​To understand yield farming, we have to put things into perspective by using current examples of our day to day life. The best example is a Savings Account. Most folks likely have a savings account with a bank right now.

The problem with a savings account is most United States banks can only promise you around one dollar a year, for every $1000.00 you put into savings. If you wanted to $10.00 or even $100.00 a year for simply saving money, imagine how much you would need to save every month. The amount you would need to save would easily exceed the amount you make at a minimum wage job.

Most Americans can barley keep over $500.00 in savings, so the financial incentive to get one free dollar for saving $1,000.00 is not very encouraging. If the banks offered you $10.00 for every $500.00 you save, that would probably motivate you to save a lot more right? You could earn free money passively, but unfortunately banks make money off of your savings. So the more you save, the more they make. Offering you higher financial incentives, takes money away from them.

Yield Farming

​Yield Farming is basically the crypto version of a savings account, with a much better financial incentive. The term “Yield” is a financial word that means, “What you get for investing,” and the term “farming” is used, because it represents the possible exponential “growth” you can receive for saving your crypto.

Thus, Yield farming is the process of putting your cryptocurrency in the most optimized platform (aka crypto savings account), so that it will earn you free crypto (aka more money) for every year you store your crypto. The key to yield farming, is finding the right place (aka crypto bank) to hold or “hodl” your cryptocurrency.

​So why should you care? You should care because crypto currency yield farms (aka savings accounts) earn you more money than a savings account with a corporate bank. So if you don’t own crypto or hodl it on platforms like in Uniswap, Pancake Swap, Quick Swap, etc… you are actually losing money!  

​To put this into perspective, let’s talk about the inflation rate in the United States. As of October 2021, the national inflation rate has surged to 6.2%, which is the highest it’s been since 1990. In fact 40% of the United States dollars in existence was printed in the last 12 months resulting in the 6.2% inflation rate!

To some people, they may think 6.2% is not that much, but to fully grasp the entire average, lets break down the inflation rates by category to get the fuller picture of just how much more money you are paying to survive day to day.

JUST THIS YEAR…

–Energy costs were 24.8% and rose to 30% in October. Expect your energy bill to go up around 5-6%.

–Gas costs are up 49.6% (you are lucky to find gas under $4.20 in states like California and New York).

–Shelter and Rent increased from 3.2% to 3.5% (A one bed, one bath apartment in California used to average around $1,300.00 a month in 2015. Now studio apartments easily averaging more than $1,500.00 a month.)

–Restaurant dining was 4.6% and is now 5.3%. So your morning latte at Starbucks used to cost around $5.00 and is now easily over $6.00.

-At home food costs were 4.5% to 5.4%, so you are paying more money for less food at Costco.

–Purchasing a new vehicle was at 8.7% and is now 9.8% Purchasing a used vehicle was 24.4% and is now 26.4%. You are getting less milage and paying more for a used vehicle.

Cost of “normal” life

I could go on and on, but hopefully by now you are getting the grasp of just how much more money you have to pay simply to survive (depending on the State you live in). Either way, you costs for essentials has increased 6.2%, while your job only gave you a 3% raise. How do make up that 3.2% financial gap? Credit Cards? Loans? Save? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

​Some banks, like Chase, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo, only offer you 0.01% annual percentage interest rate with a monthly fee of $4.00 – $5.00 just to store your money in a standard savings account. The national average with other banks ranges around 0.06%. How on earth are you supposed to keep up with the inflation rate when practically all the banks don’t even give you more than one dollar for saving?

It’s an unrealistic way to live. In fact, it’s no way to live! So if your money is just sitting in a savings account right now, you might do well to look into yield farming (aka crypto saving). Staking crypto is a really great way to make up that financial gap with the inflation rate. Below are some coins to consider staking if you own cryptocurrency, or are looking into investing in crypto currency.

Remember all investments have risks. So, invest wisely.

–Tether (USDT) receive up to 3.5% return on your investments.

–Ethereum 2.0 receive up to 4.5% return on your investments.

–Terra Luna receive up to 12.10%return on your investments.

–Polkadot receive up to 13.9% return on your investments.

–Tezos receive up to 10.6% return on your investments.

–Polygon receive up to 13.5% return on your investments.

–Binance receive up to 7.5% return on your investments.

–Algorand receive up to 7.5% return on your investments.

–PancakeSwap receive up to 33.5% return on your investments.

–Solana receive up to 10.5% return on your investments.

–Cosmos receive up to 4.5% return on your investments.

​You may wonder what platforms you would need to stake these coins in order to get these return rates. Unfortunately, that is a bit of a catch. Cryptocurrency is catching on like wildfire, so more and more yield farms are being produced. As of today, not every platform will allow you stake all these coins in one place. You have to create a crypto wallet (aka crypto savings account), on multiple platforms in order to stake certain coins.

For example, Coinbase will allow you to stake Ethereum 2.0, Tezos, and Cosmos, but not Solana or Terra Luna. If you wanted to stake Solana or Terra Luna, you would have to create a separate wallet on other platforms like MathWallet, Atomic Wallet, Exodus, Binance, etc…

Yes it is more work, more passwords, and more time, but then again, look at those percentage rates? It’s definitely worth your time if you don’t want to work the rest of your life. Until a platform is created that can allow people to buy and stake any coins all in one place, we do have to use some extra determination to get ahead of the rat race.

Read next: What Every Veteran Should Know About Money & Cryptocurrency

Editor’s note: The author is an Air Force Veteran, Cryptocurrency Investor and Published Writer. If you can’t wait for her next insightful OpEd, you can buy Sienna’s book on Amazon by clicking here. Remember, crypto is not a get rich quick scheme. Don’t invest all your rent money into a fad coin. Be smart!