One question that pops up in our inbox with reliable frequency is ‘where can I find a Coinbase faucet list?’ or variants of this theme.
While it’s a valid question as Coinbase (Get $10 worth of FREE bitcoins if you use this link and buy or sell more than $100 of cryptocurrency!) is one of the most popular websites for securing a bitcoin wallet address to receive and send payments, together with trading, it is not correct.
Coinbase, which also supports Litecoin and Ethereum, does not accept payments directly from free bitcoin faucet websites. Coinbase is a platform for storing or trading coins, rather than receiving micropayments which is what you receive from faucets.
See: Best free Bitcoin faucets & portals
So how do you get those small amounts of Satoshi (the fractions of bitcoin collected from faucets) into a wallet that you can then use to either pay for something or hold as a speculative investment?
When you begin visiting free bitcoin faucets you will quickly realise that you need to a set up what’s called a microwallet. This is a free account used to collect the tiny fractions of coin paid by faucets (known as ‘dust’) into a more meaningful amount.
When you reach a certain threshold as set by the mircowallet you can then withdraw your hard won coin to Coinbase and begin obsessively checking on whether its value as risen or fallen in line with the prevailing price of bitcoin.
Which microwallet you need will vary from faucet to faucet, however it will always be clearly stated on the faucet you’re visiting which microwallet you need to set up.
It’s worth noting here that microwallets levy a free when you withdraw your coins. This usually diminishes as the amount you withdraw grows larger, and in some cases can even be free.
And back to our original question – the simple answer is that all faucets pay into Coinbase, but only via a microwallet service that enables you to gather your Satoshi together.
Coinbase History
At the time of writing Coinbase has more than 13 million users across 32 countries, a figure that has been rapidly increasing with the exponential growth in the value of bitcoin and its move from what was a niche product for a handful of computer geeks to a mainstream asset class.
Setting up an account is free – Coinbase makes its money by charging users to buy and sell coins on the open market, a process that works seamlessly most of the time.
There have been a few reported issues with service reliability when global trading activity has been unusually high but Coinbase has stated publicly that it has worked to address the problems.
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