In Bitcoin’s early days, the community experimented with ideas that would feel surreal today. And some of these experiments were so unusual that they’ve become tiny legends inside the ecosystem. Here are the 2 most striking ones:
- The 5 BTC faucet (2010)
Gavin Andresen launched a webpage where solving a CAPTCHA earned you 5 BTC 💸
No registration, no tasks - just a push to help people try the new system. Across its lifetime, the faucet distributed nearly 20,000 (!!!) BTC before closing as Bitcoin gained value and bots started abusing it.
- The conference giveaway (2012)
BitInstant reportedly handed out 100 BTC at a physical booth, the way companies usually give out merch stickers or tote bags. At the time, Bitcoin was cheap and adoption was tiny, so giving coins away felt like normal marketing rather than a headline event 🎁
As Bitcoin grew, these gestures disappeared. The economics changed, and the phrase "free BTC" quickly attracted phishing pages and scam schemes, turning an early community culture into a risk zone.
👉 Today, when people refer to earning Bitcoin, it’s usually about micro-rewards, cashback, referral bonuses, or simply getting paid in BTC for your work - still interesting, but nothing like the era when a CAPTCHA could hand you some coins 😉
It’s a fun reminder of how quickly Bitcoin’s incentives shifted - and how those early experiments helped shape the culture we have today.
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