A relic of Bitcoin’s earliest days is making a comeback, potentially reviving a tradition that once handed out bitcoin (BTC) for free to anyone who could solve a simple CAPTCHA.
Charlie Shrem, an early Bitcoin developer and entrepreneur, teased the relaunch of the Bitcoin Faucet earlier Monday, posting a link to the page that mimicked the one built by Gavin Andresen in 2010.
The faucet famously distributed 5 BTC per user to their bitcoin wallets for free back when the token was worth less than a cent. Each of those transfers is worth nearly $500,000 at current prices.
The website is not yet live with rewards and holds zero BTC as of early U.S. hours Monday.
The original faucet was designed to help onboard new users to the Bitcoin network at a time when buying or mining BTC was cumbersome and often required technical know-how.
At the time, Andresen funded the faucet with 1,100 BTC and saw it as a way to grow the network organically. The idea worked: thousands of early users got their first exposure to Bitcoin through the faucet, which, in hindsight, distributed small fortunes for free.
By the time the faucet shut down, its payouts had dwindled to fractions of a BTC, but its cultural impact remained legendary — especially as BTC prices surged over the next decade.