This continues last week's post.
A faucet 'drips' out a small amount of crypto every so often to a registered address. As previously discussed, they prevent entropy in the blockchain, amongst other things. An example of a 'true' faucet is the one on the Tezos Foundation, and it's great but only has a queue of 10 people and requires a mobile phone number. That said, it credits straight to a wallet without advertisements or withdrawal limits. There are however, as has been pointed out in some of the comments on my previous posts, some fairly scammy faucets that make their money by inundating you with ads and pop-ups and have a very low chance of paying out even if you make their minimum withdrawal. I have signed up for Qoinpro as the reviews seem promising, and it combines multiple crypto 'drips' onto one easy page. We'll see what happens with that when the balances build up sufficiently for a withdrawal.
'Quasi-faucets', if I can call them that, are far more interesting. Take Blockchain Poker for instance. You can log in for free, and if you have no money, every 3 minutes you can reload with about 0.5 cents worth of Bitcoin. The minimum withdrawal is around $10 of Bitcoin. I can't confirm that the withdrawals work or what the fees are, but why would I play on any of the mainstream poker sites that require a deposit when I can play an infinite amount of penny poker for free and potentially win crypto? The site is built on blockchain technology to demonstrate what it can do; it's more fun than sending a verification text message; and to be quite honest, the quality of the opposition in terms of their poker skill is not particularly high!
I'm a total gaming addict, though, so when I started hunting around for games that might be newer or more entertaining than poker, I found a few. Axie Infinity looks interesting, but maybe a bit cost-prohibitive to get into. The one that caught my attention was Splinterlands. One notable upside for me is that they accept payment through PayPal. I haven't got my head around crypto fees yet, and sometimes I lose out shuffling small amounts of currency around because I don't really know what I'm doing. Being able to buy Splinterlands cards, which are themselves digital assets, with PayPal is still a very efficient way for me to deposit fiat currency into crypto.
I played Magic: The Gathering back in about 1995, when I could have bought a Black Lotus for relatively little which might today be worth tens of thousands of dollars. I've been on the hunt for the next collectible gaming item that might shoot up in price ever since. Magic: The Gathering Online has seen a huge decline due to Magic: Arena coming out, so I went on to my collection of MTGO cards and sold all the valuable ones, raising 300 tickets. A MTGO ticket costs $1USD to buy, and it was one of the first examples of a digital commodity I can think of. In fact, as many readers here will probably know, the Mt. Gox site got its name because it was originally a MTGO online exchange. I sold my 300tix for around USD$270, credited to my PayPal through MTGO TRADERS, if anyone wants the name of a decent bot/website still running. I then blew most of it on Splinterlands cards. I'm finding it fun. I hope the game continues, and that any issues with STEEM, which it relies on, are ironed out. I hope it grows. I hope the prices of my cards go up.
I'll continue to get as many drips of crypto here and there as I can, and I'll continue to shuffle small amounts of fiat into it as well where possible. Splinterlands has got my attention now, though. I've earned about 200 of their Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) in a couple of days of fairly casual play. This is a token in itself, and 200 DEC is worth 20 cents. In theory you could transfer the DEC to an Ethereum wallet, although at the moment that would be fairly pointless as I don't know of any exchanges that would accept it. You can also spend it on packs and orbs to get cards. The cards can be sold on the in-game marketplace for currency that is credited to an external wallet. Earning money for gaming, not paying it: I've been waiting for this for a while.
I apologise that my opinion piece on Bitcoin turned into a rant by a gaming addict, but that is where I ended up. I'll continue to describe aspects of my crypto journey here on PublishOx. It's a great example of a 'quasi-faucet' in itself, in a way. But that's the end of "I Bought My First Crypto A Week Ago". I hope you enjoyed.
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Here are some referral links if you want to support me another way.
https://www.qoinpro.com/194e8aa94f78e60d613d5d981661d1e6
https://splinterlands.com?ref=almightymelon
