It’s a cliche, but, growing up, my Dad always preached about how there’s no free lunch in life. If you want something valuable, you need to put in the work to earn it -- or spend money to buy it.

This timeless notion also applies to getting bitcoins. If you want to get a substantial amount of bitcoins fast, you need to spend money buying them. If you want to get a substantial amount of bitcoins for free, you need to spend a lot of time earning them on websites called bitcoin faucets. Expending monetary or mental resources to get bitcoins is a necessity. But some methods of buying and earning bitcoins are more effective than others. Read on to learn the best ways to buy bitcoins and the best ways to earn them for free through bitcoin faucets.

How Do You Get Bitcoins? There are two ways you can get bitcoins: Quickly purchase a substantial amount of bitcoins on the internet or in person. Slowly earn a substantial amount of bitcoins for free through bitcoin faucets, like playing mobile or online games, completing tasks on websites, or writing about cryptocurrency.

How to Get Bitcoins Fast

1. Buy Bitcoins Online

To buy or earn free bitcoins, you first need to download a bitcoin wallet, which is software that allows you to securely send, receive, and store funds in the bitcoin network. There are four types of bitcoin wallets that you can use: mobile, web, desktop, and hardware.

Once you download a wallet, you need to set up an account on a cryptocurrency exchange that’s approved by your wallet provider. Cryptocurrency exchanges are market places where sellers trade cryptocurrencies to buyers in exchange for fiat money or other digital currencies.

Most exchanges accept bank transfer or credit card payments, and some even accept Paypal payments. They’ll also charge you a transaction fee for every trade you make. You can choose from hundreds of crypto exchanges, but the most popular and reputable exchanges are Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Coinbase, and Coinmama. Here’s a list of more popular crypto exchanges.

2. Buy Bitcoins in Person

If you’d rather buy bitcoins in person, you have four options to choose from:

Use websites like Coin ATM Radar to help you find a Bitcoin ATM, which works very similarly to a regular ATM, except you trade your cash for bitcoin.

Use websites like LibertyX to find retail stores across the United States that will give you bitcoin in exchange for cash.

Use websites like Paxful to find bank branches that will give you bitcoin in exchange for cash deposits.

Use websites like LocalBitcoins to find people who are willing to exchange Bitcoin for cash, in person.

How to Get Bitcoins for Free

1. Play Mobile or Online Games to Earn Bitcoins

One of the most entertaining and fun ways to earn free bitcoins is by playing mobile or online games. That’s right -- you can play games on your phone or computer and actually get paid in bitcoin. But if these bitcoin faucets want to make money and pay their players, they have to serve a lot of advertisements to their users.

To avoid the ads, you can join a bitcoin casino, where you bet your own money or bitcoin on traditional casino games, sports matches, and lotteries to potentially win a higher payout in bitcoin.

Here’s a list of some of the most enjoyable bitcoin games that you can play on your phone.

2. Do Odd Jobs Online to Earn Bitcoins

Another way to earn free bitcoins is by completing tasks on websites. Some companies will pay you in Bitcoin to test their web sites, take their surveys, retweet their posts, and complete other small tasks.

There are also websites that let people offer small bitcoin rewards to the person who can give them the best answer to one of their questions.

You can find odd-jobs that pay you in Bitcoin on BitcoinGet, and you can answer questions for Bitcoin on Bitfortip.

3. Read Classic Books to Earn Bitcoins

Paying people to play simple games and complete repetitive jobs sounds like a great way attract a lot of users and, in turn, tons of advertisers. But there are hundreds of bitcoin faucets competing for users and advertisers’ attention, making it hard to stand out from the crowd.

Users also don’t rely on faucets as a main source of income, so, a lot of the times, a small bitcoin reward isn’t enough to coax them into doing boring tasks during their free time.

To generate more user activity and advertising revenue, bitcoin faucets, like Bitcoin Aliens, knew they needed to find a better way to engage their users. So they decided to pay people to read. Their service, PaidBooks, compensates people in Bitcoin to read classic books like Pride & Prejudice, War of the Worlds, and over 600 other titles on their website. If you love a good book and want to earn free Bitcoin, consider trying it out.

4. Write About Cryptocurrency to Earn Bitcoins

Certain cryptocurrency blogs, news outlets, and forums will pay you in bitcoin to contribute your insights and write for them, if you have a lot of knowledge about the industry.

You can find article writing gigs for crypto blogs and news outlets on job boards like Coinality.

Popular cryptocurrency forums, like Bitcointalk, offer monetization opportunities to their established members -- companies can advertise their product or service in the signature of their posts.

Because advertisers usually want to partner with top-ranked members, and since the forum increases its members’ rank based off their activity, Bitcointalk makes it nearly impossible for them to spam their way up from the lowest rank of Newbie to the highest rank of Legendary Member. The only way you can increase your rank and earn free bitcoins is by providing a high quantity of high quality posts.

Bitcointalk lists all bitcoin signature campaigns and rates in this overview.