GET 5 FREE BITCOINS.
Gavin Andresen announced his Bitcoin faucet on 11 June 2010, offering five BTC per visitor.
Five golden coins fall from a brass tap built into the edge of an old computer. A visitor holds out a hand, surprised that a website might give them something they can actually use. The monitor, tap and coins make an invisible online transfer feel as simple as collecting water. The room is imagined; the giveaway was real.
On 11 June 2010, Gavin Andresen announced his first Bitcoin coding project: a website that gave away bitcoins. He stocked it with 1,100 BTC to start and offered five per customer. Mining could mean waiting for a computer to generate coins, while buying them was still awkward. Gavin wanted newcomers to get a handful and try Bitcoin for themselves. The phrase beneath this proposed card title is an excerpt from his forum announcement's title.
The forum answered almost at once. Laszlo Hanyecz, whose pizza exchange appears on the previous card, replied, “Awesome!” Other users asked how to keep the site funded. Later that day Gavin reported a balance of 1,135 BTC after donations and clarified that the original limit was five bitcoins per IP address, rather than five every day. A week later Satoshi praised the idea as a way for new users to have coins to play with.
There is no record of this person, room or faucet. The wider computer casing is a purposeful visual invention so the tap appears to belong to the machine; it is not a historical device. The five drawn coins stand for a transfer from the faucet's existing balance, not newly created bitcoins. The small pizza-box corner joins two chapters about making an experimental currency useful to ordinary people.
Sources & the artist’s interpretation
Gavin Andresen's 11 June 2010 faucet announcement and discussion gives the launch date, website address, five-per-customer offer, initial 1,100 BTC, purpose, Laszlo's reply, later balance and original IP limit; it also contains Satoshi's 18 June reply . The later faucet changes thread documents subsequent anti-abuse changes. The image is an imagined, illustrated scene; the tap, person, room, notebook and pizza corner are symbolic props. No source establishes the exact appearance of the original website in this illustration.
