Passive Income Strategies with Cryptocurrencies. Part B: Staking

After the astounding success of Part A (I made $0.04!), I couldn't wait to write this second part.

Staking is a fairly new idea within the cryptocurrency space, as far as I'm aware only PIVX & ION coins currently offer it. However I can see it becoming more & more popular as people try to work out an alternative to the electricity & hardware hungry 'Proof-of-Work' model to secure the respective crypto networks.

So staking is more correctly called 'proof-of-stake' - you agree to open your wallet to the network, you agree to stake an amount of coin to keep the network running smoothly, and in return for this you have the chance of earning some new coins.

I have now been staking 1000 ION coins for about a week (i bought for them between 30 & 40 cents a coin, they are now 50 cents). In this time I have earned.....zero! In my innocence I thought there was some linear relation between number of coins + length of time staking, but now I'm led to believe it's a little bit more complex. The number of coins give you a 'weight' (more coins, more weight) up to a particular limit (beyond which you are wasting your time & might as well start a second wallet to stake with), your time staking also gives you a 'weight' (more time, more weight) up to a limit. So it now appears that if you are only staking a small amount (like 1000), you might NEVER stake (for the whole week the wallet tells me I may receive a payout in 7 days, this doesn't go down!)

As you can see, I'm learning as I go! I'm going to continue staking another week, if still no payout then I'll have to make a decision:

1. Sell the coins on Bittrex & repurchase BTC (I'm not a fan-boy of ION, nothing against them but long-term I would choose BTC)

2. Increase the coins up to the optimum level to start getting a return from staking (More research needed on what this level is, 6000?)

3. Join a staking wallet where I'll get 'daily payouts (again, I need to research this more. I have just asked the question on the ION Slack channel)

I believe ETH have been discussing moving to Proof-of-Stake in the future, definitely something I'd be interested in.

Hopefully Staking will become a fixture in the cryptocurrency scene, a method of earning predictable returns like a savings account used to be!

Comments, corrections & upvotes all greatly received.