4 Ways to Make Money with Crypto in 2026 (Most People Only Know #1)
Most people who get into crypto learn one strategy: buy something, hold it, and hope. That's a legitimate approach, but it's only one of four distinct ways people actually earn money in this market. This video walks through all four — investing, trading, DeFi yield, and copy trading — and explains what each one actually requires from you in terms of time, skill, and risk tolerance.
Way #1: Investing (Buy and Hold)
The first category is straightforward: buy cryptocurrency and hold it. The two largest and most popular assets by far are Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin is often treated like gold — a commodity and a store of value — while Ethereum's smart contract functionality gives it a different role entirely.
Looking at the weekly chart tells the real story of this approach. Bitcoin started near a dollar, ran to roughly 18,000 in 2017–18, fell back near 4,000, climbed to around 60,000 in 2021, dropped to 18,000, then pushed into the 70s and back into the 50s. Ethereum followed a similar rhythm from around a dollar to 1,300, back near 100, up again, down again. The gains existed — but you were waiting eight years or more to see them.
One point worth understanding: where you hold matters as much as what you hold. In the US and several other countries, you can hold crypto inside an IRA, which changes how capital gains are treated depending on the account type and how it's structured. If long holding periods are your plan anyway, it's worth learning how to hold crypto in a tax-advantaged retirement account rather than defaulting to a taxable personal account.
Way #2: Trading (Shorter Timeframes, Active Work)
The second category is trading — daily, weekly, or whatever timeframe fits your schedule, much like trading stocks. Some traders stick to spot buying and selling. Others use leverage, which is available in certain regions and on certain exchanges depending on where you live.
Tools matter here. The video demonstrates indicators on charts — MACD, RSI, OBV, plus custom indicators people build and publish themselves. If you're serious about reading price action before you commit capital, it helps to understand how to set up crypto charts and indicators in TradingView so your decisions come from a repeatable process rather than a feeling.
Way #3: DeFi and Yield (Passive Income)
The third category is the largest and the most technical. Liquidity pools work like a currency exchange at an airport: the exchange has to hold both currencies, and when people swap, a fee is generated — and as a liquidity provider, you earn a slice of it. Pools can be double-sided or single-sided, and impermanent loss is something you need to model with a calculator before depositing.
Lending protocols are simpler. You deposit crypto, borrowers take over-collateralized loans against it, and you earn interest. Staking is a separate mechanism again, with several variations worth learning. Then there's yield farming and looping — putting up $10,000 of Ethereum as collateral, borrowing $3,000 in stablecoins, buying more Ethereum, and redepositing. That's leverage, not passive income, and loan-to-value and liquidation risk both apply. Anyone exploring this should first understand how staking and DeFi yield actually generate returns.
Way #4: Copy Trading
The fourth way removes the need to trade yourself. On copy trading platforms you can browse traders, see how many people are copying them, and allocate a set amount — say $500 — to mirror their positions. When they buy, your account buys. When they sell, your account sells. Performance fees typically run 10% to 30% of profits, since the trader is doing the work.
Allocation is where most people go wrong, so it's worth reading how to allocate capital across multiple copy traders safely before funding anything. If you want to see how the mechanics work in practice, Bitunix is one of the exchanges that publishes trader stats, copier counts, and drawdown history openly, which makes it a reasonable place to study real data before committing.
Learn All Four in Detail
Each of these four paths has its own courses, live sessions, and daily discussion inside Crypto School — including a weekday live webinar at 12:00 Eastern that gets recorded and archived. If you want structured, category-by-category training on investing, trading, DeFi, and copy trading, you can join the Crypto School community here and work through the paths in order.
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