Passive income is one of my interests so putting some money into a proof-of-stake (PoS) cryptocurrency like Peercoin (PPC) and setting up a full node by letting the wallet run on my computer to collect staking rewards seemed like a very interesting idea.
According to the official website, the ROI on staking Peercoin is 1% per year so in order to make $1 a day by staking peercoins, I would need to make $365 worth of peercoins a year. Since the annual ROI is 1%, I would need an initial investment of $36,500. That works out to about 91,250 PPC at current prices which would also make my address the 59th richest PPC address on the blockchain.
And that’s not including the fact that like nearly all cryptocurrencies, the price of PPC is very volatile – e.g. it was trading at $0.60 per coin just two months ago. Because of this, small price shifts up or down can make the rewards from staking seem pretty irrelevant.
So there goes that idea…
Now, if I wanted to make e.g. $10 a day instead of $1 then I would multiply my initial investment of $36,500 by 10. If a coin had an annual ROI of 2% or 3% instead of 1%, then I would divide my initial investment of $36,500 by 2 or 3, respectively.
From this little mental exercise, it seems apparent that the equation to find out how much of a cryptocurrency (in $x) needed to make $y worth of it per day assuming an annual ROI of z% is x = (36,500y)/z. Neither market cap nor price per coin factor into this equation.
Here is a table that shows several PoS coins, their approximate average annual staking reward rate, and the amount of money that would need to be invested in order to make about $1 a day rounded to the nearest dollar (note that some of these coins might have other requirements for staking such as a minimum balance and coin age):
| Coin | Ticker | annual staking rate | investment needed to make $1 a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| PRIZM | PZM | 120% | $304 |
| Lindacoin | LINDA | 70% | $521 |
| Philosopher Stones | PHS | 50% | $730 |
| Bulwark | BWK | 43% | $849 |
| Phore | PHR | 37% | $986 |
| ChessCoin | CHESS | 32% | $1,141 |
| ION | ION | 25.15% | $1,451 |
| HoboNickels | HBN | 25% | $1,460 |
| Stakenet | XSN | 20% | $1,825 |
| Decred | DCR | 13% | $2,808 |
| Blocknet | BLOCK | 12.9% | $2,829 |
| Cashcoin | CASH | 10% | $3,650 |
| Neblio | NEBL | 8% | $4,563 |
| Qtum | QTUM | 7% | $5,214 |
| CloakCoin | CLOAK | 6% | $6,083 |
| Emercoin | EMC | 6% | $6,083 |
| PIVX | PIVX | 6% | $6,083 |
| CacheCoin | CACH | 5% | $7,300 |
| GalaxyCoin | GLX | 5% | $7,300 |
| Gold Pressed Latinum | GPL | 5% | $7,300 |
| Grain | GRA | 5% | $7,300 |
| Komodo | KMD | 5% | $7,300 |
| KuCoin Token | KCS | 5% | $7,300 |
| MintCoin | MINT | 5% | $7,300 |
| ReddCoin | RDD | 5% | $7,300 |
| Yacoin | YAC | 5% | $7,300 |
| YbCoin | YBC | 5% | $7,300 |
| YobitVirtualCoin | YOVI | 5% | $7,300 |
| Navcoin | NAV | 4% | $9,125 |
| Neo | NEO | 4% | $9,125 |
| Particl | PART | 4% | $9,125 |
| Deutsche eMark | DEM | 3.8% | $9,605 |
| Nexus | NXS | 3% | $12,167 |
| Electra | ECA | 2.5% | $14,600 |
| Waves | WAVES | 2.1% | $17,381 |
| Gridcoin | GRC | 1.5% | $24,333 |
| Stratis | STRAT | 1.5% | $24,333 |
| AndroidsTokens | ADT | 1.2% | $30,417 |
| BlackCoin | BLK | 1% | $36,500 |
| CinnamonCoin | CIN | 1% | $36,500 |
| IncaKoin | NKA | 1% | $36,500 |
| Peercoin | PPC | 1% | $36,500 |
| Colossuscoin | COL | 0.5% | $73,000 |
| ChessCoin 0.32% | CHESS | 0.32% | $114,063 |
| Nxt | NXT | 0.3% | $121,667 |
Back in the mid 2010s, there was a coin called HyperStake that promised extremely high staking rewards of up to 750% per year. As long as the price of each coin remained the same, an initial investment of less than $50 would have yielded a $1 daily return!
Of course, the high inflation rate meant that the price had to fall – HyperStake (now rebranded as Element) is down 99.8% from its all-time high. To prevent this outcome, most PoS coins like ReddCoin, Navcoin, Emercoin, and Neo have less extreme returns of about 4 to 10% per year. However, the prices of many of these coins have fallen by over a third during the past couple of months which goes to show how easy it is for potential returns from staking to be completely overshadowed by price volatility.
If you know of any coins with good potential for staking then feel free to share them in the comments.