Frequently Asked Questions

What is a faucet?

A faucet is a tool that allows new cryptocurrency users get their first coins without the need of mining, buying or earning them. It sends a small amount of free coins to an address.

Why would anybody give their coins away for nothing?

The coins are free, but that doesn't mean they are lost: they are used to get YOU interested on a determined cryptocurrency. And the more people using/owning a certain coin, the higher the interest there will be for the success of said coin.

Who makes these faucets?

The faucets are generally made by cryptocurrency developers to get people interested in their new coin.

Then, did The Bitcoin Master develop all the coins he has made faucets for?

Not at all! The Bitcoin Master is not involved in the development of any cryptocoin. He hasn't even invested any significant amount of fiat money in any particular cryptocurrency. He simply likes to have fun developing new web stuff, and making a faucet offered an interesting challenge.

How do these faucets work?

In order to use a faucet you'll need an address from the appropriate cryptocoin. You can get an address by running the cryptocoin client and clicking on "Receive coins" (there's a link to get the client on every faucet's page). Once you have your address, you'll need to paste it into the text field you can see. After that, solve the captcha. Captchas are necessary to avoid automatic use of the faucet by computer programs. Lastly, click on the button beside it.

And after I click the button, will I receive the coins on my wallet?

If you have your wallet synchronized with the network (with the blockchain completely downloaded), you have clicked on the checkbox "I want a payout now", have reached the withdrawal threshold enforced on some coins and the cryptocoin network is in good health, you should see the coins arrive straight away:

• If your wallet isn't synchronized with the network you might need to wait until the last block is downloaded to see the coins on your wallet.


• If you don't click on the "I want a payout now" checkbox, you'll accumulate your coins on your address, but we won't send them to you yet.


• For every transaction a faucet makes it has to pay a transaction fee. Some coins enforce a considerable transaction fee if the amount being sent is relatively small. In such cases, we won't let you withdraw your coins until you reach a certain threshold.


• If the cryptocoin network is unhealthy (there are not many nodes connected, there are not enough miners, the coin has unsolved network problems on its source code...) you might not get your coins inmediately. You might not even get them at all.

Why should I skip clicking on the checkbox "I want a payout now"? I want my coins as soon as possible!

For two reasons: to reduce the blockchain size and to reduce your transaction fees:

• Every transaction made on a cryptocoin network is recorded on the blockchain. And it occupies memory. If you plan to use a faucet several times and care for the cryptocoin community you are becoming a part of, please don't request a payout until the last time you use the faucet. This way, instead of, for example, adding 20 transactions of 1 coin to your address in the blockchain, there will only be one transaction of 20 coins to your address. A light blockchain benefits the coin.


• When you send your coins to a different address, you'll have to pay a higher transaction fee if you received the coins through multiple small transactions instead of a single one. You might even have to pay a higher transaction fee than the amount of coins you want to send (this is NOT a joke: it's possible that you have to pay a transaction fee of 1000 coins to send 1 coin if it is heavily fragmented among many micro-transactions)! This is made to avoid malicious transaction spamming aimed at unnecessarily bloating the blockchain.

Why do some coins enforce a considerable transaction fee?

Read the last sentence of the previous question.

How much are the faucets paying out each time they are used?

If you convert the alt-coin value to Bitcoins, between 1 and 30 satoshis. If you think it is low, you should look into mining your own coins. Remember: faucets are made for new cryptocoin users, not to make you rich. We won't stop you from using the faucets as many times as you wish, though. If you consider your time is worth ~ 100 satoshi / minute... Well, enjoy yourself.

What is a 'satoshi'?

1/100,000,000 of a Bitcoin. There are 100,000,000 satoshis in a Bitcoin.

Where do the funds of each faucet come from?

Most of the funds come from donations, but The Bitcoin Master has also put part of his amazing wealth (amassed by mining with his super-effective GeForce 560 GTX Ti!) into the faucets.

How long do you keep the collected coins assigned to each address?

At least one month. After one month, I might delete inactive addresses to save disk space (there are A LOT of them!).

What is this distinction between 'remaining' funds and 'reserves'?

The remaining funds are in the local server wallet. As a security measure, when a donation is received, if it surpases a certain amount, part of it is sent to a heavily double-encrypted wallet. As the remaining funds of each faucet are taken and decrease, new funds are manually sent from these offline wallets to the local wallets to restock the coins.