The Bitcoin Faucet (2010) — Published Donation Address
1°
this address's ancestry traces 1 degree to the earliest coins
On 11 June 2010 Gavin Andresen announced a web service at freebitcoins.appspot.com that handed out a small amount of bitcoin to anyone who solved a captcha and supplied a receiving address. In the announcement thread he published a donation address so that recipients could return coins to the pool. The service ran into 2012 and is widely described as the first Bitcoin faucet.
What is and is not established. This is a genuine self-disclosure: the address was posted by Andresen himself in the public announcement thread, archived by the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. The address has since seen very heavy use (on the order of 9,500 transactions) and its later activity may not all relate to the original faucet. Totals for how much the faucet ultimately distributed vary between secondary sources and were not verified on-chain here. The faucet is a 2010 service and fits the era window, though it was not named in the core brief.
Address
15VjRaDX9zpbA8LVnbrCAFzrVzN7ixHNsC
Era
2010
Sources
Other wallets and stories
Genesis Block Coinbase (Block 0)
Patoshi-Pattern Early Mining Set (2009-2010)
Hal Finney — Recipient of the First Bitcoin Transaction (Block 170)
Kraken
OKX (formerly OKEx)
QuadrigaCX (defunct)
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