Hello Steemians!!

After a long discussion with a group of friends yesterday, I decided to write a mini series on how to earn free cryptocurrencies through coin faucets. As a result, this guide will be for people who wants to get introduced to crypto currencies without any risk or for experienced crypto coin collectors. The series will be separated in three articles which are designed to guide through a step-by-step process on how to quickly acquire FREE cryptocurrencies. As you have noticed, this article will introduce to coin faucets and I used hyperlinks to redirect you straight to the source or definitions. 

WHAT IS A COIN FAUCET?

The cryptocurrency market seems to be like the wild wild west and risk is its best friend. It's a high risk asset and not a lot of people can bear the risk. Others simply don't have the money to invest. Now, this is where coin faucets comes in hand. You can earn coins without mining by simply investing a little bit of your time.

So what's a Bitcoin faucet? It's a reward system, in the form of a website or app, that dispenses rewards in the form of a satoshi, which is a hundredth of a millionth BTC, for visitors to claim in exchange for completing a captcha or task as described by the website. There are also faucets that dispense alternative cryptocurrencies. 

WHO CREATED IT?

Gavin Andresen was the first person to create a Bitcoin faucet back in 2010. For those who don't know Andresen, he was one of the lead Bitcoin developers. Here's an interesting excerpt from a Washington Post's article written by Timothy Lee.

Mid-2010: Gavin Andresen creates the Bitcoin Faucet, a Website that gives out free bitcoins. Early versions of the faucet gave out 5 BTC per visitor — worth around a penny in 2010, but worth about $4,000 today.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A BITCOIN FAUCET?

1 - To introduce users to bitcoin: Faucets are a great way to help introduce new people to bitcoin, or to altcoins. A majority of faucets provide information to new users as well as offering them some free coins so that they can ‘try before they buy’, experimenting with a test transaction or two before putting real money on the line. Since this whole experience is so new and a bit complicated to people, who perhaps don’t quite trust it with their hard money, this is a beneficial way to promote digital currency and bring in new users.

2- To get traffic: Faucets are high traffic websites. It is not difficult to obtain a huge number of page views per day to a site which is giving away free money. If a website has other content or services to promote to Bitcoin users, especially new users, a faucet is a great way to bring them to make them familiar with a brand name.

3- To make money: Making a healthy profit from a faucet site on its own is a lot harder than just making a popular faucet, but it is still possible. There are a lot of these sites around today, so it's a very competitive market, and earning enough from advertising to cover the cost of the coins you are giving away and hosting costs is nearly impossible. Adding additional content to a website, or creating some kind of unique or interesting twist, is the only way to generate an income for a Bitcoin faucet.

Good luck with your coin collections and KEEP THEM SAFE!

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