Exploring 'Free' Bitcoin Earning Mechanisms 2020: Impact on Crypto Wealth / Tax

[Mazari1]

Hello everyone, apologies for my imperfect English, as it's not my first language. I’m writing a thesis on certain aspects of Bitcoin and some dynamics related to cryptocurrencies.
I’m particularly interested in knowing whether, around the year 2020, there were still ways to "earn free" Bitcoin. For example, crypto faucets, crypto bounties, or even games with user pools (possibly within structured social networks like Telegram rooms) that offered Bitcoin rewards. Essentially, I’m looking for any mechanism that, at that time, allowed people to earn BTC without making an initial investment.
This information will be useful for explaining the surge in income tax filings from individuals who, starting in 2020, suddenly found themselves with cryptocurrency fortunes without having made any investments or sold anything.
Feel free to expand on the topic by including any other "solutions" that might not have been mentioned.

[Stalker22]

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This information will be useful for explaining the surge in income tax filings from individuals who, starting in 2020, suddenly found themselves with cryptocurrency fortunes without having made any investments or sold anything.

I remember when Bitcoin was trading between $5k and $10k for much of 2020.  It wasnt until late that year when the price started rising dramatically on the way to its all-time high for that bull cycle.  But even so, no one suddenly got rich off free Bitcoin from "free" Bitcoin earning methods. 

Back then you could earn tiny amounts of BTC from faucets, bounty programs, or some games.  but we are talking negligible sums - just like today. Sure, some folks got lucky timing the dips and peaks.  Yet those bitcoin fortunes mainly came the old-fashioned way: buying during the troughs.

[Lucius]

~snip~
Back then you could earn tiny amounts of BTC from faucets, bounty programs, or some games.  but we are talking negligible sums - just like today. Sure, some folks got lucky timing the dips and peaks.  Yet those bitcoin fortunes mainly came the old-fashioned way: buying during the troughs.

Some will say that the golden age of faucets was when the price of BTC was a few hundred $, although back then you could collect a lot of satoshi which were worth very little if you converted them into fiat. Only those who believed that the price of BTC would one day be x50 or something similar, and at the same time did not sell what they had accumulated, can say today or a few years ago that they made a real fortune.

Somewhere in 2015/16, one could very easily collect around 500 000 satoshis or more per day with some work and active referrals, and that only in BTC - if we also count some alts like ETH, which was worth a few $ at the time, or DOGE, whose price was expressed in the way 1000 DOGE = $0.14 then we could conclude that 1 BTC could be collected in about 3 months of clicking on faucets.