Need something to do while you are sick in bed? How about getting some free Bitcoins?
A Bitcoin faucet is a service that gives out tiny tiny bits of Bitcoins for free, typically 50 to 1000 satoshi at a time. A satoshi is 0.00000001 BTC, or about $0.000006557 USD (at the moment.. prices are always fluctuating), so it really isn’t much money. The owners of these services earn money by selling ad space.
To keep you from racking up the Bitcoins too fast, these services only let you earn satoshi once every 30 minutes to 24 hours.
You need at least 5500 satoshi to get paid due to Bitcoin minimum transaction size requirements, and some services require a little bit more just to make it harder to get a payout. Many faucets send micropayments to an aggregator, which then pays you when you get 5500 satoshi.
So here are a few of my favorites (some of these give me a referral bonus.. using these links won’t reduce the amount of Bitcoins you’ll get though..):
Bitcoin Zebra - If you are only going to try this once, then Bitcoin Zebra is the one to use. It lets you earn once every hour and has a Chrome extension that gives you a heads up when it is time to earn some more. They only pay out once a week, but you’ll earn more for doing less than you would with other faucets.
Bit Chest - This aggregator uses many faucets, including 8coin which gives 500 satoshi at a time. I really like this one because: A) it lets you know when you can earn more satoshi, B) it is easy to get to 5500 satoshi in a single day, and C) it pays out each night.
CoinBox.me - They have a bunch of little faucets that get aggregated into this one site. They have a full list of faucets on their homepage. They pay out daily, but it takes a LOT more work to get to the minimum 5500 payout because their faucets don’t give out much at a time.
There are PILES of faucets out there, but these are the best I’ve seen (particularly the first two).