On June 11, 2010, Gavin Andresen posted a Bitcoin forum announcement offering five bitcoin per customer. He said he had initially supplied the site with 1,100 BTC. The offer was a distribution experiment: give people something to use while they learned the software. Andresen’s announcement.
An experiment in participation
Andresen explained that waiting to generate coins could be frustrating and buying them was awkward. His stated aim was to make trying Bitcoin easier. That is evidence of his motivation, rather than a claim that the faucet alone caused later adoption.
The thread also records practical discussion about repeat claims. In a follow-up, Andresen clarified that his initial limit was five bitcoin per IP address, not five per day. Those details matter because later summaries sometimes turn a changing experiment into a single permanent rule. The original discussion.
Distribution is different from issuance
A faucet sends funds it already controls. An ordinary payment consumes existing transaction outputs and creates new ones, with any fee coming from the difference. It does not bypass the issuance schedule or create coins out of nothing. How transactions account for value.
This is a useful distinction beyond this particular story: a giveaway and a mining subsidy are different mechanisms, even if both result in someone receiving bitcoin.
A historical offer
The forum post documents what Andresen offered in 2010. It should not be read as an offer readers can redeem today, or as evidence that a present-day giveaway is legitimate.
Continue with Andresen’s profile or another experiment from the same period, Bitcoin Pizza Day.