1. Sign up with an exchange Plenty of crypto exchanges will put some crypto in your wallet if you sign up as a client (just as brokerages will give you cash if you sign up as a client.) You may want to pick the best available option, although it could be worth your time to earn them all. The good news is that this is among the safest options if you’re looking to score free coins, though you’ll need to put up some yourself. Some of the exchanges offering free crypto include the following: Coinbase Gemini BlockFi Celsius Crypto.com From time to time other exchanges add promotions or provide time-sensitive bonuses, so stay on the lookout for those additional opportunities. 2. Crypto staking Staking your crypto can help you earn a continual source of income, and that can be especially advantageous if you’re a long-term buy-and-hold investor or looking to stack up some coins. The rewards vary from coin-to-coin, but those for more speculative coins tend to be higher. Some cryptocurrencies use a “proof-of-stake” protocol to validate and manage their decentralized system. That gives those who own the digital currency a chance to participate as a validator and earn income through staking their coins. You’ll support the infrastructure, get to hold your coin while doing so and even earn some income, too. Here’s how crypto staking works and how to get started. 3. Free NFTs A non-fungible token, or NFT, is a kind of digital asset or artwork, and they’ve become incredibly hot recently. Technically, NFTs aren’t cryptocurrency, but you can trade them for crypto quickly. So how do you get free NFTs in the first place? There are giveaways for those, too. If you’re on the hunt for NFTs, you have a couple good avenues. First, many new crypto projects offer NFTs as a type of “invite bonus” to their top supporters. You could follow a new crypto on its Discord channel with the hope of participating in an invite bonus pool for the people who drive the most traffic to the channel. Another alternative is to search Twitter regularly for NFTs giveaways, which may be offered for retweeting and promoting the project itself. A retweet could get you a chance to win an NFT. Of course, NFT giveaways can create some tax issues, so be aware of those. 4. Learn and earn Some websites offer you the chance to learn about cryptocurrency and earn a little bit of it at the same time. You may need to watch some videos, take a short quiz and pass to earn the bonus. Coinbase Earn is one site that offers rewards for learning about crypto, but others such as CoinMarketCap.com also provide an opportunity to rack up free rewards. The thing with these “learn and earn” promos, however, is that you may not always get the cryptocurrency you want. 5. Crypto savings account Looking to combine an easy way to earn interest with cryptocurrency? A crypto savings account lets you earn interest on your holdings while you continue to enjoy their potential rise. And the initial interest rates you receive can be much better than with traditional banking accounts. One option here is BlockFi’s savings account, which offers a tiered-rate structure. That means the more you have deposited, the lower your interest rate. High-flying coins such as Bitcoin and Ethereum may offer an annual return of a few percent, whereas stablecoins might offer several percent higher interest, helping to make those a more attractive place to hold your money. 6. Crypto lending Take your cryptocurrency game to the next level and lend money to borrowers and earn interest on the transaction. It’s called decentralized finance, or DeFi, and you can use the power of digital currency and decentralized apps to earn money through peer-to-peer lending. Regardless of which lending platform or currency you use, however, you’ll want to be careful that the potential borrower can repay the money you’ve lent. Additionally, it may make sense to fund many smaller loans or fund them in connection with other lenders, to help reduce the risk. If you go this route, however, it’s important that you work with a well-established platform. 7. Crypto credit cards If you already have regular cash-back credit cards, it can be easy to make the leap to crypto rewards cards and enjoy crypto in exchange for your purchases. These credit cards may offer rewards on purchases in the form of Bitcoin or other popular altcoins. And other spending bonuses may be available as well. Two popular options here include credit cards from BlockFi and Gemini. Of course, the same caveats apply to these cards as they do other credit cards: Don’t run up a huge credit card bill trying to get the relatively modest rewards. 8. Browse the web Looking for a crypto that you earn while you browse the web? The Brave browser may be for you. You’ll earn the Basic Attention Token cryptocurrency for using the browser as long as you have the Brave Rewards program turned on. Brave blocks the typical ads and cookies, but still gives you the option to see some ads in exchange for cryptocurrency. The program is available in most countries, and the company shares 70 percent of ad revenue with users, it says. Payouts are made once a month. It’s something you’re doing anyway, so maybe it makes sense to get paid to browse.