Jack Dorsey, serial entrepreneur and one of the most recognizable bitcoin maximalists in the tech industry, has messed up again. On Friday, he posted a link to a mysterious website titled “Bitcoin Day | Earn Free Bitcoin”. Short, concise and with its characteristic minimalism. Effect? The BTC community immediately went into uproar.
The post quotes the announcement of the “Bitcoin at Block” account, which states explicitly: “The bitcoin faucet is back” – with a link to btc.day. The website, hosted on AWS CloudFront, until Monday displayed only a bold headline encouraging people to get free BTC and a countdown clock. No details. No explanations. Today we know that this is just a clever marketing campaign to promote BTC and Cash App.
Back to the roots
To understand the importance of this gesture, you need to go back to 2010. Then Gavin Andresen – a developer who later became one of the main creators of the Bitcoin protocol – launched the Bitcoin Faucet website. The mechanism was simple: solve the CAPTCHA, get 5 BTC. Andresen funded the bitcoin source with his own funds because he wanted one thing: for people to start using this new, strange digital currency, the market value of which was then… practically zero.
Over several months of operation, faucet distributed a total of approximately 19,700 BTC. At today’s prices, this amount is in billions of USD. Someone clicked the captcha for fun back then – today he is a millionaire.
Giving away BTC for free again seemed too good to be true – especially considering that today BTC is not just a curiosity like it was in 2010. The action promoted by Dorsey turned out to be a Cash App promotion – just open Bitcoin Map, buy something for bitcoins (satoshi by default) and then you can get $25 in BTC. Interesting marketing at a time when Satoshi Nakamoto’s cryptocurrency is reaching levels not seen on the charts since October 2024.
BTC down, but Block stays the course – Dorsey follows in Saylor’s footsteps
The timing of this announcement is not accidental. Bitcoin is experiencing one of its weakest half-year periods since 2018 – the price has fallen by approx 50% from November highs above $120,000 to near $67,000 today. The decline has erased much of the gains from the previous cycle, and investors are waiting for clearer macroeconomic signals.
