Free Coins everywhere!

Everyone here probably already saw announcements of free Bitcoins and altcoins around, but is it for real?

The answer is: maybe.

Some of the ads that you see floating around every cryptocurrency site promises that you can get free coins without too much effort. Lots of them are selling the idea of Cloud-mining and Investing bitcoins.

Please, don´t try Cloud-mining or Investing Bitcoins

Cloud-mining promises that you buy Hashpower on their site, and they will use the money you put in to increase their mining infrastructure, and direct part of the profits to you. And you have to trust them that they really have a real infrastructure and are mining for real. But how can you really check if its real? Well, you can´t. I really doubt anyone is going to fly to Iceland or any remote place where the energy costs are cheap to check if there is a real instalation. (There is another way to actually rent Hashpower, but its still a big risk, as everyone read about Nicehash hack this week.)

Investing bitcoin is even worse. The process of investing with fiat money already have some risks, but banks and brokers have regulations to follow that reduce the risk of not having money to pay its clients. With Bitcoin investing its a really great a wild-west, and all of them is probably only Ponzi Schemes

I strongly suggest that you stay out of these "free" coins offers, because they just dot make any sense in pratical ways.

Enter the faucets

Some of these free coin offers come in the form of Faucets, where from time to time, they give some really small amounts of coins if you do some tasks, usually involving clicking ads, resolving captchas or playing games.

But first, some history lessons and some disclaimer

What is a Cryptocurrency Faucet

On the year of 2010, a guy named Gavin Andresen, a software developer involved with Bitcoin development created a website that gave 5 bitcoins for each visitor that solved the captcha and gave the bitcoin address. Not much money at the time, since bitcoin then was worth only a few pennies.

His objetive was to spread the bitcoin knowledge, and distribute some coins so people would start to be aware of it, and he named it the bitcoin Faucet.

A jump to nowdays

As everybody knows, Bitcoin got traction, its worth more than US$15.000,00, and the Altcoins are on the rise.

Then it came the faucets of today. Their main objective isn´t as noble as the first one (almost all of them are created to attract people to an website and get money from ads, and oh boy.... a lot of ads).

So, i decided to explore this free coins world, and to see if it really workout, or if its all a great big scheme and nobody gets anything (except for the faucet owners, who probably get a lot of money from the forced clicks)

Will i get rich?

Well, its pretty easy to see, that its impossible to get a lot of money from these faucets, since they only give at most 50 satoshis per click.

I´m doing this as an experiment, and to see if it is possible to few coins to mess around in the world of cryptos, since there is a lot of Altcoins faucet floating around.

So, if its free money, why not do it all day long?

One of the most true laws of our economic life is that there is no free lunch. And in this case, the price i will be paying will be some ours of my life where i could be doing something more productive.

If your idea is to "work" on daily basis to get the money from these faucets, think twice, because probably you would be making like US$ 0,10 per day. You will be a lot better if you find a job that you like and sticking with it.

Besides that, in the end, no one is 100% sure (based on fact, of course) that any of the crypto currencies will actually have some real value on the future.

Enough talk! Just let me know how to get these free coin!

I´ve spent a few days understanding how these faucets work, and i tried to select the few ones that have potential of "paying" the coins for real, and the less annoying ones. Because, like i said, i really don´t think is worth my time to stay all day resolving captchas e and clicking ads.

Since i started this only a few days ago, i still haven´t cashed out any of these promissed coins, so that is one thing i cant say for sure now that it works. I´ll write another post when i have enough coins to cashout. (BTW, all links are referall links, so if you want to try these faucets, please use the link, so that i can test the cashout part quickly)

And here i present you...

The less annoying faucets that you may want to try (Ranked form less annoying to more annoying)

1 - Qoinpro

How it works

This is the weird one out there.

Theoreticaly, its the most effortless one, since you dont have to actually do anything. Every 24h, the amount of coins you have increases, depending how many referrals you have. Shaped like a pyramid. (Multi Level Marketing anyone)

On Signup, they already give you a bunch of coins, including, Bitcon, Litecoin, Dogecoin and Dash.

How they make money

That is the big question that must always be made when looking at a faucet, because there is no actual free faucets around.

On their FAQ they say that they do have a business plan, and that "step one is to educate people about crypto-currencies and make it easy for people to get started" and the "Step two was the launch of a complete multi-currency online wallet where you (will continue to) receive free coins every 24 hours"

Then their stated goal is to create a wallet (probably an online one) and to raise awareness of their wallet and the Cryptocurrencies, they are giving them away.

What is the catch?

The first one is that, when you enter the wallet, there is six coins that are locked, and will be unlocked in days, weeks, or months. But you can unlock them, and start earning them by buying Qoinpro credits. You know, real money to get virtual free coins.

The second one is the wallet itself. It begins with the fact that this is supposed to be an online wallet, wich, most of you already know, you wont actually have full control of whatever is in this wallet. And they exist since 2014, maybe 3 years is enough time to create a funcioning secure wallet? I don´t know, but i definitly won´t use it as a wallet, since there is no evidence that it is secure.

And if you want to buy the Qoinpro credits or use it as a wallet, mind that there is a really high risk involved in doing this now.

Probability of payout

I´m still no sure, but maybe it will. Like i said, i wont use it as a wallet right now, and wont buy the Qoinpro Credits, but i will wait and see how it goes. Some people reports on the web say that they have a hard time to cashout, but eventually they are able to do so.

At this moment, the cashouts are totally manually processed, this may be why they take too long to be processed. A tweet on 8/12/2017 claimed that they will have automatic transactions on January first

I will wait and see. Since it doesn´t take much offer, ill let it flow an try to cashout this free coins on a future date. If you want to help me test that quickly, use this link to Signup

2 - Coinpot Faucets (Moonbit,Moondoge,Moonlite,Moondash,Bitfun)

How it works

Now we enter the realm of Ads driven Faucets. And these are one of the less annoying ones. Maybe that is why they don´t have big payouts.

For these Faucets, you will need an account on the Coinpot, since all the faucets drops are paid directly to this wallet. It works like an intermediary wallet, where you can accumulate the coins, exchange them for another coin on the wallet, and then transfer them to you actual wallet.

In the Moonfaucets (Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Litecoin, and Dash) you can claim a drop every 5 minutes, and send it to your Coinpot account.

All you have to do is put you coinpot account email, click the claim button, resolve the captcha, and done.

What it make less annoying is that you don´t have to do the claim every five minutes. The coins will accumulate over time, and you can claim any time you want, the most numbers of captchas i had to solve to claim were 3 so far, but usually its only one.

I suggest claiming at least once a day, since they have a "loyalty bonus" that increase in 1% every day you claim a coin.

The Bitfun also is a faucet, but it claims that you can get statoshis by playing games with ads on their site. I don´t acually play any games, but they have a faucet that accumulates the satoshis, just like the moon faucets

How they make money?

Ad clicks. The page is only ads, so they get some revenue what an ad is clicked.

What is the catch?

The first one is that even if you dont click an ad on their page, the site tricks you into doing so. Some of the times you click the claim button, or the captcha form, your browser open a tab like you have clicked on an ad.

The second one is on the Moonbit. Everytime i open the page, the Avast detects Trojan JS:Miner-C, that basicly infects you computer to mine coins for someone else without you knowing it.
The site say that you can Activate a "mining bonus" where you would mine bitcoins on the site. And i think i don´t have to explain here why this is a bad idea. So, please, don´t activate it, and have a good updated antivirus running when trying to use these faucets.

Probability of payout

I can´t say for sure yet, since this coinpot wallet appeared only a few months ago.

The people around the web are kind of divided if you can actually transfer your faucet earnings to a real bitcoin wallet. They have some options with no fees, like transfering to coinbase, so what make this kind of risky is exactly that they dont charge a transfer fee, since this woud be the logic way to make money on a service like this.

I´ll see in a few days, when i acumulate enough coins to exchange them all to one coin to get to the minimum threshold and see if i will actually recieve anything.

3 - MulticoinFaucet (BTC & ETH)

How it works?

This is an interesting one. They don´t seem ttoo invasive with their ads, and the captcha they introduce is pretty easy and no annoying to do.

They have two faucets, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and two ways to get the drops. One is a roll game, where you roll a 10000 random number generator and get an amount of coins depending on the number rolled, and the other is a straight faucet: resolve the captcha, click claim, every one hour.

The satoshis are stored on an account you create, and can be transfered to another account once it reach the minimun threshold (0.002 ETH and no fees if you use an Faucethub microwallet (more on that later) and 0.0026 ETH and 0.0002 fee to any other wallet. Need to check the BTC Threshold)

They also have some games, like dice, coin-toss, pool, and lottery if you wanna try your luck and increase your drops.

Also they claim that they start to pay 4% monthly interest rate if your balance is over 0.0005 BTC (10% if you pay to join their "Ad Club")

How they make money

Also with ads. Besides the third party ads, they sell their own ad services, that i think it runs inside the faucet itself.

What is the catch?

I don´t know yet. A few days ago, there was a message apologizing for the hack that happened on their site. Maybe this "hack" happens from time to time, so less people get their satoshis out of there.

Probability of Payout

Not sure. That hack message got me thinking, but if this isn´t an elaborate play to not pay anyone, they may work, since they generate their renevue from their own ad system.

4 - Freebitco and Freedoge

How it works

These two seems to be the most popular ones, and aren´t much of a hassle to use.

Every hour you roll a Random number, and get drops according to the number rolled. There is also some games, if you want to try to "multiply" your coins

They also claim to pay interest if you keep more than 0.0003 BTC on the site.

Another interesting feature is that you can distribute coins among your referrals, if you want to distribuite your gains as a thank you. (wich i will do if i get some one day)

How they make money?

That´s is something that i still dont know for sure, since they don have ads nor a clickwall (where you get coins for clicking links), but it seems that they have a mining operation, and maybe some people deposit BTC on the site to get the interest rate (like i said, not really a good idea).

What is the catch?

Still can´t find any, except the part where you may want to deposit any amount of BTC to get interest rates.

People around the web seems to find it legit, and it has been working around for sime time now.

Probability of payout

Maybe there is a good chance to get payouts, mostly because they have been around for some years, and there seems to have some trust of the community. But again, i wouldn´t trust my money on earning interests.

5 - Multifaucet.io and Coinpot.win

How it works?

These ones are a bit annoying but not so much.

Both have multiple coins faucets that resets every 10 minute or so. When you claim, the coins go to your account, but you can withdraw immediatly to your Faucethub microwallet.

There is also the "bonus" where you get a few more coins by clicking ads.

And games of luck included.

How they make money?

Ads. It´s a lot less ads than i saw on some of the faucets around.

What is the catch?

Sometimes, when you try to withdraw the coins to an error appear, saying that the faucet doesn´t have funds. They say funds are added daily, so you can try again to withdraw the other day.

So far, i got some of these messages on some coins, but were able to withdraw the coins the other day

Probability of payout

Besides the eventual "faucet doesn´t have funds" error, you probably will be able to withdraw the coins to your Faucethub microwallet.

The true payout will work on the Faucethub, that i will talk about next:

6 - Faucethub

How it works

This isn´t a faucet per se, but its a microwallet, where you can direct a lot of the faucet results.

It doesn´t have a faucet, but an offerwall, where you do some tasks to get some coins. I´m not really a fan of that.

It also have a list of faucets that make the payment to its wallet.

Also, it have an internal exchange, where you can exchange the various coins you get from the faucets, for only one specific coin, wich may make it easier to claim your coins for real.

How they make money?

They have the offerwall, where they get money from the users clicks, and they offer a web mining (don´t, please).

Besides that, you can get a premium account, that come with some perks

What is the catch?

Well, web mining. But besides that, it seems to be a pretty popular microwallet, but as always, its an online wallet, so, you don´t actually control the coins.

Probability of payout

It looks good. The owner mexicantarget is part of the community for some time, and the people on the web seems to have recieved payments from the wallet.

7 - Games (Pokebits, Satoshiwars, Cryptoracers)

How it works

This is an interesting part of the faucets: The web games.

They work similar to old web-based games (do people still make them?), where you can do missions, buy stuff, fight... Not really exciting. If you like games, go play some real good games.

But as a faucet, they add in interesting spice. You get the coins by doing some tasks/missions, increasing the rewards the more you use it. Like, leveling up a character, and you can use the satoshi you earn to upgrader your power, and theoreticaly, increase you satoshi gain.

But beware. Some of the games (a certain farm game that i will not advertise wich one here) i found asks you to do a deposit to be able to withdraw your earned satoshi. So that is a big no-no. Avoid them like the plague.

The three i posted up here are the ones i found interesing:

Pokebits is a pokemon clone, where you train, catch, and do missions to get the satoshi. Its interesting, but i doubt it will last long, becaus Nintendo is pretty agressive with anything regarding their IP. So as soon as Nintendo find out about this, they will probably shut down.

Satoshiwars. This one is interesting because is directly related to the crypto culture (if there is such a thing). You click on timed missions that unlocks, and you get a bit of information about bitcoin. At mission number two of the "bitcoin academy" area, you get the text: What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is a form of decentralized digital currency, created and held electronically. So, lets see how deep this knowledge goes. Here you earn gold that can be traded by satoshis.

Cryptoracers is not really that interesting, since it looks worst than the Pokebits, but if you want to check it, give it a try.

How they make money?

Ads. Ads everywhere. And hidden ad click too

Also, VIP and subscription options.

What is the catch?

Well, it seems they may give too much satoshis for each action, wich is totally different for other faucets (you can get like 500 to 1000 satoshis per day if you have the patience and play right), but since most of these satoshis will circulate into the game, its hard to know how much of it is taken out.

Probability of payout

Im a bit skeptical a these ones. But ill try to see if i can reach the minimum withdraw on at least one of them to test it.

BONUS 1: Mining (but for real, and not web mining) on Minergate

With the advent of so many altcoins on the last years it is now possible to farm some of them with you normal day to day computer, with an easy interface and without too much code learning. Btw, it wont be as efficient as direct mine, but you still get some coins.

At Minergate you can actually mine altcoins (DSH, XMR, BCN an other still useless coins) on your normal computer, using your CPU or you GPU. But somethings must be noted:

1 - You wont get too many coins by mining your you common computer, so dont get greedy
2 - Mining 24h can be really harmful to your computer.
3 - You need to know what temperatures you computer might get while farming. If you dont have a trustful way to measure and control these temperatures, don´t mine. Anything above 70-80 Celcius for too much time can kill your CPU and GPU in a short time. If you wanna try, there is a lot of good temperature monitors on the web.
4 - With Minergate app you can choose how many cores of you GPU/CPU you want to use to mine. Dont use it all. Use one a small part of the cores, that way you may mine while using your computer as you normally would.
5 - I don´t recommend using the CPU to mine. It gets hot really quick, and probably isnt much effective. Use your GPU to mine at a slow pace (and controled temperature) when you are no using it for anything else.

BONUS 2 How to manage your Crypto Portifolio: Cointracker

I was looking for a good way to register an track how many coins i have, and where they are.

So far, Cointracker looks like the best bet. The only downside is that the free version you can only register 200 operations. More than that you have to pay. But it is a really good platform.

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Well thats it! It s a long text, but it is an interesting topic, since lots of websites claim that you can make easy money on these kind of things, but you rarely see a more detailed analysis.

As my experiment progress, i will make another post to report if any of these faucets really work.

Please, feel free to add anything you know about the faucets i talked about, and if you have any experience with them.