The word investor usually applies to people with a LOT of money. But what we are seeing in the crypto industry is a new type of investing, sort of micro investing. In this way everyone can be a hot shot investor 😊.

The Steem blockchain in a many ways is a blockchain of opportunities. Maybe you have a friend who don’t want to get that much in the crypto world. Ain't time for that.
What are the possibilities for investing with Steem and get some passive income?

Option 1 – Buy STEEM and HODL

This is probably the most wide spread option for investing in crypto in general. Just buy some STEEM and wait a couple of years for it to go to the moon. But since our lovely blockchain is distributing inflation trough Steem Power and voting, not just mining, a whole new area of possibilities opens app.

Buying Steem and just HODL is a waste!

Investing trough delegation

The delegation option is amazing tool on the Steem blockchain. It allows new business and apps to start easy with delegations from the community. At the same time it allows the Steem Power holders to earn something trough delegation. The most wonderful thing of this concept is that, this is basically risk-free investment. You don’t give your Steem to the project, but lending it. There is also no commitment to give away the SP for a certain period. Everyone can undelegated at any time he wishes. The delegator has a total control on his asset.

I have some bitter experience in 2017 with ICO investments. At that time people were fighting to give away their money, or more precisely ETH to projects with a fancy white paper and without any working product at all. Literally giving away money and hoping for the best. Comparing to the delegating option on Steem, this is some ultra risky thing to do.

Probably the most of the Steemians are aware of the delegating option. Just don’t know do they appreciate it enough. To an outsider this can be very attractive. Instead of just investing in some crypto and hoping for the best, you can buy some STEEM power it up, delegate it and start earning. This can be a great argument to Steemians to bring some new people here 😊.

Options for delegation

This is not a post for advice where to delegate. It is about the possibility for earning passive income trough delegation. But I will make some examples.

1. Delegating to promotional services - aka bots

This is probably the most obvious way to delegate. The payments are daily and in STEEM.
If you are long enough on Steemit you know how the posts end up on trending. They buy their votes trough services that offers exactly that. A liquid STEEM for a big vote. These services need a lot of SP to deliver a big vote. Long story short, one can delegate SP to them and have a passive income in Steem. The ROI is not a crazy number, it is somewhere around 2% per month. But it is better then nothing. It is also reasonable. Because projects with crazy numbers for ROI usually doesn’t ends well.

One of the most known promotion service is @smartsteem. It has a nice web https://smartsteem.com and interface. Others are @therising, @booster, @appreciator etc. If you have significant investment you can diversify between some of these.

2. Delegating to projects for tokens

This is another great way of delegating. Projects usually needs some SP to support their user base trough upvotes. In return you get tokens.
This is a riskier option then delegating to promotional services, but also can be a much more profitable one. The word risk here have a meaning of risking not earning nothing. Not loosing your money.
If the project succeeds, and their token have a nice value one can ends with a great ROI.

Now, with SMT delay this project has been slowed down a bit, but we see an option are already put in places. Steem Engine is one of them. It is a side chain for Steem, where everyone can create a token. An exchange is also live, and people can trade tokens there. This is very new so time will tell how it goes. The team behind it is very solid.

Some projects are finding different ways to get their tokens on exchanges. Steemhunt is making a swap of their Steemhunt tokens to ERC tradable tokens. Some other projects are following this path as well. In this way users can earn tokens on Steem and then trade them on exchanges like ERC token.

Here are some of the projects that for delegating at the moment:

• @steemhunt
• @actifit
• @dlike
• @magicdice

All the above are offering tokes for delegated SP. You can do more research on each of them. These are not the only ones. There is more.

3. Investing in gaming?

This is an interesting topic to consider. First, are games really an investment. I will mention @steemmonsters here, since they seem to tick a lot of box for investment, even if the investor is not actually playing the game. Buying some Steem Monsters cards, especially the more expensive ones. Steem Monsters have tournaments now, and soon an option to delegate cards. If someone want to win a tournament, he will need some quality cards. Having not enough money to buy them, a rent option is more affordable. Steem Monsters cards are limited, so even without the renting option, the possibility for their value to go up in the future is high. Just need a couple of years 😊.

DrugWars also have clans, and one can invest in them and they pay up liquid steem.

Conclusion

Well there is no shortage of option here that’s for sure. Steem is an excellent place for investing and passive income. The delegation option is an amazing feature of this blockchain. Users can invest without risking their base assets only by powering up and leasing SP. Promotional services aka bid bots are providing a secure and stable ROI. New projects can be an amazing opportunity and offer a great opportunity trough their tokens. Even investing in gaming is possible on this platform.

All in all, having some SP is a worthy asset. I can see even more projects coming up in the feature and they will fight to get SP. Interesting times ahead 😊.

All the best
@dalz