How Does FaucetHub Work? How Do I Start?

Creating an account on FaucetHub

When I first started with crypto faucets, it took me a while to figure out how FaucetHub actually worked. All the websites I found had long articles that ended up saying “Step 1: Sign up for an account. Step 2: Profit!”. Ok…but how? How does FaucetHub work? Let me try to explain.

FaucetHub is an intermediary between a free coin faucet and your cryptocurrency wallet. Think of it like an email draft. The faucet collects small transactions for you, and saves them as a draft until you have enough for a withdrawal. FaucetHub is that draft, not a wallet.

This is where a lot of people get hung up. Right in their logo, FaucetHub calls itself a “microwallet”. However, it doesn’t have it’s own address. You will be using your existing cryptocurrency wallet. FaucetHub simply connects that wallet to the faucet site through the magic of an API.

Why Use FaucetHub At All?

The next logical question is “Why use FaucetHub at all then?” Why use a middleman? Shouldn’t the faucets just send the coins directly to your wallet address?

The answer, in an ideal world, is yes. The coins should just go directly to your wallet. The problem is that faucets pay out a small amount of satoshi, which are worth a fraction of a cent. Each of these cryptocurrency transactions has a fee associated with it. This is part of the reason why there are minimum withdrawals. It just doesn’t make sense to make hundreds of transactions for a fraction of a cent. Instead you wait until you have a few dollars and make the withdrawal then.

FaucetHub is a way of holding all those little transactions until you can make one big enough to transfer coins to your wallet. FaucetHub also offers benefits to faucet owners for associating their sites, but since most people aren’t faucet owners I won’t get into that.

How To Get Started With FaucetHub

Let’s take a quick look at how this works.

1. You need to have a cryptocurrency wallet.
2. Go to FaucetHub and sign up for an account. You need a BitCoin address for this step.
3. From the menu, select ‘Wallet Addresses’ and enter your existing crypto wallets.
4. Go to FaucetHub supporting faucets and sign up with the same wallet addresses you just entered in FaucetHub.
5. Visit the faucets every day to collect your free coins.

Setting up your FaucetHub wallets

That’s it. It is pretty simple once you know how it works. Note that FaucetHub makes you sign up with a BitCoin address, even if you don’t want to use BitCoin faucets. This is likely because it is the most common coin, it’s going to be around for a while, and everyone offers BitCoin wallets.

If you don’t want to deal with BitCoin, you can make a throwaway wallet (but don’t actually throw away your wallet addresses) to sign up. Once you have your account you can start focusing on the coins you want.

What Is A BitCoin Faucet Anyway? Free Cryptocurrency?

So now that you know what FaucetHub is, and how it works, why should you care?

Faucets are sites that give you free cryptocurrency. You visit a site (which is usually filled with ads), and do a simple task, like solve a captcha. In exchange, they give you some satoshi. Who doesn’t like free money?

The sites make money off ad revenue, though a few also make affiliate money by offering GPT type tasks, like offer walls. Think of it like SwagBucks, but you get paid in alt coin. In fact, some of them even use the same offer walls as SwagBucks.

For a full list of recommended faucets you can check out my recommended resources page, or my full article on crypto faucets.

Auto-Faucets Are The Easiest Way To Get Free Coins!

Another type of faucet, that I’m a big fan of, is auto-faucets. Like the name suggest, these are automated (up to a point). You load the site, leave the browser tab open (even in the background) and let the coins pour in!

If you want to give an auto-faucet a try, I would recommend starting with FireFaucet. It is a FaucetHub faucet that supports 13 different alt coins. Each day you get a random allotment of auto claims (my average is 80 to 90), and then you just let the faucet run in the background.

You can also fill out a captcha every half hour for additional claims (my average is around 40), as well as mine or do offer walls. It’s the easiest site I’ve found for free cryptocurrency.

Which Alt Coins Does FaucetHub Offer?

Not surprisingly, faucets associated with FaucetHub will only pay out in alt coins accepted by FaucetHub. As of this writing those coins are:

• BitCoin
• Ethereum
• Monero
• LiteCoin
• DogeCoin
• BitCoin Cash
• ZCash
• DigiByte
• BitCore
• BlackCoin
• Dash
• PeerCoin
• PrimeCoin
• PotCoin

As you can see, you have quite a few options. You can choose to mine them all, or just focus on one or two. For example, if FireFaucet pays out in 10 different coins, and let’s suppose each captcha gets you 40 payouts. That means you can have 4 payouts of each coin, 20 payouts of two coin, or any combination you can think of.

The big names are obviously BitCoin and Ethereum, but some of the other coins are great too.

Personally I’m a big fan of DogeCoin. You can find out all about it over on Reddit. If you’re just getting into cryptocurrencies, they are some of the most helpful people you’ll find.

Though DogeCoin started as a bit of a joke, it’s a passionate community of individuals who are interested in cryptocurrency for it’s own sake.

A lot of the people involved in the major coins are looking to get rich quick, or investing their life savings and obsessively trading back and forth. (side note: don’t ever, ever, invest your lifesavings in something as unreliable as cryptocurrency!)

The DogeCoin crowd on the other hand, is all about having fun, and using the coin for good. An increasing number of sites (like Reddit) now let you tip in DogeCoin, so you can say thanks to someone for creating good content.

Which Wallet Should I Use?

This is really up to you. I’m going to write a full article on getting set up for cryptocurrency as a beer money option, but for now I’ll just give you a brief idea.

There are 4 basic types of wallets:

• Online wallets — The wallet is hosted on a website. The owner of the website has both keys to the wallet. The wallet effectively belongs to the site owner, and they are allowing you to use it. This is probably a bad idea. If the site goes down, or the owner decides to disappear with all your money, there’s nothing you can do.
• Software wallets — This is a step in the right direction, and what I would recommend if you’re just starting out. For the small amount of coins you’ll be getting from faucets, they’re more than adequate. You download a program that stores your wallet keys and it generates wallet addresses for you. Keep in mind, especially if you get serious, you’ll want to upgrade for long term storage.
• Hardware wallets — This a dedicated hardware device, usually operating through USB. You plug it in, enter your passphrase, and have access to the stored wallets. These are good if you’re concerned about security. They will cost a decent amount of money though.
• Paper wallets — This is exactly what it sounds like. In it’s simplest form, it’s just a piece of paper with your wallet keys written down. You can generate as many as you want, they’re free, and secure (as long as you don’t leave the paper lying around!)

To start out, I would recommend going with a software wallet like Coinomi. Though it’s sadly not opensource any more, it’s still a simple, free, and secure way to store your coins. It’s very easy to use, and will generate wallet address for a massive number of coins. Over 125, according to their website!

Coinomi and a FaucetHub account is really all you need to get started.

What Else Does FaucetHub Offer?

If free money from faucets just sounds too easy, or too boring for you, there’s more you can do on FaucetHub. Both FaucetHub, and a lot of bigger faucets, will have some type of gambling option. You bet a certain amount of coins, roll for a random number, and get paid out (or lose coins) based on the result. They can be a lot of fun, or a great way to lose a lot of money.

There are also offer walls. Those of you familiar with GPT sites will know all about offer walls. You’ll even recognize some of them from other sites (PeanutLabs anyone?). Watch videos, answer surveys, sign up for offers, and get paid in BitCoin. Pretty straightforward. I’d recommend sticking to the sites, like SwagBucks that pay in cash though, as you’ll probably make more money this way.

So What Are You Waiting For?

Now you know how FaucetHub works. You know all about alt coin faucets, and how you can earn some free money. What are you waiting for? Head over to FaucetHub and start collecting those free coins!

To get you started, here are a few of the higher paying faucets worth checking out:

If you’re looking for more faucet sites, don’t forget to check out my recommended resources. If you want to move beyond FaucetHub, I’ve got some reviews of CoinPot faucets on my full introduction to crypto faucets article. Get out there and get earning!