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!
It does support LNURL, and if you have already submitted a claim, it should have been processed by now, unless it failed due to some unexpected reason. I’ll keep fixing such issues from time to time. Can you please point me which what LNURL you submitted?
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.
Those were the golden days... and earning hundreds of thousands of sats per day sounds unbelievable by today's standards. It's also easy to forget that back then 5 BTC wasn't viewed as a huge amount because Bitcoin had little value and yes mining was still accessible to ordinary users. Hindsight makes those numbers look much bigger than they felt at the time but yeah that reminds of that quote of satoshi
“It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” - Satoshi
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/That is true. Many people probably forgot to store their wallet keys properly. In a way, each lost bitcoin increases the value of the remaining bitcoins.
Something is triggering the claim button cooldown even though I haven't claimed anything.
The first time it happened, I was reading some docs in the website's footer.
When I got back to homepage using the dedicated "<- back to home" button, it started the countdown timer for some reason.
The second time, I purposely reproduced it by clicking "View faucet status & recent activity", then "<- back to home".
It started the cooldown again, with longer waiting time.
Using the browser's "back" button to return to homepage doesn't trigger this bug.
A minor issue but it could be inconvenient to those curious individuals who prefer exploring the page links first before using the faucet.
Yes, sorry for that. It is actually across the whole website, meaning 10 minutes per claim.
To be honest, despite adding many checks:
- IP address check
- One claim per LNURL for 7 days
- Browser agent check
- Manual payment processing
I am still getting automated claims.
I know because I receive 10–20 claims exactly 55–65 seconds apart. It looks like some AI agent is solving the puzzles. A human cannot be this precise.
After seeing this, I added a 10-minute cooldown timer. Later, I might change it to 5 minutes depending on how the traffic goes.
However, if I receive a claim from a unique IP/location, I will give it higher priority, and you will be able to claim.
At the moment, I am getting around 90% of the claims from two countries, which looks like a coordinated effort.
Same spirit. Same purpose. Updated for 2026.
So, does this faucet site look identical to the original Gavin Andresen's faucet from 2010? I just wasn't around back then, so I'm curious.
Well, not exactly, but I would say around 80%. I cannot keep it 100% the same because it needs to be a little more modern, with responsive design, status updates, and current activity, which the original faucet did not have.
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
I think, in honor of the original website, it would be logical to issue 5 sats.
Your faucet issues fixed sats. or random values within a certain range (like 1-100, like bestchange faucet).
Ahh, good idea. Thank you for that. Yes, I will make it random within a range of 1–100 sats. I like that and will definitely do it.
It was 100 sats at the start for the first 500–600 claims, but I saw it was draining pretty fast, around 200–300 claims in 12 hours. Now I have made it 50 sats.
Just connect a Lightning wallet, claim a few sats, and experience what newcomers in 2010 felt when they received their very first bitcoin.
In the sense that the received award is worth nothing and will have symbolic value?
Haha, of course the value is there. I mean in terms of USD, 100 sats at the current ~$60k BTC price is around $0.06.
Imagine if Bitcoin goes to $1M.
Nobody is getting rich from a few sats. That's not the goal.
Of course, it will be a pleasure to just participate. And for newbies, it will be their first "touch" with
bitcoin sat. without any investment.
It did. There are many people who never knew about Lightning payments or how fast and convenient they are. Actually, I am working on a Lightning payment project with someone, and that is how I came up with this faucet idea.
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.
Sometimes curiosity leads to very unexpected results.
Yes, it does. Curiosity is the fundamental spark that drives discovery.
The site is intentionally simple. I tried to keep some of the look and feel of the original while giving it a modern touch.
So, I found the answer to my question above. So, it turns out this is a kind of replica (with some modifications) of the old website design, right?
You got it. Some of the changes were absolutely mandatory, and some were add-ons.
One thing I noticed.
Each claim is worth 50 sats, right?
In this section >
https://thesatoshifaucet.com/support < you say that 10,000 sats funds around 97 claims. That looks like 100 sats per claim. If each claim is worth 50 sats, shouldn't it be 200 claims for a 10,000 sats donation? minus whatever fees there are. Maybe I am missing something...
Well the fee I don't want to deduct from the user's claims but keep it on the faucet, yes there is a variable fee for each claim. If I send it via Wallet of Satoshi, each claim can have a fee of around 3–4 sats.
If I use LNBits, the fee is around 8 sats. I am using both depending on how many pending payments I have.
Yes, that calculation is based on 100 sats + fee.
Secondly, why is it not 100 sats? My original idea was to keep it at 100 sats, but like I said above, the
https://thesatoshifaucet.com/ wallet was draining fast. Based on my estimate, in 28–38 days I would have zero sats left to distribute. To avoid that, I made it 50 sats.
But now I like
m2017’s idea and will make it random between 10–100 sats.
