Another Reason to Use Earn.com ...

I've flogged Earn.com before as a way to pay to communicate with me, and a few of you have chosen to do that (so far as I know, that link is not an "affiliate link," nor as I understand it am I compensated in any way if you join -- which you can do for free).

But of course there are other reasons to use Earn.com, and I've actually made more money on those other reasons than I have on valued messages from my dear readers. Unfortunately they in Bitcoin, so the high fees and long wait times make it impractical to withdraw four bucks or so I have in my account at the moment, but I expect one of two things to happen: Either Bitcoin will get better, or Earn.com will go with a different cryptocurrency in the near future.

In Earn.com you can add yourself to "lists" corresponding to your interests. At present there are 93 such lists, ranging from "C++ Programmers" to "Stanford students" to buyers of, or people involved with, particular cryptocurrencies.

When you add yourself to a list, you are saying that people can pay to contact you about the topic of that list. This has happened to me several times, and I've made a few bucks each time.

Now, there's something new: Ethereum token "air drops." The shortest primer I can come up with:

Ethereum is a cryptocurrency.

ERC20 Tokens are little bits of Ethereum split out for specific purposes. I'm not going to go into "Digital Autonomous Organizations" and "Smart Contracts" and so forth, but think of them like arcade tokens. For a certain amount of Ethereum, you get a certain number of tokens that can be used for a specific purpose.

An Air Drop is when a token start-up company gets together a group of people it expects will use, evangelize for, or help it improve, its product and showers them with some free tokens to get them interested.

I've been invited to two "air drops" so far this week. To qualify, you answer a few questions (including giving them an Ethereum address to send your tokens to) and join a focus/discussion group, and you're in.

I'm going to start in with a limited evangelist bit on those two air drops. I am NOT (yet) endorsing these startups. I'm just telling you about the two so that you'll know what kind of thing you can get into via Earn.com. I am not overly familiar with them, and you shouldn't consider this investment advice.

CanYa started up in 2015 and is building a "blockchain-powered marketplace of services." What does that mean? As I understand it, it means that if I want to hire a web developer in Mumbai, Moscow or Marseille, I don't have to find a way to get rupees, rubles or euros. I just transfer CanYa tokens (fee-free and peer-to-peer) via the app, which will also help me find that web developer, etc. The developer can in turn use those CanYa tokens to get his yard mowed or whatever, or exchange them out for crypto or fiat.

SKRAPS is a "spare change" app. There are others out there, and I am not going to try to tell you which one is best. The way SKRAPS works is that whenever you make a purchase using a debit card that you link to the app, the purchase is rounded up to the nearest dollar, and that "spare change" is invested in a cryptocurrency portfolio of your choice "based on your risk aversion" (sort of like how some mutual funds invest only in stocks that seem "safe," while others go looking for hungry startups and hope for a much higher return). Presumably the token here is an intermediary instrument, i.e. it represents a certain amount of that "spare change" and can be used to purchase a share in the chosen portfolio.

Once the "air drops" actually happen and I see token balances in my wallet, I'll explore their use further and if they're interesting I'm sure I'll blog about them. In any case, if you are involved in, or interested in, cryptocurrency, I suggest you hit Earn.com and start getting some of this cool stuff for yourself.