Rolling Cryptocurrency Faucets 1000 Times So That You Don’t Have To.
A faucet is a service that allows you to exchange your time and attention for crypto. These usually take the form of a dice-roll, a roulette wheel, or a simple click-for-pay model. These are profitable on behalf of the faucet because it encourages consistent clicks to their page and it brings in ad revenue.
The profitability for the end-user varies upon which specific faucets they are using, and how often they use them. Faucets are generally a good way to get people to enter the crypto space, but no one should count on them to earn anything more than pocket change. It adds a little excitement to acquiring this mystic internet money, and doesn’t require any investment on behalf of the user.
Theoretically, everyone wins — Except they often don’t.
As it turns out, many faucets have only self-serving interests in mind, and nothing more. The faucets in the chart below are the websites we will take a look at in this post. I encourage you to avoid frequenting them — which is the point of this article. Keep reading.
A little bit of backstory:
I often search for new faucets to add to my routine. Upon stumbling upon a this series of interconnected faucets, I thought I had found a great and fair source of crypto. It allowed you to roll between 0–10000 once per hour, with the maximum roll of 10,000 coming out to a $300 reward! Even better, there was a grand total of 14 faucets run by the same entity which each individually had this jackpot. This means every hour there was a 14/10,000 (7/5000) chance of winning $300.
The odds seemed pretty decent. Even without hitting the jackpot, there was incentive to participate since there was a reward for low rolling. The only thing you spend is an inconsequential bit of electricity and a few seconds of your time and with only that you have a shot at a nice chunk of pocket change. Even for some people, $300 could be the difference between making the bills that month and getting further behind. The carrot on the stick was the promise of hitting the jackpot, and it encourages many people to return time and time again.
For a few weeks, I had been rolling these websites casually. After all, the only thing I really had to lose was a small bit of time. There seemed to be a pattern: “high-rolls” just never came — and by high-roll I mean earning even just $0.03. The way the websites are set up they appear to have an unweighted roll. 98.85% of the time would be a $0.0003 payout, but the other 1.15% of the time there should be a reward greater than 1/33rd of a penny.
These websites, which pride themselves on being “provably fair”, put me up to the challenge. I started to collect data to determine exactly how fair it was. With trusty Microsoft Excel, data for each and every roll was recorded. 1000 seemed like an acceptable sample size.
The raw data of every single roll can be found here:
What is the highest number you can find in the data? The results were a bit shocking. Statistically speaking, I should have rolled >9885 about 14 times to receive more than the minimum reward. I did not get break that threshold a single time. Either the rolls are stunted and incapable of reaching any meaningful amount, or the probabilities are hidden, and hitting a roll of >9,885 is at least a magnitude more difficult than presented. The data suggests that there is foul play, and the odds are being misrepresented.
Even worse, we can compare this with the minimum withdraw amounts. Combined with the data above, we can conclude that it would take between 3015 and 23,300 rolls to meet the minimum threshold to withdraw. The data below:
The most grievous scheme was the one for cryptocurrency known as NEO. The maximum number of rolls, without rolling anything above 9885, it would require 23,300 visits to the page over the course of 23,300 hours. With an average of 8 advertisements per page view, that means you would view 186,400 advertisements to meet the minimum cash out value. That cash out value? Depending on the time of day, it is currently around $27.50. Minus any transfer fees. These faucets are wildly not worth anyone's time, even if they resided in the poorest part of the world.
The only feasible way to make any sort of returns on utilizing these websites are through their referral system. This scheme grants a generous 50% extra bonus for every faucet that a referral commits. Only those who refer en masse and the website itself are able to make any profit. The exploited who play by misrepresented rules will never see a cent.
It is imperative that scams like this are wholly shunned and rejected by the cryptocurrency community. There is already a negative public and institutional perception of being used to avoid taxes or for buying illegal goods. Crypto does not need additional scrutiny of also being part of what amounts to massive timewasting. No one expects to get rich off of crypto faucets, but they certainly shouldn’t expect to be cheated out of their time.
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Alternatives
Not all faucets are so dishonest. Plenty exist which actively share their ad revenue, as is the purpose of a faucet. Here is a small list of referral links to websites that I have accumulated over the years and have consistently proven to be fair with their users, and they do not take an inordinate amount of time to cash out from. Besides, what would a crypto article be without a few referral links?
1. PipeFlare [Referral Link][Non-Referral Link] — Grants ZCash and Dogecoin once per day. It gives a modest amount and there are even video games you can compete on to receive rewards for.
2. FaucetCrypto [Referral Link][Non-Referral Link]— Rewards many popular cryptos including Dash, Litecoin, Ethereum, and many other altcoins. Has a moderately generous faucet, Pay-To-Click ads, surveys, and a leveling system which compounds your rewards. Avoid “shortlinks” as those can be rather obnoxious.
3. AlgoFaucet [Referral Link][Non-Referral Link] — Algorand is my personal favorite crypto-currency, and this one allows you to submit your receive address for 1 share every 3 hours for a payout at the end of the day. Algorand is expected to have a generous interest rate for the next several years — these can compound!
IMPORTANT: Per Algorand’s network rules, you must have at least 1 Algo in your wallet to receive small amounts. Find a way to acquire 1 coin first before committing to this faucet!
4. Althub [Referral Link][Non-Referral Link] — Similar to FaucetCrypto, this has a leveling system which allows you to gain increased rewards over time. Additionally, it unlocks surveys and other offers as a way to earn crypto after you reach level 7. Has many good low market cap coins as rewards.
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Credit to Carl Jones, who gave basic insight into the statistical analysis designed and employed by author.
