With the rise of Bitcoins, Ethereum and cryptocurrencies everyone are talking about mining again. Video cards price has skyrocketed in the last 2 months.

If you are late for the mining ride, you don’t have the knowledge or time to build your own mining rigs or you just don’t like risking it there are others risk free ways to obtains cryptocurrencies.

You can use faucets. Faucets are websites or mobile applications giving you small amounts of free bitcoins or alt coins in exchange for watching videos, viewing adds, playing games. After solving a captcha you’ll receive a varying reward in satoshis. One satoshi is hundredth of a millionth BTC. It’s quite spammy in the form of ads, so be prepared in advance.

Rewards are dispensed in predetermined intervals of time varying from faucet to faucet. In order to get your coins you’ll need to visit the faucet a couple of times and accumulate a predefined value before they are sent to your wallet. This helps faucets reduce the transfer (mining) fees for sending you your coins.

All you need to do is:

• visit your favorite faucets
• click and resolve the captcha
• wait for the timer to run out (no need to keep the tab opened)
• …repeat
  

Choose your wallet

NOTE: If you already heave a wallet skip to the next section.

If you are a beginner with cryptocurrencies then you’ll need a wallet before claiming from faucets. Wallets are the place where you keep your coins. Each cryptocurrency has its own wallet. You can get the official wallets but that’s probably an overkill if you are just starting. There are also hardware wallets but they require you to invest money and buy them. Do that when you gather more coins. Hardware wallets are much more secure.

There are all-in-one apps that combine several wallets and you can keep more than one currency in them. My 2 favorites are:

• Exodus
  Has been around for a while and the UI is quite simplified.
• JAXX
  Has a mobile version. Don’t use jaxx if you plan on mining in the future.

NOTE: Exodus will drop Dogecoin support mid September so if you plan on getting Dogecoins install JAXX.

Cryptocurrency wallets have a public key. That’s what you use to receive coins. It’s safe to share it. You also have private keys you should never share with anyone. Exodus and JAXX hide this from you showing you only the public address (key).

You’ll need to copy your public addresses a lot and use them for the faucets. If you like write them down outside the programs.

Exodus Click on Receive
JAXX

Remember to always backup your wallets – if you loose you access you won’t be able to recover them without a backup.

Which faucet should I use?

When using faucets you shouldn’t go after one currency. Payout varies so I prefer to accumulate several crypto coins. This also shields you from a currency price dropping too much. Exodus and JAXX come with built in exchange so you can exchange your coins to the preferred currency.

freebitco.in

freebitco.in is probably one of the most user friendly and easy to use faucets. All you need is to register and use the “Free Roll”. Each roll will give you approximately 80 satoshis and you can claim once per hour. The game is fairly simple. You roll for a random number between 0 and 10000. Numbers above 9886 will give you more satoshis up to $200.

You can enable auto withdraw and get your earnings to your wallet every Sunday… or you can just leave your satoshis there for the annual interest of 4%.

Another nice feature of this faucet is their reward system. Each free roll gives you reward points which you can convert to bitcoins or exchange for one of the other rewards they offer.

There is a HI-LO dice game called “Multiply BTC”. That’s gambling so be careful with that feature. You can loose everything you’ve earned. Do it only for fun with what you can afford to loose and never for profit. Don’t think doubling your bet or any sort of martingale is a winning strategy. Sooner or later you’ll end up on a loosing streak. However, if you decide to gamble, always use a Stop Loss.

Like every other faucet they also have a referrals commission for inviting new users. You can invite your friends and earn a little bit more without doing anything.

Faucet networks and payments

All faucets have a threshold you need to reach so you can withdraw your coins. For bitcoins this will be around 15000-20000 satoshis (0.00015 BTC). Not all faucets accumulate your earning in their own system. Some of them use a faucet network. Don’t worry, they’ll notify you that your bitcoin bits are being sent there.

faucethub.com

FaucetHub requires you to register. Any faucet using faucethub won’t send you satoshis unless you’ve registered so my advise is to do so before you begin. You’ll need to enter your wallet addresses from Jaxx or Exodus on the Wallet Address tab in Dashboard.
The benefit of FaucetHub is that you can be sure faucets using it won’t scam you for your clicks. They also have a section with top faucets which is useful for finding the highest paying faucets.

faucetsystem.com

Another faucet network used by many faucets. You don’t need to register here but you still need to visit the site and withdraw your earnings once you get to 15000 satoshis (0.00015 BTC).

Gamification

In addition to the regular faucets you’ll also stumble on games. You’ll get points for waching ads while playing the game. With those points you can upgrade your points income or turn them in satoshis you can send to you wallet

One popular example is virtualpub.io. You run your own virtual bitcoin pub and earn credits you can convert to bitcoins and withdraw. The game requires a FaucetHub account.
You’ll need to hire a waiter, buy drinks which you sell for profit. Upgrade your bar will increase you credits profit. You’ll even hire scientists that can invent stuff for you.

Start game is pretty slow but once you upgrade you bar you’ll see better profits. Be prepared to go through lots of ads and captchas.
There are other games out there so if you like gaming instead of clicking that’s also an option.

Mobile Applications

Be careful with mobile apps. Android PlayStore is full with scam applications which doesn’t pay. Withdrawal sum is quite high so once you hit it and figure out they don’t pay it will be already a month of clicking. Always read the comments section. Another way to test is to click 1-2 times and then clear the app storage from settings. If you balance is 0 after you run the app again, then it’s a scam. Another clue would be a high payout per interaction. If it’s too good to be true, than it’s almost sure a scam.

Scam, scam everywhere

As you’ve already guessed, most faucets give you cryptocurrencies in exchange for watching ads. Those ads are not managed by the faucets and you’ll see many high-yield investment (HYIP) sites being advertised as giving you 10-20% profit per day for you bitcoins. Yes, they’ll ask you to deposit your bitcoins. Such high returns can be nothing else but a Ponzi scheme. Next investors money cover the earning of the members before them. When new members flow goes down those sites just disappear with all the invested money.

Same applies for cloud mining. Stay away from cloud mining. You’ll earn more by just bying your own hardware and it will be much lower risk.

When in doubt use 99bitcoins scam test. 99bitcoins is a great site with useful advises and resources. Take some time to browse it’s content if you want to learn more about bitcoins.

Another source is bitcointalk forum. You’ll find information on new projects, discussions, faucets reviews and a helpful community. It’s a great place to check on a faucet or bitcoins related website credibility.

Step by step guide

• Register on freebitco.in. The site lacks the heavy ads usage on the other faucets and the reward points system on freebitco.in is worth it.
• Be prepared to see lots of ads. Use your browser private mode if you don’t want disabling your add blocker all the time.
• Captcha, captcha everywhere – you’ll need to solve lots of captchas. Most sites use reCaptcha v2 which means recognizing images instead of typing text. Don’t try using a captcha solver. It’s a waste of money. Most will fail.
• Don’t limit yourself to just Bitcoins. There are faucets for Ehtereum, Dash, Doge, Litecoin. Use all of them. Be a hoarder.
• Be patient. Your coins will accumulate with time.
• Don’t expect you’ll get rich from faucets. You can get a decent amount of crypto currencies but that won’t make you a millionaire.

Getting fiat currency for your coins

Both Exodus and JAXX come with built in exchange for cryptocurrencies. This makes it easy to, let’s say, convert your dogecoins to bitcoins. But what about getting euros or dollars for your coins?
Unlike crypto to cryptocurrency conversion fiat conversion will require uploading a passport for verification. Processing times vary from site to site.

• kraken.com
  Kraken has been around for a long time. It’s easy to use with low taxes but the approval process takes forever (2-3 weeks).
• coinbase.com
  Fast approval times but trading fees are a little bit high compared to Kraken.
• bitstamp.com
  Fast approval times
• There other sites out there but I haven’t tried them personally.

It’s never a bad idea to have a backup. Register in all three.

• Never sell high amounts for cryptocurrencies at once. If a coin crashes down you don’t want risk too much.
• Don’t keep too many coins in exchanges. They are not meant to be used as wallets

Faucets List

• freebitco.in – once every hour