42. First Bitcoin Faucet

42

First Bitcoin Faucet

GAVIN ANDRESEN, currently Lead Core Bitcoin Developer, announced that he has written a “Bitcoin faucet” giving away 5 bitcoins per customer for free. Satoshi replies that he has had the same idea in mind if nobody else came up with it.

Re: Get 5 free bitcoins from freebitcoins. appspot.com

Satoshi Nakamoto June 18, 2010, 11:08:34 PM

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on June 11, 2010,05:38:45PM

For my first Bitcoin coding project, I decided to do something that sounds really dumb: I created a web site that gives away Bitcoins. It is at: https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

Five B per customer, first come first served, I’ve stocked it with B1,100 to start. I’ll add more once I’m sure it is working properly.

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. It can be frustrating to wait until your node generates some coins (and that will get more frustrating in the future), and buying Bitcoins is still a little bit clunky.

Please try it out and get some free coins, even if you already have more Bitcoins than you know what to do with. You can get some and then donate them right back; the address is: 15VjRaDX9zpbA8LVnbrCAFzrVzN7ixHNsC

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.

Later, as the value was going up. Satoshi suggest reducing the bitcoin faucet to 1 BTC (1 bitcoin)

Re: Donations to freebitcoins. appspot.com needed!

Satoshi Nakamoto July 16, 2010, 02:02:07 AM

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on June 12, 2010,07:15:46PM

The Bitcoin Faucet is handling the slashdotting really well... except that I’m running out of coins to give away. over 5,000 have flowed out of the Faucet since I refilled it last night.

Any of you early adopters who generated tens of thousands of coins back in the early days, are you willing to send a few to the Faucet to be given away so more people can try out Bitcoin? I know that most of them are likely to be lost (I suspect there a lot of slashdot lookey-loos who won’t stickaround long enough to spend their 5 bitcoins), but if that’s the case then that’ll just increase the value of your other bitcoins, anyway...

Fountain donation address is: 15VjRaDX9zpbA8LVnbrCAFzrVzN7ixHNsC

Depending on donations and how long the slashdotting lasts, I might have to start giving away bitnickels...

5 BTC seems like a lot these days, maybe the normal amount should be 1 or 2 BTC.

This is an important service so new users can at least get something if generating is too hard.