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.