the #1 trending game on the Nintendo Switch platform, with Japan, the U.S., Korea, France, and Spain at the top.
Some people are even using Animal Crossings to overcome social distancing — such as my daughter and step-son’s partner who met in-world for a quick catch up.
The challenge is that people have real anxiety — justifiable worries about health and money with no clear guidance about what they can do besides stay at home and do nothing, which is a tough order for most people.
Turn to technology…
As a writer and promoter of blockchain technology, I’ve been waiting for the disruptive revolutionary solutions to change the way we do everything for several years now. I’ve been wondering where these solutions are now that the world is facing a real crisis with real economic implications. Some blockchain companies are pitching in — others, we imagine, are somewhere in the limbo of development. Not quite ready for primetime while the economic crisis crypto enthusiasts have been anticipating for nearly a decade.
But there are two solutions for you right now — they won’t solve the pandemic problem or the attendant financial crisis, but they can add some entertainment and some possible income to your day.
HedgeTrade — Fantasy Sports for Crypto Enthusiasts
Would you like to put your money where Tim Draper’s mouth is, but find yourself in pecuniary constraints that make that not entirely feasible?
HedgeTrade is the crypto social trading platform for you. According to the site, HedgeTrade aligns the purposes of experienced and newbie crypto investors. It allows experienced investors to publish “blueprints” or predictions about the futures of crypto assets and new users can purchase access to the blueprint. If the traders making the blueprints turn out to be correct in their predictions, they profit from everyone who purchased the blueprint. If the resident experts are incorrect in their predictions, those that paid for that information get their money back; some will even get a share in the trader’s lost stake.
HedgeTrade offers more transparency than most copy trade platforms — it’s on Ethereum blockchain and all predictions made by expert traders are tracked for accuracy so users can check the leaderboard and read up on a trader’s performance before betting on their accuracy or inaccuracy.
But can you make money?
Yes. Maybe not lifechanging amounts, but it is a good way to learn from the experts on crypto markets, and earn a few dollars in tokens. If you do it every day you may find your earning stacking up into the hundreds at least.
If you are a standard “user” instead of an expert trader, you are most likely to make money either off the platform by following the good advice in the blueprints, or by choosing blueprints that you expect to fail which causes you to earn a profit.
Mary Thibodeau, Freelance writer and HedgeTrade user, described her experience like this: “Even as a completely new trader, I was able to make a little money on HedgeTrade. I was familiar with cryptocurrencies… but had never personally traded stocks. I knew I had a learning curve to climb and dug right in. I’m glad I did because I discovered I had a penchant for finding predictions that were sure to close Failure. I would buy predictions that seemed really unlikely to be fulfilled and then get my money back plus a share in the lost stake of the trader who posted it. It’s not as lucrative a way to earn as when you are publishing your own predictions, but it’s a good start and helps you learn how to get to the other side.”
The HedgeTrade platform is in open Beta but usage has increased since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has a simple, straightforward user experience so the play value is likely to increase in months to come but now is a good time to get on and give it a try. While you are home and have the time, after all.
Crypt-Oink: Fulfill your Pig Racing Fantasies
GoodLuck3, the first Japanese creator of blockchain-based games, has brought us a potent combination of super cute animals and a sense of competition in Crypt-Oink Racing Friends, a free game which allows you breed, train, and sell your unique Crypton (which is what they call the pig characters — it’s a play on the word Ton which is one way to say pig in Japanese).
You will need a MetaMask wallet to play of course. Our experience is that though the actual racing is somewhat limited in functionality, the logic behind breeding and training the pigs is incredibly complex, with supposedly billions of permutations possible for your unique pig, kept truly unique and immutable as an NFT on Ethereum blockchain.
Having played the game for several weeks, we have to comment that the races do not vary much and that training your pig is a lot of redundant racing. But your pig will gain value as you raise its abilities and its traits are passed on by breeding to other Cryptons. I made some in-game currencies but never succeeded in making any RAKUN tokens which can be traded on or off the platform. I think mostly you need to breed and sell outstanding Cryptons to other players in their open marketplace to actually earn — but who wants to sell an amazing pig that you have trained in over 300 identical races? Besides, look at that face…
Conclusion…
We have been told by the CDC that stress, listlessness, and feelings of isolation are to be expected during this time. We may look back on lockdown as a fuzzy, monotonous dream. But with some determination, you can make use of all this screen time you suddenly have in exclusion to other forms of human interaction.
Apply to some jobs (I like Angelist, personally), practice some recipes, back catalog watch something better than Tiger King, which is not likely to improve your mood or outlook on humanity and consider turning to blockchain as a way to do something a little fun and potentially a bit profitable.
Author’s Bio
Justin Roberti has a background in media and fine arts and has been writing and doing PR/marketing for over 20 years for Fortune 500 and startups in media, gaming, consumer tech, mobile tech, fintech, and blockchain. He is the PR Director for blockchain agency Zage.io.
