Sorry, I Turned Off My Bitcoin Faucet (Because Money)

Ofir Beigel is the general manager of 99 Bitcoins, an informational site for newcomers to the space.

In November 2015, I started operating 99Bitcoins’ faucet. Almost three years later, on Oct. 8, I shut it down.

Throughout its history, the faucet paid out over 12.795 bitcoins to its users. Here’s its story.

What are cryptocurrency faucets?

Faucets are a type of website that work on traffic arbitrage. It means you “buy” traffic cheap and sell it expensive. It works as follows:

• You give site visitors a small amount of crypto every few minutes
• You give visitors referral fees for bringing in new visitors
• You get paid by advertisers to show ads to your visitors

As long as “Money paid to visitors” < “Money received from advertisers,” you’re profitable.

The first faucet was actually created back in 2010 as a way of giving people free bitcoins to spread the word about it. You may not believe it, but back then that faucet gave out 5 whole bitcoins for each new visitor.

Today…