Mining on the Bitcoin testnet

I'm looking to test out my hardware wallets, multisig setups, and other interesting stuff, so I need a decent amount of tBTC. I get that nobody's just gonna hand out large sums of tBTC since they'd run out fast. So, I thought I could fire up a miner at a testnet pool for a bit to grab what I need. But after digging around, it seems more complicated than I expected since a lot of pools are offline. I've seen advice about setting up your own pool, but I don't have the time or the mining power to go that route. Any suggestions on how to get the tBTC I need?

You can check these sites: I remembered that one of the links was very helpful for me when I wanted to get some tBTC few months ago.

I know that those faucet do exist but the give you just very small amounts like 0.001 tBTC Avery 12 hours. This is enough for many users but in my case I need a larger amount to test some functionality of my hardware wallet. So for that reason I want to mine testnet coins.

I have forgotten the sites I used that time, but it gave just 0.001 BTC every 24 hours. You can always change your VPN location to to be able to use different location to receive as many as possible before the 24 hours. Each location changed can be able to receive another 0.001 BTC.

Why? 0.001 tBTC is enough to create many transactions and wallets. It may not be enough to open a LN-channel though. As far as I know, testnet difficulty is far too high for that. I've seen a calculation from mocacinno, which concluded that it's quite expensive to mine even just 1 tBTC. The reason why it's so hard to use testnet the way it was intended:

Because it is possible to create some transactions but I will have to then manually send all the transactions back to the main address, which would be a lot of unnecessary work if the actual value of tBTC is 0 USD and therefore it should be easily available. Also I want to have some tBTC for future projects for example open a LN channel and just did not expect that it would be so hard to obtain the needed amount. I dint know about that Ethereum Scam stuff, but I hope if this doesn't stop there will be just a second testnet or something like this to be able to stop these scammers to mess with people by hoarding all the coins. For the mean time I will try to just stick with the faucets, but all help regarding testnet mining will be appreciated, since maybe the difficulty will go eventually when the next shitcoin bubble will pop.

Unfortunately, the days of wasting testnet coins are long gone I keep a small amount for such testing, and indeed always closed the channels and recovered the coins when I was done. As far as I know, Bitcoin is on it's third testnet reset already. You may be able to use regtest instead of testnet. There's mocacinno's estimate on the cost of mining testnet.

Thank you for the explanation, it is really a bad situation that the testate coins are at one hand free but at the other hand they are wasted to an extend that you can't really get them anymore. After all there are also 19.000.000 tBTC around that are worthless but still not easily accessible if they are needed.

How many tBTC do you want? I can send you some, far more than faucets do, if you give me a good reason to; send PM if you don't feel comfortable to say in public. What functionality do you want to test that requires an amount greater than 0.001 tBTC? Experiencing with Lightning is the only thing I can think of. Check my thread. I can lend you some, if you want to either route or understand the mechanism.

If all you're doing is testing your hardware wallets and multi-sig wallets, you really don't need any more than 0.001tBTC.  Tx fees on testnet are very low, and you can make at least 9 or more reasonable transactions with only 0.001tBTC.  The wallets don't care how much you send, and you know you can get replenished every 12 hours.  If that's still not enough, you can hit up multiple faucets every time you need more.

I think I was simply wrong about thinking that the testnet had a low difficulty and I could simply point a miner to it and mine some coins to use them as I like. If somebody is willing to give some testnet BTC feel free to contact me. I will not reply to offers like this anymore: Do that and you will get that amount of testnet BTC!

I can give you 1 tbtc for 0.001 btc. You have to add it as collateral somewhere as in theory tbtc has no value, so if you don't spend much of it, you will get most of your money back. I don't agree with most of crypto users who say that tbtc is worthless, if it's worthless, give me 100 right now to test, don't you have?

It's worthless. Proof: I sent him 0.25 tBTC for free.

I offer it for free, but some money has to be put on collateral in case he spends it or goes offline.

Then it's not really free. If, to acquire them, he needs to risk losing money, there's definitely a possible hidden cost. Especially for coins that are meant to be tested, hereby to be lost either accidentally or deliberately.

If people want them for external device testing -- and they are willing to pay for them -- testnet coins are not worthless.  I have many -- what are they worth to someone I wonder?

See: It seems like you're missing the point: testnet coins are never supposed to have any value! If it has value, it becomes worthless for it's purpose.

Most people do not mine real bitcoins, nor other tokens. But desire them from the free market. Seems the OP can't mine testnet coins, but similarly desires them from the free market? (Still missing the point sorry)

OP can't mine testnet bitcoin, because it costs a lot. Correct. OP desires testnet bitcoin. Also correct. It'd be reasonable to assume that testnet coins do have a market value, because there's demand and there's supply. However, this should not be the case in here. The moment the community starts treating tBTC as a product or money, it'll essentially nullify the demand, because their only purpose is to help on testing. They exist only to help us improve and understand the main network's benefits. Therefore, the owners are incentivized to give them for free.

There's currently a shortage, developers/testers need good amounts of testnet coins. Ideally there'd be a market -- people with many (like myself) would like to turn them over to people who seriously need them. Perhaps a faucet, while giving away small amounts for free -- could sell batches of 5,10,20,100,1000 for a fee. And correspondingly, buy from hoarders -- to replenish.