Glossary

Faucet

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A Bitcoin faucet is a digital service that gives out bitcoin for free. All a user had to do was input an address and the service would send bitcoin to that address. Faucets were popular in the first few years of Bitcoin’s existence, when bitcoin was cheap and demand was relatively low. Faucets were used as a way to distribute bitcoin and spread awareness. Some faucets even gave away multiple bitcoin at a time. Today, faucets are exceedingly rare and give out small amounts of bitcoin.

Testnet faucets, which distribute testnet coins rather than real bitcoin, are much more common because testnet coins have no monetary value. You can check out an example of a testnet faucet here.

Related Terms
Testnet
Testnet is a parallel blockchain to Bitcoin’s blockchain, used solely for testing and development. The testnet network has a separate token which has no monetary value.
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Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO)
A UTXO is a discrete piece of bitcoin. Bitcoin does not use accounts and balances. Instead, individual pieces of bitcoin are owned by individuals, analogous to physical coins or cash.
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Address
An address is used to receive bitcoin and is represented as a string of letters and numbers. When you send bitcoin to an address, only the owner of the private key(s) corresponding with the address can spend that bitcoin.
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