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By Will Ellis

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Last Updated on April 12, 2024

Edited by Adam Turner

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Fact checked and reviewed

Everyone knows Bitcoin at this point. In fact, there are tons of people who know what Bitcoin is even if they do not know what cryptocurrency in general is.

Part of Bitcoin’s value is the fact that people know about it.

This has an interesting impact on marketing. What it means is that there are trading platforms, crypto wallets, and even other cryptocurrencies that essentially advertise themselves on the basis that they will give you free Bitcoin for making use of them.

So, how much free Bitcoin can you get this way?

Before we go any further, it should be noted that the price of a Bitcoin tends to hover between $38,000 and $43,000, even higher of late. If someone is offering free Bitcoin, then it is unlikely to be more than a fraction of a Bitcoin.

But that fraction of a Bitcoin is still worth something. And, more importantly, it can still grow.

Now then: When, where, and how can you get free Bitcoins?

Table of Contents:

• Trading Platforms Giving Away Free Bitcoins
• Mining Bitcoins
• Playing Games for Free Bitcoins
• Bitcoin Bounties

Trading Platforms Giving Away Free Bitcoins 🆓️

Let’s start with the places that started the “free Bitcoin” craze: Trading platforms. These are places that you would ordinarily use to trade stocks, and sometimes cryptocurrency if it is a really new platform. 

A few of the trading platforms giving away free Bitcoins are:

• Coinbase
• SatoshiLab
• CoinMarketCap
• Airdrop.io
• Tradestation

Anyone who has used these trading platforms will realise something pretty quickly, however: Just because a trading platform gives you Bitcoin, that does not mean you can easily spend it.

To begin with, you will want to prioritise trading platforms that allow for “account consolidation”. This means the trading platform allows you to bring over holdings from other platforms. Coinbase and Tradestation all do this, as it is an expected feature of most platforms that trade stocks.

While it is bad to generalise, you can expect most trading platforms that deal both in stocks and in cryptocurrency to allow you to consolidate your holdings. But why is this important?

Because if you are getting a fraction of a Bitcoin from each trading platform, then ideally you will want to combine all those fractional Bitcoins at some point. It is easier to trade $10 in Bitcoin than it is $1.

It will allow you to trade Bitcoin more easily, with more options. 

This is also important for another, more sinister reason that you should make sure you can move your holdings off of whatever platform gives them to you: Many platforms will not truly “give” you Bitcoins.

If you look back at the history of some trading apps, you will notice something strange. If an app trades stocks, ETFs, options, or anything else dealing with the stock market, then it needs a license to do that.

But there are other securities, such as binary options and cryptocurrency, that do not require licenses to sell. The trading platforms for these types of securities have far less regulation. As a result, they have a bad habit of scamming their users. Be careful not to invest in a platform you can’t get money out of.

Mining Bitcoins ⛏️

Signing up for platform after platform just to consolidate a few cents worth of Bitcoins is a whole lot of work for not a lot of reward.

But there is another method of getting free Bitcoins that you have probably heard of: Bitcoin mining. However, to call it “free” is an oversimplification, as it takes effort.

Bitcoin mining works because of how the blockchain works. The blockchain is a network of computers connected through blockchain applications. The job of these blockchain applications is to determine the location of Bitcoins. They all talk to each other all the time about where every single Bitcoin is.

The thing is that there are so many Bitcoins in existence that keeping track of all of them is basically impossible for any single computer. But Bitcoin has a clever system in place: You can set up a computer (or multiple computers) to help with this record-keeping process. For doing so, you are granted Bitcoins.

Like before, you are only granted a small percentage of a single Bitcoin, but the more processing power you contribute to the blockchain, the more Bitcoins you are granted for your contribution. This means that the most efficient way to earn “free” Bitcoins through mining is by using lots of powerful (and expensive) computers, as well as rack up a very high electricity bills.

How to Mine in Different Ways

You do not have to have lots of high-end devices in order to mine, however. You can slowly make Bitcoins for little effort and no risk simply by repurposing old devices for Bitcoin mining. As long as the device can connect to the internet at all, it will work. This means old computers, tablets, you name it.

They just need to stay powered, cool, and be connected to a wallet app. Many wallets will connect to Bitcoin mining software, and most mining software works the same. It is important to note that basically, all mining software will yield you the same number of Bitcoins. 

If you find you are making lower Bitcoins than you think you should be, you can easily change the software you are using and try again. But your biggest limitation will be your hardware.

Playing Games for Free Bitcoins 🎮️

This is the method of getting free Bitcoins that people are often the most surprised about. The idea here is that there are sites that host games that are connected to the blockchain. These games are “play to mine”. That means you enter certain (limited) information about how to receive the coins, then play.

By playing the game, you contribute part of your computer’s resources to the blockchain. And by contributing to the blockchain, you help mine Bitcoins for both yourself and the company hosting the game. But as you can probably tell from this setup, it is important for you to do it as securely as you can.

How to Play Games for Bitcoins Securely

It would be overly exhaustive to list every place you can go to play games that earn you Bitcoin, but the general rule of thumb is to start with a VPN. A VPN will help you in two ways. First, it will let you play Bitcoin games without worrying about your region, as some games are locked to certain regions.

A VPN will also help you from getting your information stolen. This is not to say that the websites hosting the Bitcoin games will try to steal anything off of your computer—though you should watch out for that. The greater danger is the ads that are on these sites, as they are usually unregulated.

VPNs help with this by making it difficult for a website to place programs on your computer, as well as difficult for a program to call secure information out of your computer. Naturally, good anti-virus software will help you avoid websites that are to be avoided.

If all of these precautions make getting free Bitcoin this way sound risky, that is because it is. Looking for free Bitcoin anywhere comes with certain risks. In this case, the risk is that the websites might ask for compromising information under the guise of needing that information to give you the Bitcoins.

There is also the risk that the games in question are more nefarious than they appear to be initially.

Bitcoin Bounties ➡️

This is the method of getting free Bitcoin that throws the whole risk-to-reward-to-effort scale-out of alignment. The reason is that Bitcoin bounties have extremely low risk associated with them. They are usually Bitcoin-making opportunities put out by “white hat” sources that can be verified in a few ways.

But in exchange for being the most secure and reliable method of potentially getting a large windfall of Bitcoins, they also require the most effort by far. The reason is that the “bounties” in question are related to programming. You have to find a problem in a program and its cause to claim the bounty.

How Bitcoin Bounties Work

There are three kinds of Bitcoin bounties: The first is the most common, which is bounties set up by developers for existing or in-development programs. They do not have to show you the whole program. Sometimes they will just show you the code and the errors they get when it compiles.

Then, there are bounties set by developers for smaller apps. These are also quite common but pay much less. You might see someone’s whole program while trying to fix these.

And finally, you have what is known as “black hat” bounties. These are bounties set out by hackers looking to find exploits in existing technology. These can pay a lot, but they run the risk of being illegal or scams. It is not recommended you pursue these.

Conclusion 💡️

While Bitcoin is hard to buy into because of its cost, its ubiquity among cryptocurrencies makes it easy to pick up in a number of different ways. Just be sure to manage your risks, effort, and rewards.

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