Why Bitcoin Faucets: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

  

I used to spend some time on Bitcoin faucet websites when I first started learning about cryptocurrency. For those who are not familiar, faucet sites are websites that give visitors free access to very small quantities of cryptocurrency (i.e., they "drip" very small amounts of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies). 

Normally, to get the free money, you have to click a button and solve a captcha. The coins gradually accumulate in your account until you reach the minimum withdrawal threshold, which I've seen range from 0.0001 to 0.001 BTC. You then withdraw your accrued funds into a personal wallet at that point. You can claim on certain faucet websites every 15 minutes, on others every hour, and on some only once each day.

The frequency of your ability to submit claims affects the compensation. Less BTC is awarded each claim the more frequently the service permits you to submit claims. 

Why on earth would a website offer free Bitcoin, you might be wondering. It’s a good question and I’ll explain in a bit.

Free Bitcoin? 🤔

Faucets are typically encountered by most Bitcoin users early on. It takes place before individuals are fully versed on how to obtain, utilize, and trade cryptocurrencies. For me, it was like that. I was wary about purchasing Bitcoin on an exchange as a beginner to cryptocurrencies. My excitement was high when I discovered my first Bitcoin faucet. 

In a frenetic effort to find a faucet site that paid out more Bitcoin, it spent a few weeks searching the internet for additional faucet sites. I wasn't sure why the websites were dispensing Bitcoin at that stage. I assumed the faucets were authentic even though they seemed a little mysterious to me because there was so much about cryptocurrencies that I still didn't fully comprehend.

Ad-Based Faucets

In these weeks, I discovered a wide variety of faucets. The majority of them promised meager sums of Bitcoin in return for solving a captcha. Later, I discovered that these faucets were making money from the various pop-ups and adverts that were on their pages (a good example of this is the Moon Faucets). The meager Bitcoin payments served as a method of luring visitors to the website so they would watch and, ideally, unintentionally click on adverts. 

Many of the advertisements were for cloud mining companies offering unrealistic returns. I frequently saw advertisements for purported investing websites that similarly made inflated return promises. Additionally, advertisements for ICOs and other faucet websites would appear.

The pages were created in such a way that it was frequently unclear where you were required to click to submit a claim. It was simple to unintentionally click a few advertisements. With the cryptocurrency they distributed, several of the faucet sites featured lotteries and casino activities. For many newbies, the promise of converting a small number of satoshi into whole bitcoins was tantalizingly presented by these alternatives. 

Of course, the reality of using faucet winnings to purchase lottery tickets or engage in other forms of gambling is that you simply give the minuscule sum of cryptocurrency you received back to the website.

Mining Faucets

Additionally, I discovered Ethereum faucets that provided minuscule sums of ETH in exchange for solving a captcha. I later realized these sites were highjacking my computer’s CPU for the purposes of mining. 

After some investigation, I found that the electricity my computer was using at the time this occurred was probably worth more than the ETH I was receiving. I soon stopped visiting those websites. 

The Ugly: Faucet Scams

The third category of faucet sites is much more sinister than the mining faucets that use your CPU for mining and the ad-based faucets that entice you to see adverts. These are websites that advertise themselves as online wallet services and give you little cryptocurrency deposits in return for daily logins. 

Unfortunately, they are almost always blatant scams intended to part you from your cryptocurrency. Any deposit will result in one of two things: 1) You try to remove it but are unsuccessful 2) The website abruptly vanishes, taking all your money with it. 

In a technical sense, faucet wallets aren't actually faucets because a genuine faucet doesn't actively seek to steal your money. Take my advice and don't even bother registering with a faucet wallet. If you do, make sure not to deposit any coins.

The Bad: Faucets Take a lot of Time

Faucets may significantly sap your time, which is far more valuable than any Bitcoin you would receive in exchange. It doesn't appear to be much at first. A few minutes are needed for each claim. But in practice, it may seriously interrupt your day. With faucets comes the need to submit as many claims as you can on as many different websites as you can. 

The fact that many faucet websites give incentives for daily consecutive logins or as a portion of claims made over the preceding few days helps to explain this. The layout of these websites encourages users to submit as many claims as they can to maximize the compensation structure.

This implies that if a faucet permits claims once every 15 minutes, you must keep an eye on the time to make four claims in an hour. It indicates that you think about making a claim on a faucet site as soon as you get up (s). It entails leaving supper to make statements (much to the chagrin of your spouse or partner). It might be frustrating to try to do tasks at your day job while being constantly interrupted by people making claims. 

All of this adds up to the nearly inevitable point where people stop using faucets. After a few weeks, I did in fact come to the conclusion that faucets weren't worth the effort. By that time, I had discovered that I could deposit $100 into a Bitcoin ATM and instantly receive the revenue from several lives worth of faucets.

The Good: Faucets are a Gateway into Cryptocurrency

You could assume that my aim is to criticize faucets as a time waster. That is not the situation. I don't have an entirely unfavorable opinion about faucets. Although there are some scams you should be aware of (such as fraudulent faucet wallets), I believe that legitimate faucets are crucial to the bitcoin industry. 

For many newcomers, they serve as a doorway. They allow users to become familiar with the idea of digital money before exposing themselves to any financial risk. Before trying to buy Bitcoin with my own money, I was able to test out wallets and learn blockchain technology thanks to faucets. My very first withdrawals from faucets were BTC, ETH, LTC, DASH, and DOGE.

Conclusion

In conclusion, faucets might be risky and wasteful, but they also offer those who are intrigued time to understand the idea of digital money. In fact, as soon as I was prepared to go past faucets, I was also prepared to register an account on an exchange and make my first cold wallet.

If after reading this you still want to give faucets a try I would recommend this one. You won't make a ton of satoshis but you also won't get scammed.

Disclaimer

The content is for informational purposes only, may include the author’s personal opinion, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of TheDailyCryptoZ. All Financial investments, including crypto, carry significant risk, so always do your complete research before investing. Never invest money you cannot afford to lose; the author or the publication does not hold any responsibility for your financial loss or gains.

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