Where to get large amount of testnet coins? (~2.5BTC)

[pooya87]

Testing an app with third party investors. It's a bit silly to only let them buy 0.1 (test) BTC in a test system

are they paying actual money to buy these testnet coins? if yes then it is a scam.
if no (which i'm guessing is the case here) then how come the money they pay (or whatever they use to buy) doesn't exist and is fake but the coins they receive has to be real?

besides there could be an easier way of doing this that takes a little more effort. which would be creating a new regtest per customer that wants to test the system, making the connection between the client and server and sync (it is syncing the couple of tiny blocks mined instantly) then sending them regtest coins in any amount they wish.
no matter how much testnet coins you receive, it could be gone in a single test (a user buying all) or a handful of them if you put a limit which would defeat the purpose IMO.

[1715020637]

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[1715020637]

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[HCP]

Where do test coins come from, is there any kind of mining?

Yes, they are essentially mined in the same way as Bitcoin on Mainnet... however there are mechanisms in place to make it (theoretically) "easier" to mine by resetting the difficulty from time to time... unfortunately, for whatever reason, some people like to use ASIC mining rigs on testnet which means they mine lots of blocks really quickly and then the difficulty increases dramatically again

[Dali748]

Hi, I'm looking to get a larger amount for integration testing purposes; it seems to be taking a while to accumulate a good amount at 0.01 BTC at a time, can anyone help with this?

I just need them for integration and then will return these testnet BTC coins.

Thank you!

[tranthidung]

You can check and get testnet BTC from one for those faucets. I am not sure they are all active runnning so you need to check.

Testnet Faucet:

• https://tpfaucet.appspot.com/
• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Testnet: Find out more in the Faucet section.
• https://testnet-faucet.mempool.co
• https://coinfaucet.eu/btc-testnet
• https://tbtc.bitaps.com
• http://kuttler.eu/bitcoin/btc/faucet/
• http://bitcoinfaucet.uo1.net/
• https://tbtc.mocacinno.com/

[DaveF]

Hi, I'm looking to get a larger amount for integration testing purposes; it seems to be taking a while to accumulate a good amount at 0.01 BTC at a time, can anyone help with this?

I just need them for integration and then will return these testnet BTC coins.

Thank you!

Try using regtest to generate as much TESTNET BTC as you need.
It only takes a few seconds to be done because it's a preset low difficulty.

More information / detailed instructions here: https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-examples#regtest-mode
or here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5268794.0

This should let you do any testing you need.

-Dave

[Husna QA]

Where do test coins come from, is there any kind of mining?

Yes, there is also a mining process for Testnet coins.
Here is an article about How to Solo Mine on Bitcoin’s Testnet:
https://blog.lopp.net/how-to-solo-mine-on-bitcoin-s-testnet/

[nutildah]

Did anybody ever determine what was up with the trend of people asking for large amounts of testnet coins? People are asking again... I'm wondering if it is to participate in an airdrop, token sales or some kind of giveaway... Maybe they are scammers looking to pull a tBTC/BTC switcharoo. Anyway I could sworn I saw a thread with an explanation somewhere but I can't find it.

[tranthidung]

Did anybody ever determine what was up with the trend of people asking for large amounts of testnet coins? People are asking again... I'm wondering if it is to participate in an airdrop, token sales or some kind of giveaway... Maybe they are scammers looking to pull a tBTC/BTC switcharoo. Anyway I could sworn I saw a thread with an explanation somewhere but I can't find it.

I see some people try to buy it (and you know if there are buyers, there are sellers) tBTC. tBTC is zero-value on the market, in theory. In reality, such testnet bitcoin is not from the air and people have to spend mining cost to mine it.

The total lost tBTC is likely much higher than the total amount of lost BTC. People are less backup their private keys for tBTC and lost it.

You can check the testnet statistics there https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/testnet. The total hashrate of testnet is at 8,259,552.00, not low.
Sum up:

• Mining cost (expensive, not cheap)
• Huge lost tBTC from its total supply
• The naively thought for the future that sometime in next few decades, people will use tBTC and trade it when price of BTC is extremely high

[pooya87]

Did anybody ever determine what was up with the trend of people asking for large amounts of testnet coins? People are asking again... I'm wondering if it is to participate in an airdrop, token sales or some kind of giveaway... Maybe they are scammers looking to pull a tBTC/BTC switcharoo. Anyway I could sworn I saw a thread with an explanation somewhere but I can't find it.

it was mostly the airdrop thing; some bastard started a trend that DeFi scams needed testnet bitcoin, people were claiming tbtc to get the shittoken. that created a lot of demand for a while and that ended but the trend is not.

there is also always a rare type of scam where they try to sell tbtc to newbies, but this is rarely successful since tbtc requires a different wallet, explorer,... and there is a ton of warning and indicators that alerts the newbies.

i have also seen some developers say they want to "test" their application but i am not yet convinced that they need large amounts since i have not seen any actual test that couldn't be done in another way without even needing any coins!

[fmonts]

What about mining them? Is much hashpower needed or they can be mined with a PC?
Are there public pools available?

[BlackHatCoiner]

What about mining them?

Absurdly, mining testnet bitcoins is really expensive. Currently, it has a difficulty of 61681740.29071233 which means it has a target of:

Code:

0x0000000000000045a14a00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Your odds of generating such hash are ~0.00000000000000037% or 1 in ~264,925,099,745,189,347. This isn't meant to be accomplished from a CPU/GPU. You'll need to work on a pool, but your rewards won't be big. Currently, each block generates only 0.1 tBTC.


If you want some tBTC to make testings, I'm running a forum faucet: [Merit] [Faucet] Hey Bitcoiners! Wanna try out the lightning network?

[n0nce]

Absurdly, mining testnet bitcoins is really expensive. Currently, it has a difficulty of 61681740.29071233 which means it has a target of:

Code:

0x0000000000000045a14a00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

To be honest; I was wondering about mining tBTC myself a while back and I was astonished how the difficulty can be so high, even though there is no monetary reward for mining it. Is there any good reason why so many miners are apparently mining it? Or maybe it just has a different difficulty target / other parameters that were chosen?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Is there any good reason why so many miners are apparently mining it?

They must have an incentive. I can't really believe that paying the hosting of a faucet website plus the mining costs are less than the ad revenue, but they must have a profit somehow, otherwise they wouldn't mine. That profit may not be translated into money.

Or maybe it just has a different difficulty target / other parameters that were chosen?

It has the same difficulty parameters. Check chainparams.cpp#L180.

[garlonicon]

The moment when tBTC is sold and bitcoin community know it, there will be discussion to abandon testnet 3 network and create testnet 4 network

There is "testnet 4" called signet that is used now, because of blockstorms and other testnet issues. Getting large amount of signet coins is easier than testnet coins, so testing in signet should be easier. Also, the only reason why someone would need huge amounts of that coins is just for paying minimum transaction fees. But assuming zero satoshi outputs and one satoshi per byte fees, that means every 0.01 tBTC is enough to create 1 MB of test transactions. That means 2.5 tBTC is enough to send 250 MB of test transactions. But then, does someone really need to put 250 MB on-chain? Or maybe that amount of data could be lowered by using Lightning Network inside testnet?

[n0nce]

Is there any good reason why so many miners are apparently mining it?

They must have an incentive. I can't really believe that paying the hosting of a faucet website plus the mining costs are less than the ad revenue, but they must have a profit somehow, otherwise they wouldn't mine. That profit may not be translated into money.

Interesting thought; however I'm not sure what else could motivate them.. Do you have anything particular in mind (even if just pure speculation)?

The moment when tBTC is sold and bitcoin community know it, there will be discussion to abandon testnet 3 network and create testnet 4 network

There is "testnet 4" called signet that is used now, because of blockstorms and other testnet issues. Getting large amount of signet coins is easier than testnet coins, so testing in signet should be easier. Also, the only reason why someone would need huge amounts of that coins is just for paying minimum transaction fees. But assuming zero satoshi outputs and one satoshi per byte fees, that means every 0.01 tBTC is enough to create 1 MB of test transactions. That means 2.5 tBTC is enough to send 250 MB of test transactions. But then, does someone really need to put 250 MB on-chain? Or maybe that amount of data could be lowered by using Lightning Network inside testnet?

True, I would for sure use signet e.g. for developing applications that run on Bitcoin. When I last did something like that, signet wasn't out yet, so I haven't tried it myself so far - not sure if it has some limitation that would incentivize using testnet instead. But if it allows to do everything that's possible on testnet, there's not much use for that anymore, right?

Regarding the name: I find it good that it's not called testnet4, because it's actually really not a 'new testnet' It has a few notable changes and is not just a newly setup 'testnet' with new genesis block, like testnet 1 through 3 were.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Interesting thought; however I'm not sure what else could motivate them.. Do you have anything particular in mind (even if just pure speculation)?

Well they have to either sell them in a market or use them in a way to have a greater income than outcome. Since I don't believe in the latter, I'd bet that there're people who buy them. Still, at the moment each block gives a tiny amount of coins, but it's too expensive. I can't really speculate anything farer.

I remember I had created this thread back when I had more, similar queries: What's the point of mining testnet bitcoins?

[garlonicon]

not sure if it has some limitation that would incentivize using testnet instead

The only serious limitation in signet I can think of is mining. You can only get coins from faucets created by signet developers. You cannot mine a single block on your own. Or rather: you can mine it, but you cannot sign it. Also, you can do one block reorg, because nonce is not signed, but then the next signed block will resolve that and all nodes will follow the right chain.

[ABCbits]

They must have an incentive. I can't really believe that paying the hosting of a faucet website plus the mining costs are less than the ad revenue, but they must have a profit somehow, otherwise they wouldn't mine. That profit may not be translated into money.

Interesting thought; however I'm not sure what else could motivate them.. Do you have anything particular in mind (even if just pure speculation)?

Here's relevant post. IMO their motivation is either data collection or disrupt Bitcoin development. Claiming "free" token/coin usually require your email address and accessing their website (which means they obtain your browser fingerprint). On extreme case, they might ask for KYC verification.

Please don't give TNBTC to people who are just hoovering it up to paid by defi scams based on it.

Real testing just needs tiny amount, the people who "need" large amounts are selling it.  (technically trading it for defi testnet defi tokens which they expect to get converted into real value once that scams they are participating in go live).

This abusive and anti-social behaviour has made it hard for people to get testnet for actual bitcoin testing because they've drained all the faucets and conned the people that have historically given it out out of theirs.

It's also forcing bitcoin development to abandon testnet for testing.

[n0nce]

Here's relevant post. IMO their motivation is either data collection or disrupt Bitcoin development. Claiming "free" token/coin usually require your email address and accessing their website (which means they obtain your browser fingerprint). On extreme case, they might ask for KYC verification.

Data collection would mean they get really a lot of money for a few stats about their site's visitors. Again, not sure a few ads and browser information is really worth more than mining and giving away worthless test coins. Disrupting BTC development makes a bit more sense to me since it's not monetary, like BlackHat said. I have had a small web search for 'buying testnet coins' and it yielded nothing, so I don't think that's how they make their money back.

not sure if it has some limitation that would incentivize using testnet instead

The only serious limitation in signet I can think of is mining.

Yes, it's true, but on the other hand - let's say I'm developing a miner and I want to test it. The difficulty on testnet is probably way too high to get quick and consistent results to see if my driver and software is working fine, anyway. Then I would probably just setup regtest and mine in there. (not sure if this is possible but I think you can mine on regtest)

[garlonicon]

Then I would probably just setup regtest and mine in there. (not sure if this is possible but I think you can mine on regtest)

It is possible even if you use CPU for mining, but when I tried it, I had a lot of stale blocks, because the difficulty was too easy and mining was faster than sending blocks to the clients.