In this article, we attempt to explain why something related to earning free cryptocurrencies is named after the most unexpected object of all; faucets. What?! (Yes, free cryptocurrencies)
Cryptocurrency faucets will be the prime focus of this article, wherein we try to unravel the origin, the working and why they may be so popular in our times.
In order to ensure proper readability and understanding of concepts, we will be dividing the following article in the following manner:
- What are Crypto Faucets?
- Is it really free?
- Why do Crypto Faucets exist?
- Crypto Faucets in action
Now before we jump on to the bulk of the contention points to be discussed, let’s set a few things aside here. When we say, cryptocurrency faucets allow you to earn cryptocurrencies for free, we’re coming from a pre-held context.
It’s 2022. If you want to increase your cryptocurrency assets, you can very well do so by trading cryptocurrencies and earn profit by exploiting market volatility. You can also just simply buy cryptocurrencies and while that is indeed a way to increase your cryptocurrency holdings, so is when you stake them.
Staking, a concept perhaps not as popular amongst many, is when you collect a certain amount of a particular cryptocurrency which then leads you to earning more cryptocurrencies via a system different for each cryptocurrency.
Even mining remains to be a very popular option of increasing the cryptocurrency in one’s wallet as it is famous for having an image of the person doing as little work as possible while the amount of cryptocurrency in their digital wallet increases; all for having good hardware. That hardware and the maintenance costs that ensue however, are indeed the miner’s responsibility and are something considered very well when starting out the activity.
The aforementioned ways are just some of the ways in which you can work towards increasing your cryptocurrency holdings. You will notice that in each of these, there is indeed a startup cost which one has to take into account. Whether it be, getting good sophisticated equipment and paying for electricity for mining cryptocurrencies, or spending some capital to acquire them and hence begin (or not) trading activities; these all involve a startup capital.
However, there is one way to earn cryptocurrencies which does not really require any capital at all. Well as long as you have a device with an internet connection, you may as well be all set. It doesn’t even depend on having powerful specifications on your equipment either, as long as it can view something in HD, it’s good enough.
The method is via Crypto Faucets; the one in focus in this article. Referring to what was written earlier, yes this is indeed a relatively free method to earn cryptocurrencies. Do note the use of the word “earn” here, because a lot of things may always go back to that old adage; nothing good is ever free.
What are Crypto Faucets?
Going towards a more formal textbook definition style: Crypto faucets are platforms on the web which reward you for completing various tasks in return for some cryptocurrencies. Now while this may seem like proper working, and it is to some extent. It also is not. Crypto faucets are given the name faucets as it makes the reader visualize how a faucet works. A leaky faucet, ever so slightly, releases a drop of water out of it. Now while that drop may as well be a very small one, it is a drop indeed.
Connecting the analogy into the world of cryptocurrencies, a crypto faucet usually refers to a website or an application which rewards users for completing tasks with very small, tiny amounts of cryptocurrencies, somewhat like how a leaky faucet releases water.
However, the idea of crypto faucet usually brings forth two main questions into the minds of the previously ignorant; what tasks do the platforms make me do in return for some amount of cryptocurrency? That’s question number one. The other question is more towards the daydreamer kind, Would I be able to do this to the point I’d be able to earn a proper income out of this? We’ll be looking at these two questions in the very next paragraphs.
Looking at the nature of the platform, crypto faucets are usually highly accessible in order to increase the number of people who use the platform. Crypto faucets would hence, as mentioned earlier, adopt the shape of a website or a mobile application. Users can simply sign up on these platforms, and hence create their accounts which track their progress of the completion of tasks. It is often available to the users, how much they will be rewarded for doing what.
Speaking of “doing what”, let’s cover exactly that. Crypto Faucets usually exist in the form of websites or applications which make users do several easy-to-do tasks such as watching a particular video, interacting with particular ads, downloading a certain game, etc. What one may notice as a general common key idea behind most of the tasks listed on crypto faucets as reward worthy, is that they are all very easy to do.
Comparing this method to all the others for increasing the cryptocurrency holdings in one’s wallet, crypto faucets stand out by the mere fact that they require nothing but a functioning prefrontal cortex of one’s brain to carry out simple tasks and in turn earn some amount of cryptocurrencies. Hence, in order to ensure people are easily able to carry out the tasks, the tasks themselves need to be easy.
Hence, this allows crypto faucets to be housed on anything from a computer, no matter how blocky or sleek it may be, to even mobile phones. One can easily choose the task to do, which is when the application’s code starts to track your activity with respect to the completion of the task.
As soon as you have completed the task, for example, if you were getting paid a certain amount of Bitcoin to download a certain application, after the completion of the download, that amount of bitcoin will be set to be given to the person. Looking at how simple the tasks are, this allows crypto faucets to exist on multiple kinds of devices. Examples mentioned were PCs, mobile phones and whatever may come in between.
Is it really free?
However, there is a point to be made here. One may say, given how easy it is to just click the right buttons on a screen and watch a 40 second video, how has it gotten this easy to crypto fast?! And the answer is, it hasn’t. Nobody would be willing to pay you with anything substantial if the labor you are doing isn’t useful. Given how easy such a form of labor is, what is asked from these individuals, the amount of cryptocurrencies given in return are very very less. The two “very” were put there for a good reason.
The cryptocurrencies offered for each task are so low in quantity, that in most cases, upon the signing up of an account on the crypto faucet platform, users are given a micro wallet to store their earnings. Micro wallets are just like normal digital wallets, but in turn, are designed to store very small amounts of cryptocurrencies.
These amounts are so low that in most cases, a person cannot even withdraw this amount on its own. They need to accumulate a certain amount of cryptocurrency in their micro wallet before they can withdraw this to their normal wallets. This often causes the users to stay on the crypto faucet platform to complete other tasks which will allow the user to reach the minimum amount required to withdraw their earned cryptocurrency.
These strategies and more are used to ensure users spend as much amount on the crypto faucet platform as possible. Crypto faucets are designed in a way where they entice a user to complete the small easy-to-do tasks by making them realize it will bring them one step closer to withdrawing a now-bigger amount of cryptocurrency. Indeed, the easier the task, the lesser the cryptocurrency being offered to complete it. This means that in order to even fill the micro wallet which would lead to the user withdrawing the cryptocurrencies from the crypto faucet platform, the user must practice a lot of patience.
The point made above also highlights the fact that this is definitely not a get rich quick scheme. You are definitely not going to go too far trying to get rich from such platforms as the payouts aren’t as big. Even with patience, where you’ll end up mostly is having a small amount of a cryptocurrency in your actual digital wallet. However, as you will discover later, this heavily depends on the kind of crypto faucet platform.
Why do Crypto Faucets exist?
Another question may arise from getting to know of the Crypto Faucet platform; what does the crypto faucet platform gain out of this? Why do they exist? That is a good question to ask indeed since it will help gain a better understanding of how they work on the back-end. In most cases, crypto faucet platforms are themselves getting paid to get users to complete a certain task.
For example, if a company wants a good amount of real views on their product launch video, they can very well contact a crypto faucet platform, paying them a good amount of money in return for a particular amount of views. The crypto faucet in turn, uses a small portion of the amount paid to them, and offers to distribute small portions of it to those who watch the video once. In order to ensure that each user is retained on the platform, they make use of clever strategies as mentioned earlier, like one of a minimum payout threshold.
Users must accumulate a minimum amount before they can withdraw their cryptocurrency holdings. Since the only way to accumulate more cryptocurrency in quantity in the micro wallet is by completing more tasks, that is what the user ends up doing.
In many cases, it could also be to highlight and spread awareness of a particular cryptocurrency or just basic cryptocurrencies in general. By allowing people to acquire these cryptocurrencies by doing basic simple tasks, more people are in turn gaining exposure to what many believe is the future mode of payment. However, it should be understood that almost all crypto faucet platforms exist to earn a profit.
Now that we have discussed a great deal of theoretical knowledge of how they work, let’s see the practical presence of such platforms and talk in detail about some of them. This should give one a good idea of the current state of crypto faucets on the internet nowadays.
Crypto Faucets in action
Perhaps a very famous example you are very likely to come across when researching crypto faucets is the one of Gavin Andersen. Being a bitcoin developer, he launched a crypto faucet by developing it so that users were offered rewards of five bitcoins to complete simple tasks. Now before you get off your seat and recheck if we really have written “five bitcoins” or not, let me tell you this is 2010 we are talking about. At the time, Gavin Andersen launched the Crypto Faucet platform in order to raise awareness about the Bitcoin cryptocurrency.
Many experts say this was a really good tactic to get people familiar with Bitcoin. The reason behind this may as well be that this was a very clever way to offer people Bitcoin without asking them to invest their actual money into it while also giving them a chance to earn some by completing simple tasks.
This could have allowed people to familiarize themselves with this form of virtual currency, as it had only been around 2 years since Bitcoin had launched at the time. Another problem being faced by the cryptocurrency industry of that time was that there were not any exchanges where bitcoin could easily be bought. Hence, by allowing the general public to own bitcoin without them having to risk their money into it, crypto faucets were a great way to familiarize them with cryptocurrency technology.
The users who would have HODLed their cryptocurrencies earned from the platform would not have digital wallets worth tens of thousands of dollars. This is one of the rare cases where crypto faucets have indeed made people rich.
However, this special case involved the entire cryptocurrency industry growing together hence driving up the value of the coins in possession. One could not generally expect such an event to take place with their crypto faucet journey. However, when it comes to the cryptocurrency industry, major price changes of any cryptocurrency can take place without any previous indication.
Looking at the state of Bitcoin Crypto Faucets currently however, there is some terminology which one needs to get familiar with. As mentioned earlier, crypto faucets have relatively simple tasks to complete for which they pay a very small amount of cryptocurrency. Gone are the days of receiving 5 BTCs per task done. Welcome to the age of Satoshi.
Satoshi is basically a unit measuring one-millionth of a bitcoin or 0.00000001 BTC. Most bitcoin crypto faucets will pay one multiple satoshis for completing various tasks, and only if you accumulate enough satoshis equal to the minimum withdrawal limit, will you be able to withdraw. Usually they range from around 0.0002 BTC to 0.002 BTC. The number of Satoshis offered per task is also dependent on which crypto faucet is being put into focus.
In terms of Bitcoin faucets, the most popular ones on many sites which rank faucets are Cointiply and Firefaucet. There are indeed variations of the kind of services each offers, in minimum withdrawal amounts to the kind of payout they have.
However, it is not purely bitcoin which exists as the mode of payment in crypto faucets. As the name suggests, any cryptocurrency in theory, can be offered in exchange for the completion of simple tasks and still fit to the description of how crypto faucets work. In order to shed some more light on their real life presence, we could very easily look at crypto faucets which deal with Ethereum.
A good difference to note between Bitcoin faucets and Ethereum faucets is that the functioning unit, Satoshi, is replaced with Ether. Otherwise looking from a large picture, most of the concepts which apply to Bitcoin faucets still apply to Ethereum ones. Taking a look at an example of ethereum-faucet.org which was a website which used to offer ether to users in return for them solving captchas. As of currently, the website does not offer faucet services anymore.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this article focused on looking at how crypto faucets work. We explored the idea starting from a simple introduction which led to explaining what crypto faucets mean. Explaining the faucet terminology led us to discussing how users participate into the crypto faucet system.
After detailing how the user’s contributions allow the user to gain some cryptocurrency, we dealt with why may crypto faucets be made in the first place. This was an attempt to explain their presence. Lastly, we went through real life examples in order to give the reader a good idea on how Crypto Faucets exist in the current days.
