Greetings, and welcome to my first post in my new blog about my first tentative steps into the world of cryptocurrency. Being (recently) new to this world, I thought it would be worth looking to see what were the most cost-effective means of getting involved in crypto, and one of the first things I came across was faucets. In this blog I wanted to share what I've learned about this aspect of the crypto eco-system, so other newbies can make an informed decision on whether they want to get involved (without having to spend their own time and effort on this).
Now, I'm the sort of person that treats things with a healthy dose of skepticism, particularly when it relates to free stuff, and especially when that free stuff happens to be money, so I was quite sure that these were just going to provide malware and spam. However it turns out that faucets are fairly well-established in the world of cryptocurrency, as a means of distributing small amounts of new currencies in order to raise their profile - for example this faucet that was pumping out 5 bitcoins per visitor back in 2010...
Unsurprisingly this faucet no-longer seems to be working as of 2021 - quite possibly because those BTC would be worth $273,534.50 (as of 04/05/2021).
Nonetheless, faucets do still exist and do still distribute small amounts of cyrptocurrency for free. However, there are literally hundreds of them around, and they take a variety of forms. For the sake of simplicity (and out of an abundance of caution regarding signing up for questionable-looking sites), I looked around and found some of the less-dubious looking ones that I could and started claiming my free crypto, which was a fairly easy process (for the most part).
Faucetpay
One of the first blocks that I hit was that many of the half-decent looking faucets required that I set up a wallet through a website through a website called Faucetpay (referral link), which was actually far easier than I'd anticipated - it also had the benefit of giving me somewhere to funnel all of these small faucet transactions through (rather than clogging up my main wallet), so I didn't mind too much. The sign-up process was pretty quick, and it features wallet addresses for all the main currencies, so I just headed straight from there to the 'Faucet List' section of the website, which actually provided a pretty comprehensive list of faucets (as well as giving details on the amount that each site had paid out).
One thing that I didn't like in the 'Faucet List' section is that it is not obvious what hoops you will need to jump through in order to claim your faucet - some sites required an email signup (which I automatically discounted), while others made it their duty to provide as many different forms of irritation through their advertising that I felt it was better for my well-being to just move on to the next one....
The Faucets
After a few sites I did find two that were fairly straightforward (not requiring an email sign-up) and also having the least invasive ads. Additionally, these sites payout straight to your FaucetPay wallet (rather than having to accumulate the currency to a minimum withdrawal level):
Please note neither of the above are referral links.
These two sites were actually pretty good in terms of offering multiple coins (BTC, ETH, DOGE, LTC, BCH, DASH, TRX, DGB, USDT, ZEC, BNB & FEY), and the process for obtaining them was pretty simple - click the link, select a coin, enter your wallet address, deal with two captchas that normally appear and reap the rewards!
The Rewards
Given the number of coins on offer (across both of those sites), plus the fact that these could be claimed every 5 minutes, I was fairly certain that I would accumulate a small amount of crypto in a reasonable amount of time - I don't mind the grind, particularly if it saves me a bit of money, so I was willing to do it.
However, what I hadn't really comprehended is the level of currency that was actually being dispensed via each of these faucets - this was usually in the order of 1 or 2 'Satoshi' for the Bitcoin faucet, which was a term I was unfamiliar with, but I was confident that it would be something (since it was a denomination of the currency that had been given it's own name, it must be worth something!)...
Two Easy Pieces
If the faucet was paying out in US Dollars, and it was paying out the lowest possible denomination (i.e. 1 cent, or 1% of a Dollar) every 5 minutes, I don't imagine many people would participate in the faucet. Some people would, and it would probably be worthwhile for those living in other less-affluent countries, but I would imagine that the majority of US citizens wouldn't bother with the hassle for a cent.
Like a cent, a 'Satoshi' is the smallest 'chunk' of a Bitcoin. However, while the cent is one hundredth (0.01) of a Dollar, a 'Satoshi' is a one hundred millionth (0.00000001) of a Bitcoin. As such, even though the current price of a Bitcoin is around $54,706.90, you would need around 20 for these before you have accumulated 1 cent in BTC,
The Verdict
While I was under no illusions that I would be scooping up vast amounts of free crypto, I would say that I was definitely a little naive as to how little the payouts were going to be on faucets.
While I didn't take as many of the faucet opportunities as I could have, I don't expect that any of the sites that demanded an email sign-up would be paying out a great deal more via faucets than the ones that I had used.
Admittedly these sites do work in providing crypto for absolutely nothing (aside the repeated captchas), but I personally didn't think that they were worth the investment of my time for much longer than I'd given them - I stuck at it, periodically claiming them throughout a couple of days, but accumulated very little in crypto and decided to stop using them.
Another issue in the use of these faucets was that the payouts (which presumably come from advertising revenue) were pretty inconsistent. While there is nothing misleading on the faucets (most of them state that you can claim 'up to' a certain level of currency), I found that most of the payouts were around 10% of the value that was stated (making the overall accumulation of crypto even less than expected).
One thing to note is that the Feyorra has been a relatively recent addition (in the last few days) to those faucet sites, so the payout rates are a bit higher than for most of the other coins, so if this is a coin that you are generally interested in, then it might be worth taking a quick look to see if it is worthwhile.
Next up
I've recently started looking at a few other ways of earning free crypto, which I will be reviewing in more detail over the next few weeks. If you want to get involved with some of these, then hit the referral links below:
- Rollercoin - A free online mining game, with payouts in BTC, ETH or DOGE
- Faucet Crypto - An online site where surveys, ad views and faucets are used to accumulate 'coins', that can be paid out in a variety of cryptocurrencies
- Cointiply - Another online earnings site using surveys, ads and faucets, but with additional opportunities through installing and playing apps, and accumulating the site-specific currency through interest accrued on balances held on the site.
- Splinterlands - An online card game where cards and currency are held via the Hive blockchain, meaning that your digital in-game assets are truly yours (and can be sold via NFT marketplaces). I have only just signed up for this, and it looks like there is a $10 paywall, so this might take a while...
If you have any other suggestions for earning free crypto, please leave them in the comments below.
As mentioned throughout the article, there are a couple of referral links provided to some of the services that I have reviewed or mentioned. If you feel that these services might be of interest to you, I would appreciate the small benefits provided to me through your use of these links. However, if you would rather not sign up using these referral links, please feel free to remove the portion of the URL that comes after the '.com' or '.io' before signing up.
