Bitcoin faucet was one of the early-term ideas which propelled the bitcoin movement. It can truly take credit for making bitcoins one of the best ideas ever successful in history.
Bitcoin Faucet- A token from the early era
Bitcoin Faucet is a website that would give free bitcoins for solving tasks such as Captcha code. It would be tough to believe that one such website gave away five bitcoins(300,523 USD in today’s value) for visitors. All they had to do is solve one Captcha code.
Gavin Andresen, a software developer, wanted to do a project on the bitcoin movement. So, he thought to hand out bitcoins to people. He stated in a Bitcointalk forum, “I want the Bitcoin project to succeed, and I think it is more likely to be a success if people can get a handful of coins to try it out.”
Satoshi Nakamoto, the developer of Bitcoin, appreciated Gavin in the forum for this faucet. He said that he was planning to do the same thing. He congratulated Gavin’s project as an excellent choice.
Reminiscing after a decade
Now, the story of the Bitcoin faucet resurfaced thanks to a Reddit post. In the Reddit community r/CryptoCurrency, user u/GroundbreakingLack78 posted the story of a bitcoin faucet recently. The website had the domain address “freebitcoins.appspot.com.” Gavin loaded 1,100 of his bitcoins. The website then started to give away bitcoins to visitors. After some time, bitcoin miners and whales donated coins to keep the process going. Once, a visitor to the website got 5 free bitcoins and, in return, donated 50 bitcoins.
Gavin then went on to work as a software developer for bitcoin’s reference implementation after Satoshi left the program in 2012. The website gave away its last coins in early 2011. At that time, 19,715 bitcoins passed through the website’s wallets. As of today, the value of those coins is $1.18 Billion. Yes, you read it right.
Interestingly, several people found security flaws in Gavin’s bitcoin wallet. One such person drained Gavin’s wallet completely. After that, he kindly returned the coins and explained how to patch the flaw.
In 2010, Gavin Andresen was on a mission to give away free BTC. And he succeeded big time. https://t.co/36a0Ch4MQI
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) April 11, 2021
It is unimaginable to get five bitcoins for solving a captcha code in a bitcoin faucet. Still, such stories make an exciting community responsible enough to improve the lives of other people. The massive growth of cryptocurrencies, particularly bitcoin, is attributable to Gavin’s selflessly working towards a better community and a better future.
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