The Satoshi Faucet — a tribute to Gavin's original

[shahzadafzal]

Happy Birthday to the original Bitcoin Faucet — 16 years ago today.

On June 11, 2010, a developer named Gavin Andresen posted here on Bitcointalk with what he called "something that sounds really dumb." He had built a website that gave away free Bitcoin — 5 BTC per claim. Gavin was giving away a reason to try Bitcoin.

For my first Bitcoin coding project, I decided to do something that sounds really dumb: I created a web site that gives away Bitcoins...
Five ฿ per customer, first come first served, I've stocked it with ฿1,100 to start.
Why? Because 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.

To which Satoshi himself replied and said he had planned to do this exact thing

Excellent choice of a first project, nice work.  I had planned to do this exact thing if someone else didn't do it, so when it gets too hard for mortals to generate 50BTC, new users could get some coins to play with right away.  Donations should be able to keep it filled.  The display showing the balance in the dispenser encourages people to top it up.

You should put a donation bitcoin address on the page for those who want to add funds to it, which ideally should update to a new address whenever it receives something.

That faucet is one of the earliest grassroots acts of Bitcoin adoption in history. Today, 16 years later to the day, I want to pay a small tribute to it.

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Introducing: The Satoshi Faucet

https://thesatoshifaucet.com/

Same spirit. Same purpose. Updated for 2026.

The original dripped whole bitcoins — 5 BTC when BTC had barely any price. This one drips satoshis, the smallest unit of Bitcoin:

1 BTC = 100,000,000 satoshis

It runs on the Lightning Network. No registration, no fees, no catches.

Just connect a Lightning wallet, claim a few sats, and experience what newcomers in 2010 felt when they received their very first bitcoin.

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What this is — and what it isn't

Nobody is getting rich from a few sats. That's not the goal.

The goal is to make Bitcoin tangible for someone who has never touched it. To give them a reason to set up a Lightning wallet, scan a QR code, and enjoy the free sats. The same spark of curiosity that pulled many of us in.

• No tokens
• No NFTs
• No yield farming
• No web3 buzzwords
• Just Bitcoin and sats

Lightning makes these tiny educational transactions practical again. In many ways, it brings us back to what Bitcoin felt like in the early days, when the technology itself was the point.

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A note on how claims work

The sending logic is intentionally kept offline. All claims are reviewed and processed manually — no hot wallet, no automated payout pipeline exposed to the internet.

It's a deliberate design choice: this is a tribute project running on trust and sats, not a target. For the curious minds who want to poke around — I see you, and I've left a note for you here:

https://thesatoshifaucet.com/dear-hackers

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This project started as a side effect. I've been building a Lightning project and experimenting with the protocol, and while going down that rabbit hole I found myself reading those old historical moments of bitcoin. The faucet story kept coming back to me — how something so simple, so "dumb" by its own creator's admission, became the part of golden history of bitcoin.

So I spun up an editor, did some late-night vibe coding, and built this.

The site is intentionally simple. I tried to keep some of the look and feel of the original while giving it a modern touch.

I'd love feedback, criticism, and especially any historical details about the original faucet I might have missed.

Mostly, I hope it keeps a small piece of Bitcoin history alive.

Happy birthday to the faucet that started it all. ⚡

Thank you.

[UchihaSarada]

On June 11, 2010, a developer named Gavin Andresen posted here on Bitcointalk with what he called "something that sounds really dumb." He had built a website that gave away free Bitcoin — 5 BTC per claim. Gavin was giving away a reason to try Bitcoin.

A little bit more information about the first ever Bitcoin faucet run by Gavin Andresen.
Archive of the faucet https://web.archive.org/web/20120112004517/https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

More information about it in Bitcoin history book.

During Spring 2010, the Bitcoin community was steadily growing with increased discussion on ‘Bitcoin Forum’ where hundreds had registered as members. On 28th May 2010, Gavin Andresen (an American software developer) registered as a member of the forum. He was an early Bitcoin developer who wanted Bitcoin to succeed by it becoming a widely adopted peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
On 11th June 2010, Gavin Andresen created a thread on ‘Bitcoin Forum’ titled ‘Get 5 free bitcoins from freebitcoins.appspot.com’ (BitcoinTalk topic #183) which read:

Gavin Andresen initially loaded the faucet with 1,100 BTC from his own pocket. Early BTC miners and whales also donated BTC to it. The first Bitcoin Faucet allowed visitors to the website to receive 5 BTC (if available) by completing a captcha, inserting a BTC wallet address and then clicking screenshot below). The primary focus was to boost Bitcoin adoption. It disbursed about 19,700 BTC until it closed in 2012.

[dkbit98]

I'd love feedback, criticism, and especially any historical details about the original faucet I might have missed.

Website looks very good but I think you should replace g00gle captcha with something better, maybe hCaptcha that is now used on bitcointalk forum.
I don't use or like lightning network, and I don't even know what wallets support LNURL-pay, so I didn't test if faucet actually works.

[shahzadafzal]

On June 11, 2010, a developer named Gavin Andresen posted here on Bitcointalk with what he called "something that sounds really dumb." He had built a website that gave away free Bitcoin — 5 BTC per claim. Gavin was giving away a reason to try Bitcoin.

A little bit more information about the first ever Bitcoin faucet run by Gavin Andresen.
Archive of the faucet https://web.archive.org/web/20120112004517/https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

More information about it in Bitcoin history book.

During Spring 2010, the Bitcoin community was steadily growing with increased discussion on ‘Bitcoin Forum’ where hundreds had registered as members. On 28th May 2010, Gavin Andresen (an American software developer) registered as a member of the forum. He was an early Bitcoin developer who wanted Bitcoin to succeed by it becoming a widely adopted peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
On 11th June 2010, Gavin Andresen created a thread on ‘Bitcoin Forum’ titled ‘Get 5 free bitcoins from freebitcoins.appspot.com’ (BitcoinTalk topic #183) which read:

Gavin Andresen initially loaded the faucet with 1,100 BTC from his own pocket. Early BTC miners and whales also donated BTC to it. The first Bitcoin Faucet allowed visitors to the website to receive 5 BTC (if available) by completing a captcha, inserting a BTC wallet address and then clicking screenshot below). The primary focus was to boost Bitcoin adoption. It disbursed about 19,700 BTC until it closed in 2012.

Wow, I wasn't aware the faucet ended up distributing around 19,700 BTC. That's an incredible number.

Out of curiosity, if we consider Bitcoin's ATH it comes out to roughly $2.48 billion ($2,486,101,979).

Of course, that's looking at it through today's lens. Back then those coins were being used for something arguably more important than their monetary value: introducing people to Bitcoin.

Thank you for sharing the archive and the additional historical details.

I'd love feedback, criticism, and especially any historical details about the original faucet I might have missed.

Website looks very good but I think you should replace g00gle captcha with something better, maybe hCaptcha that is now used on bitcointalk forum.
I don't use or like lightning network, and I don't even know what wallets support LNURL-pay, so I didn't test if faucet actually works.

Done!

Thank you for the suggestion. I have now replaced Google reCAPTCHA with hCaptcha.

You gave me solid reason that hCaptcha aligns better with the spirit of the project and is also Bitcointalk itself uses.

The main trade-off is that the free hCaptcha plan doesn't provide the same level of analytics and reporting that Google offers, so I'll lose some visibility into captcha activity. However, for this small project I think that's a reasonable compromise.

As for LNURL, you're definitely not alone. One thing I've learned while building the faucet is that many Bitcoin users are still unfamiliar with Lightning wallets and LNURL-pay.

Hopefully the guides on how to get LNURL help make that first step a little easier for newcomers.

For the last part: yes, the faucet is working and there is still some balance left. I started it with almost 800,000 sats.

Since I am processing payments manually for now, that part may not always be "Lightning fast" — but otherwise, the faucet itself is Lightning quick.

[aoluain]

Thats such a legendary concept of giving away whole Bitcoins in order to try increase uptake etc.

So many people have commented in the past that if they could only travel back in time to those days
to avail of the faucets.

I checked my regular Lightning wallet and it doesnt seem to support LNURL addresses. I have BlueWallet
installed and might give that a ho later on?

It would be nice to experience the Faucet concept in first hand to get a feel for what it must have been
like back in the early years like 2011!

[UchihaSarada]

Wow, I wasn't aware the faucet ended up distributing around 19,700 BTC. That's an incredible number.

Out of curiosity, if we consider Bitcoin's ATH it comes out to roughly $2.48 billion ($2,486,101,979).

Of course, that's looking at it through today's lens. Back then those coins were being used for something arguably more important than their monetary value: introducing people to Bitcoin.

It's an incredible fortune if we look at it with today price but I think the same like you did, and this Bitcoin faucet run by Gavin Andresen has somehow similar role in advertising Bitcoin as the pizza trade by laszlo years ago.

Back in past years like such, both Gavin and Laszlo tried to advertise Bitcoin or use Bitcoin in unprecedented ways. What they did are truly milestones in Bitcoin history, and these things as well as their names are recorded in Bitcoin history.

It's quite wrong to take what they did in the past, bitcoins they spent and look at it with today price.

Thank you for sharing the archive and the additional historical details.

It's my pleasure to help if I can.

[Lucius]

I collected my first whole Bitcoin on faucets, but that was years after the faucet in question. In the period from 2014 to the beginning of 2017, faucets paid up to 10 000 sats per claim, and with a good faucet rotator and some active referrals, I used to collect up to 500 000 sats a day.

As for GA faucet, at a time when anyone could mine BTC with their computer and get 50 BTC for each block, those 5 BTC is not something that could attract a lot of people - because something less than 20k BTC is not some big number considering that even 50% of all BTC (10.5 million) were mined in the first 4 years.

[MusaMohamed]

As for GA faucet, at a time when anyone could mine BTC with their computer and get 50 BTC for each block, those 5 BTC is not something that could attract a lot of people - because something less than 20k BTC is not some big number considering that even 50% of all BTC (10.5 million) were mined in the first 4 years.

In June 2010 and months later, Bitcoin price was very cheap and till the end of 2010, Bitcoin price was about $0.3 according to this site. 50 BTC at the end of 2010 was only about $15, not too much.

The faucet was not too attractive with many people and who claimed bitcoins from the faucet likely did it for fun and testing. I believe that many of them did not store their bitcoin, wallet backups well and already lost their coins.
https://bitcoin.zorinaq.com/price/