Quote from: thew3apon on October 21, 2014, 11:52:38 PM

Quote from: BrendonM on October 21, 2014, 07:15:59 PM

I am looking for ways to passively earn crypto, faucets are nice for building up some SAT for gambling, but are otherwise not really worth the time, and I don't have the money to just buy and sit on a certain amount, no-regerets style. I have heard that cointellect allows you to mine off a laptop, and that bifinex allows you to invest, with returns over time. I would normally have jumped right in, but after shelling out large amounts on CEX.io vouchers and then finally selling them back at a loss, I realized that I shouldn't be making the mistake of believing a too-good-to-be-true sounding offer.

What are people's opinions of these services? I don't know enough about the established economy, let alone the relatively new crypto-economy to make an expert assessment on my own.

The interest in Bitfinex is pretty high. You can just loan your USD, BTC, LTC and DRK to people and earn interest..

the swap-lending part is indeed an interesting feature. I kept some funds there in the summer when I didn´t want to trade because of beach. Some k usd actually bought me a beer or two each day, but to go in there with money you can not afford to lose is not a great idea.

What people very often forget to take into account is factoring in the risk they take.
With any exchange you do always have some risk that you are sending your money to nirvana.
With some the risk is lower with some it is higher.

What you should look for:

-is there a company behind it?
--registered (always check for yourself) - no Panama does not count. bellaruss also not. Southamerica is tricky.
-- do they have offices?
check them out on google street view (virtual offices do not count)
-Is there a real person behind it you can single out as responsible (CEO)?
--has to be in the official company register (otherwise it does not count)
---that person has some credible track record (news archives, historical company registry entries).

is there a bank account in a "civilized" country?

If one or all of the above are missing you are basically trusting a stranger with your money on a promise made on the internet...

Even if all of the above are given you still have some substantial risk left as the management or security might be bad (eg mtgox et al).

last but not least:
--Do they have a sound business model?
---If they can not make enough money (server and other technical cost, offices and at least 3 employees) of what they claim to do they will have to resort to something they didn´t claim before. Might even be pack up and run with the money.