Hi, folks! Sherpa here, once again, with another foray into crypto fundamentals & how to not get rekt in a market rampant with reckonings. Try saying that five times fast.
This week, I’d like to discuss a subject near & dear to my heart: stacking sats, as someone without a lot of financial resources. One of the things that always bothers me about Bitcoin maximalists is this attitude of, “just stack sats, bruh”, which isn’t realistic for a lot of people.
You can’t “dollar-cost average” $100/week into Bitcoin when you’re living paycheck to paycheck! It just isn’t a reasonable expectation, and excluding people from the financial revolution based on that is just a new form of gatekeeping. The answer to that? Stacking sats.
Whether through mining coins based on speculation, or passively stacking as a hobbyist miner as we mentioned in a previous article, or stacking through purchases - there are a TON of great ways to start piling up small amounts of Bitcoin which you can later aggregate into one wallet, as your stack grows.Let’s go through a few of my favorite ways to stack…
Lolli/Bitrefill/Fold/StormX/etc.
Lolli was one of the first ‘sats-back’ extensions in the space, and as such, has an awful lot of available merchants you can shop through, earning between 1%-10% + back on some purchases. This works a lot like the “Honey” extension you may have seen advertised: they use available discounts or “affiliate links” for merchants in order to get a % of your purchase as profit without any additional expense to you. They then kick some of this back to you, in the form of ‘sats-back’.
Lolli can be a great way to stack on purchases you were already going to make, but they are only available in the US & limited territories as of right now.
There are also projects like BitRefill, FoldApp, StormX, etc. that reward you with sats for gift card purchases, completing offers, or if you’re eligible - getting a crypto-backed debit card that gives you a % sats-back on every purchase. You can also check between these apps, because sometimes you can get double sats-back by purchasing a gift card through one service - and then using the gift card on a Lolli-connected merchant to earn more sats back on the actual purchase! Or if you get a Fold card, use that to pay on Lolli merchants, which equates to double cashback.
Fold’s app also has a fun mechanism where once every day you can ‘spin the wheel’ for a chance at free sats, from as low as 5 sats all the way up to a million sats - with more chances & better prizes once you’re a Fold cardholder. Even for someone not spending any money, though, it can be a way to earn a few sats/day with a couple of clicks.
Faucets/StakingFaucets were one of the original ways to spread adoption. In the early years, a Bitcoin faucet would give out multiple Bitcoins per use - providing non-miners with a way to stack, and encouraging further use of Bitcoin among people who wouldn’t have had access, otherwise.
Today, faucets are more often a way to catch tiny amounts of numerous shitcoins, in the hopes of eventually reaching the withdrawal barrier & being able to cash out to your own wallet. A lot of sites will also claim to have faucets, only to be phishing for information or identifiers, or worse, trying to infect you with malware.
However, there are a couple of sites that I’ve seen faucets on that actually work as intended.
BTCPop has altcoin faucets that frequently give up to five or six sats worth of a coin, every half hour, throughout the day. They also offer passive staking on a lot of older PoS coins, so you can earn just by keeping coins in your wallet. You can also frequently find ‘arbitrage’ between BTCPop & the next site, where you claim from the faucet on one, and once it adds up you send to the other site to sell for more. That other site is…
StakeCube which offers daily faucets (located under community/faucets), a loyalty program, and indefinite cloud mining contracts (length is for the life of the StakeCube platform) which might be worth looking into. Again, there is some degree of arbitrage possible between StakeCube & BTCPop for the coins on both sites, as both sites feature a low volume ‘exchange’ for all of their coins.
However you stack sats, just be safe, be responsible, and don’t let anyone tell you that you have to spend a fortune to be part of the crypto game. What are your favorite ways to stack sats for free? Let me know in the comments, and check out this space next week for another dive into the fun but mental space of crypto fundamentals.
If you found this helpful, feel free to follow me on Twitter at @shitcoinsherpa or toss a few shekels in the tip jar.
BTC: bc1qahxrp47hpguhx8y8r382dekgca34tlv54aufht
Doge: DJRy9gGSUGeyXfVcZXzKLkBv7RmDLv3MhJ
Disclaimer: Please be advised that I own a diverse portfolio of cryptocurrency assets, and anything written or discussed in connection to cryptocurrencies – regardless of the subject matter’s content– may represent a potential conflict of interest. I wish to remain transparent and impartial to the cryptocurrency community at all times, and therefore, the content of my media are intended FOR GENERAL INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY. Nothing that I write or discuss should be construed, or relied upon, as investment, financial, legal, regulatory, accounting, tax or similar advice. Nothing should be interpreted as a solicitation to invest in any cryptocurrency, and nothing herein should be construed as a recommendation to engage in any investment strategy or transaction. Please be advised that it is in your own best interests to consult with investment, legal, tax or similar professionals regarding any specific situations and any prospective transaction decisions.
Thank you Wendy! I'm a 6 month newb and your white papers are awesome.
Nice work Sherpa links well with PC gamer/Hobbyist article :)