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What is a Crypto Faucet: Free Money or a Waste of Time?

what is a crypto faucet

If we told you that at one time, you could earn up to five BTC by doing little-to-no work, you’d think we’re crazy. It’s hard to believe indeed in times when a single Bitcoin goes for over $40,000. With cryptocurrency mining becoming increasingly challenging to get into, people are looking for ways to get their hands on some crypto that doesn’t involve departing with thousands of dollars.

So, how to get crypto for free? The answer is through a crypto faucet. These faucets represent websites that allow users to get cryptocurrency in exchange for performing small, menial tasks. While the opportunity to earn a significant amount of crypto is long gone, these sites can still net you some income.

Let’s go over the history and basics of crypto faucets and examine whether they’re still worth the effort today.

What Are Cryptocurrency Faucets?

A cryptocurrency faucet is a website (or sometimes an app) that pays out tiny amounts of crypto to visitors. In exchange, the visitors have to do small tasks like completing surveys or captchas, playing games, or watching ads. Some sites also require you to follow links to get crypto, which could be a risky endeavor given the number of virus-infected site links placed on many faucets.

The name ‘crypto faucet’ stems from the practice of giving away crypto in small increments over time, just like water dripping from a leaky faucet.

The first Bitcoin faucet was created by a senior Bitcoin developer Gavin Andersen. He made the faucet in 2010 when Bitcoin was worth around $0.08 and still struggling to find broader acceptance and popularity. At the time, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were known to a much smaller number of people and were not taken seriously.

Another reason for the popularity and importance of the initial faucets was the lack of cryptocurrency exchanges back in the day. Unlike now, when there are hundreds of exchange platforms, there were hardly any places to buy Bitcoin back then. As such, faucets were one of the rare ways for people to get their hands on the early crypto coins.

The purpose of the first Bitcoin faucets was to help introduce the broader population to the then-new concept of cryptocurrencies, increase adoption, and foster future transactions by giving out a small amount of crypto.

How Do Cryptocurrency Faucets Work Today?

How does a modern-day crypto faucet website function? Well, in a pretty similar fashion, just with considerably smaller crypto rewards. To be precise, the dollar value you’re getting could be similar to what you could earn back in 2010, but the amount of coins you end up with is a lot smaller. Those lucky users who held onto the BTC made through faucets in the golden days are now quite well off.

If you were wondering how to get crypto for free, using faucet websites is still a viable choice. However, you’d take years to accumulate any tangible rewards. BTC faucets of today mainly give out Satoshis, which represent the millionth part of a single Bitcoin. The exact reward rates differ between faucet sites but don’t expect any of them to make you a millionaire.

In general, a crypto faucet gives micro wallets to users for storing cryptocurrency earned on the site. The cryptocurrency is held on the site’s micro wallet until you reach a certain threshold. Once you earn enough cryptocurrency, you can then withdraw the coins to your personal cryptocurrency wallet. These thresholds also depend on the crypto faucet in question – if the threshold is higher, it could be some time before you’re able to withdraw your free crypto rewards.

How Are Cryptocurrency Faucets Profitable for Their Owners?

Some people might be wondering why anyone would give out free crypto, as this would be highly unprofitable, to say the least. Well, as we said before, the cryptocurrency is not given out for free. The tasks you complete in exchange for crypto bring traffic and revenue for the people behind them, a part of which goes to the owners of the BTC faucet site.

The cryptocurrency you end up getting is only a tiny portion of the money involved, making it profitable for people to run these sites. Ad revenue plays an especially important part in these agreements, which is why most of these sites are now completely riddled with advertisements, making for a pretty unpleasant user experience.

Faucet Rotators and Auto-Faucets

Of course, it wasn’t before long that people thought of ways to earn Bitcoins without actually doing any work. Their solution was auto-facets, bots that automatically visit crypto faucets that pay users for looking at ads. The bot goes through a list of these sites and collects the cryptocurrency rewards from each.

The problem with using auto-faucets is that they bring a minuscule amount of crypto, even when compared to the traditional methods of completing tasks on faucet sites. That is because the revenue gained from watching ads on visited sites is the lowest out of all sources of money on coin faucet sites.

Another automated and more lucrative method of speeding up the process of earning from faucets is through faucet rotators. These rotators automatically switch from one faucet site to another once the tasks on the site are finished but require you to complete the tasks yourself.

How Much Can You Earn From Crypto Faucets?

Again, the amount of money you can earn depends on the faucets you visit. On average, you can expect the daily returns to be somewhere in the $5 ballpark – if you complete the manual tasks and do not rely on a bot for ad watching.

Hence, a Satoshis faucet isn’t really a worthwhile investment, as you could earn much more in the same amount of time doing low-skill labor such as data entry. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try them out at all, but just temper your expectations and don’t expect to make the gains that people ten years ago were able to. Remember – they had to sit on their crypto for ages before it became worthwhile.

The ideal scenario would be finding a crypto faucet site that doles out a new currency that shows promise of rising in value. If you got in early and got a decent chunk of coins just like the faucet users of old did, you could stand to profit greatly in the long run.

You can already find many faucet sites that don’t deal in Bitcoin or Satoshis exclusively. There are Ethereum faucet sites, Bitcoin Cash faucets, or those dealing in Litecoin and other lesser-known cryptos.

A chronic problem plaguing the crypto world is the constant fear of missing out on the next big thing and not getting in early enough to profit. Be wise, do your research, and hope for the best, but don’t expect miracles.

Crypto Faucet Scams

An important thing to keep in mind is that the field of cryptocurrency faucets is riddled with scams and viruses. Many of the once reputable websites are now scam sites, while the links you have to follow as part of your tasks now often infect your device with trackers or malware. Additionally, a deceptively easy Bitcoin faucet might place a crypto miner on your computer or ask you to do tasks and then fail to pay out your funds.

Therefore, it’s highly recommended to triple-check before accessing one of these sites. Also, make sure you’re using an antivirus and other forms of cyber protection before wading through the murky waters of the cryptocurrency faucets.

How to Withdraw Funds from a Crypto Faucet?

As we’ve touched upon previously, most faucets provide you with a micro wallet to use on their website. Unlike regular wallets, micro wallets can hold only a small amount of cryptocurrency and cannot be used outside the faucet crypto website – similar to wallets provided to you by cryptocurrency exchanges.

As you complete the tasks, you accumulate droplets of crypto into your micro wallet. Once you’ve reached the necessary minimum threshold, you’ll be able to withdraw funds. To do so, you have to connect your personal wallet to the site. Some faucets will send your crypto to the personal wallet automatically once the threshold is hit, while others leave it to you to do it manually. Once the funds are withdrawn from the micro wallet, you’re free to do with them as you please.

Best Crypto Faucets

Finding a legit Bitcoin faucet these days is an arduous task due to the sheer amount of scammy and unsafe sites. Still, there are proven websites out there that you can earn some easy crypto on.

There are plenty of faucets out there, each focusing on a specific cryptocurrency. Let’s go through some of the safest and most lucrative faucet websites for each crypto.

Bitcoin Faucets

  • Cointiply – an incredibly popular faucet for BTC that has paid over $3 million in BTC so far and rewards users with about 200 Satoshis per hour.
  • Bitcoin Aliens – a lucrative faucet where hourly rewards average at 4,000 Satoshis.
  • BTC Clicks – a faucet dedicated to ad clicking, where one ad click rewards you with 20 Satoshis.

Etherum Faucets

  • Ethereum-faucet.org – an Ethereum-focused faucet that offers dozens of different methods for earning tokens.
  • FireFaucet is one of the best crypto faucet apps that rewards ETH tokens through offerwalls and solving captchas or watching videos.
  • Allcoins.pw – An auto-faucet that supports browser mining capabilities

BCH faucet

  • Faucetcrypto – a BCH faucet with no withdrawal fees and a 20% referral rate.
  • Allcoins BCH – an auto-faucet site with 0.0003 BCH payouts.
  • ESFaucet – a multi-currency faucet with BCH support that lets you withdraw funds whenever you want.

Are Bitcoin Faucets Worth It?

Crypto faucets are definitely worth it if you carefully pick which sites to work on. With so many scams and ad-filled sites, it can be easy to end up wasting your time or put your device and assets at risk.

However, with smart use and by sticking to proven high-rewarding faucets, you can get your hands on a bit of cryptocurrency quite easily. While faucets will hardly make you rich, they’re a great way to get yourself a small chunk of crypto to start playing with or to use in trading. If you’re lucky, and the crypto you earned through faucets jumps in value, you might even turn a decent profit.

FAQ

Are crypto faucets legit?

Faucets for Bitcoin and other cryptos can be perfectly legit and represent an easy way to get a small number of tokens for free. However, there’s a huge amount of scammy websites around, so make sure to do your research before picking your preferred site.

What is the best crypto faucet?

Cointiply and FireFaucet are considered to be the best crypto faucets around.

What is the highest paying real faucet?

While hundreds of faucets offer decent rewards, Bitcoin Aliens is one of the highest-paying ones with a reward rate of 4,000 Satoshis per hour.

Do Bitcoin faucets still exist?

Absolutely, but they give a significantly smaller amount of Bitcoin than they did back in their heyday.

What’s a crypto faucet?

A crypto faucet is a website or app that rewards users with very small amounts of cryptocurrency in exchange for performing easy tasks like completing captchas and quizzes, watching ads, and so forth.