Happy Birthday to the first-ever Bitcoin Faucet, 16 years ago today.
Back on June 11, 2010, a developer named Gavin Andresen shared something he thought might sound silly on here. He created a site that gave away free Bitcoin, offering 5 BTC for each claim. Gavin was literally giving people a reason to try out Bitcoin.
Satoshi himself chimed in and mentioned that he had the same idea planned out.
That faucet was one of the very first grassroots moves towards Bitcoin adoption ever. Now, 16 years later, I want to give a little nod to it.
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Introducing: The Satoshi Faucet
Same vibe. Same mission. Revamped for 2026.
The original gave away whole bitcoins 5 BTC back when Bitcoin was worth next to nothing. This one gives away satoshis, the smallest Bitcoin unit:
1 BTC = 100,000,000 satoshis
It operates on the Lightning Network. No sign-ups, no fees, no strings attached.
Just connect your Lightning wallet, grab a few sats, and feel the same buzz newcomers had in 2010 when they got their first bitcoin.
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So what’s the deal here and what’s it not?
No one’s getting rich from a handful of sats. That’s not the point.
The aim is to make Bitcoin accessible for those who’ve never experienced it. We want to encourage people to set up a Lightning wallet, scan a QR code, and enjoy their free sats. It’s all about igniting that curiosity that drew many of us into this space.
No tokens
No NFTs
No yield farming
No web3 jargon
Just Bitcoin and sats.
Lightning lets us make these tiny educational transactions useful again. In a lot of ways, it takes us back to the roots.
A little bit more information about the first ever Bitcoin faucet run by Gavin Andresen.
Archive of the faucet https://web.archive.org/web/20120112004517/https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/
More information about it in Bitcoin history book.
Website looks very good but I think you should replace g00gle captcha with something better, maybe hCaptcha that is now used on bitcointalk forum.
I don't use or like lightning network, and I don't even know what wallets support LNURL-pay, so I didn't test if faucet actually works.
Wow, I wasn't aware the faucet ended up distributing around 19,700 BTC. That's an incredible number.
Out of curiosity, if we consider Bitcoin's ATH it comes out to roughly $2.48 billion ($2,486,101,979).
Of course, that's looking at it through today's lens. Back then those coins were being used for something arguably more important than their monetary value: introducing people to Bitcoin.
Thank you for sharing the archive and the additional historical details.
Done!
Thank you for the suggestion. I have now replaced Google reCAPTCHA with hCaptcha.
You gave me solid reason that hCaptcha aligns better with the spirit of the project and is also Bitcointalk itself uses.
The main trade-off is that the free hCaptcha plan doesn't provide the same level of analytics and reporting that Google offers, so I'll lose some visibility into captcha activity. However, for this small project I think that's a reasonable compromise.
As for LNURL, you're definitely not alone. One thing I've learned while building the faucet is that many Bitcoin users are still unfamiliar with Lightning wallets and LNURL-pay.
Hopefully the guides on how to get LNURL help make that first step a little easier for newcomers.
For the last part: yes, the faucet is working and there is still some balance left. I started it with almost 800,000 sats.
Since I am processing payments manually for now, that part may not always be "Lightning fast" but otherwise, the faucet itself is Lightning quick.
Thats such a legendary concept of giving away whole Bitcoins in order to try increase uptake etc.
So many people have commented in the past that if they could only travel back in time to those days
to avail of the faucets.
I checked my regular Lightning wallet and it doesnt seem to support LNURL addresses. I have BlueWallet
installed and might give that a ho later on?
It would be nice to experience the Faucet concept in first hand to get a feel for what it must have been
like back in the early years like 2011!
It's an incredible fortune if we look at it with today price but I think the same like you did, and this Bitcoin faucet run by Gavin Andresen has somehow similar role in advertising Bitcoin as the pizza trade by laszlo years ago.
Back in past years like such, both Gavin and Laszlo tried to advertise Bitcoin or use Bitcoin in unprecedented ways. What they did are truly milestones in Bitcoin history, and these things as well as their names are recorded in Bitcoin history.
It's quite wrong to take what they did in the past, bitcoins they spent and look at it with today price.
It's my pleasure to help if I can.
I collected my first whole Bitcoin on faucets, but that was years after the faucet in question. In the period from 2014 to the beginning of 2017, faucets paid up to 10 000 sats per claim, and with a good faucet rotator and some active referrals, I used to collect up to 500 000 sats a day.
As for GA faucet, at a time when anyone could mine BTC with their computer and get 50 BTC for each block, those 5 BTC is not something that could attract a lot of people - because something less than 20k BTC is not some big number considering that even 50% of all BTC (10.5 million) were mined in the first 4 years.
In June 2010 and months later, Bitcoin price was very cheap and till the end of 2010, Bitcoin price was about $0.3 according to this site. 50 BTC at the end of 2010 was only about $15, not too much.
The faucet was not too attractive with many people and who claimed bitcoins from the faucet likely did it for fun and testing. I believe that many of them did not store their bitcoin, wallet backups well and already lost their coins.
https://bitcoin.zorinaq.com/price/
Something is triggering the claim button cooldown even though I haven't claimed anything.
The first time it happened, I was reading some docs in the website's footer.
When I got back to homepage using the dedicated "<- back to home" button, it started the countdown timer for some reason.
The second time, I purposely reproduced it by clicking "View faucet status & recent activity", then "<- back to home".
It started the cooldown again, with longer waiting time.
Using the browser's "back" button to return to homepage doesn't trigger this bug.
A minor issue but it could be inconvenient to those curious individuals who prefer exploring the page links first before using the faucet.
So, does this faucet site look identical to the original Gavin Andresen's faucet from 2010? I just wasn't around back then, so I'm curious.
I think, in honor of the original website, it would be logical to issue 5 sats. Your faucet issues fixed sats. or random values within a certain range (like 1-100, like bestchange faucet).
In the sense that the received award is worth nothing and will have symbolic value?
Of course, it will be a pleasure to just participate. And for newbies, it will be their first "touch" with bitcoin sat. without any investment.
Sometimes curiosity leads to very unexpected results.
So, I found the answer to my question above. So, it turns out this is a kind of replica (with some modifications) of the old website design, right?
The original bitcoin faucet was just a basic website with logo, text and the claim feature.
shahzadafzal's version has similar icon, color scheme and text format (bold header and normal text below it) but a bit modern.
For reference, someone already shared a link to the later archived version of the faucet (in the 1st reply)
You can click the earliest timestamp for the original $5 per claim version.
I didn't know about Gavin's faucet back in the day. I wish I did. It's an interesting idea to make these transactions through the Lightning Network. It makes sense, considering the amounts.
One thing I noticed.
Each claim is worth 50 sats, right?
In this section > https://thesatoshifaucet.com/support < you say that 10,000 sats funds around 97 claims. That looks like 100 sats per claim. If each claim is worth 50 sats, shouldn't it be 200 claims for a 10,000 sats donation? minus whatever fees there are. Maybe I am missing something...
It does support LNURL, and if you have already submitted a claim, it should have been processed by now, unless it failed due to some unexpected reason. Ill keep fixing such issues from time to time. Can you please point me which what LNURL you submitted?
Those were the golden days... and earning hundreds of thousands of sats per day sounds unbelievable by today's standards. It's also easy to forget that back then 5 BTC wasn't viewed as a huge amount because Bitcoin had little value and yes mining was still accessible to ordinary users. Hindsight makes those numbers look much bigger than they felt at the time but yeah that reminds of that quote of satoshi
That is true. Many people probably forgot to store their wallet keys properly. In a way, each lost bitcoin increases the value of the remaining bitcoins.
Yes, sorry for that. It is actually across the whole website, meaning 10 minutes per claim.
To be honest, despite adding many checks:
- IP address check
- One claim per LNURL for 7 days
- Browser agent check
- Manual payment processing
I am still getting automated claims.
I know because I receive 1020 claims exactly 5565 seconds apart. It looks like some AI agent is solving the puzzles. A human cannot be this precise.
After seeing this, I added a 10-minute cooldown timer. Later, I might change it to 5 minutes depending on how the traffic goes.
However, if I receive a claim from a unique IP/location, I will give it higher priority, and you will be able to claim.
At the moment, I am getting around 90% of the claims from two countries, which looks like a coordinated effort.
Well, not exactly, but I would say around 80%. I cannot keep it 100% the same because it needs to be a little more modern, with responsive design, status updates, and current activity, which the original faucet did not have.
Ahh, good idea. Thank you for that. Yes, I will make it random within a range of 1100 sats. I like that and will definitely do it.
It was 100 sats at the start for the first 500600 claims, but I saw it was draining pretty fast, around 200300 claims in 12 hours. Now I have made it 50 sats.
Haha, of course the value is there. I mean in terms of USD, 100 sats at the current ~$60k BTC price is around $0.06.
Imagine if Bitcoin goes to $1M.
It did. There are many people who never knew about Lightning payments or how fast and convenient they are. Actually, I am working on a Lightning payment project with someone, and that is how I came up with this faucet idea.
Yes, it does. Curiosity is the fundamental spark that drives discovery.
You got it. Some of the changes were absolutely mandatory, and some were add-ons.
Well the fee I don't want to deduct from the user's claims but keep it on the faucet, yes there is a variable fee for each claim. If I send it via Wallet of Satoshi, each claim can have a fee of around 34 sats.
If I use LNBits, the fee is around 8 sats. I am using both depending on how many pending payments I have.
Yes, that calculation is based on 100 sats + fee.
Secondly, why is it not 100 sats? My original idea was to keep it at 100 sats, but like I said above, the https://thesatoshifaucet.com/ wallet was draining fast. Based on my estimate, in 2838 days I would have zero sats left to distribute. To avoid that, I made it 50 sats.
But now I like m2017s idea and will make it random between 10100 sats.
wow thank you.
Should I make Public supporter wall?
I can put it something like next 10,000 sats are sponsored by Mitchell
Or
Supported by: Mitchell 10000 sats
This kind of abuse has always been the main issue for faucets' sustainability. It should be easy and quick to claim from faucets, but due to cheaters, faucet owners have to add different anti-bot mechanisms, which end making the whole process much longer for users.
Another mechanism faucet owners use is to not immediately pay users on every claim directly to their addresses, rather they have to accumulate a minimum balance first until being able to withdraw. This way, you can identify which are legit claims and which are automated ones before paying.
Why don't you set up a longer cool down timer or only limits one claim every 24 hours?
100 satoshi is not too much but if the faucet is abused, it can be drained out very quickly.
With people who actually have needs of getting 100 satoshi for experience something, firstly with faucets, and secondly using 100 satoshi for something like fresh try, they will not try to abuse your faucet after that.
In addition, if it is for pure experience like testing knowledge, they can claim testnet bitcoin from testnet faucet and use such coins on the testnet.
That's to be expected.
But at least you're processing those requests manually, which is a good countermeasure.
But how about my concern that the cooldown automatically triggers without even using the "Claim" button?
Or do you mean that it's intended when you said that it's "the whole website", means that all links will trigger the cooldown regardless if the user claimed or not?