I wonder if someone has estimated the percentage that the faucet gave out that never moved afterwards.
Just submitted my addy and solved the captcha. Can't wait for 5 free BTC my life is gonna be liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
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I read that there was a Spanish IP that drained it in the early days, so they had to add more access controls and lower the amount.
Also that Satoshi commented positively about that faucet at bitcointalk when it came out.
Excellent choice of a first project, nice work. I had planned to do this exact thing if someone else didn't do it, so when it gets too hard for mortals to generate 50BTC, new users could get some coins to play with right away. Donations should be able to keep it filled. The display showing the balance in the dispenser encourages people to top it up.
You should put a donation bitcoin address on the page for those who want to add funds to it, which ideally should update to a new address whenever it receives something.
Here's the original thread at Bitcointalk: Get 5 free bitcoins from freebitcoins.appspot.com
Note also that a bug bounty then was 50 BTC :)
฿50 to you for finding that bug
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I remember reading that comment from Satoshi when it happened. Never heard about the Spanish drainer, but will look into it.
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I just shut down freebitcoins.appspot.com; it looks like somebody in Spain is being a jerk and getting a new IP address, bitcoin address, and solving the captcha. Over and over and over again:
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