Thinking about my issues with ZBD being run by rugging thieves and the current situation with Bitcoin Magazine not allowing folks to withdraw sats has served as a good reminder that "not your keys, not your bitcoin" is true, but there's a layer above that.
For folks who are stacking sats through various apps, you haven't earned those sats until you've actually withdrawn them. Bitcoin Magazine can keep saying "you've earned 5 sats1 for reading this article," but you haven't "earned" jack.
The moment I knew Stacker News was legit wasn't when I first got zapped, or even got some nice feedback on a post (though that was enjoyable, of course), but when I clicked "withdraw" and saw a whopping 100 sats move into my wallet.
I just withdraw 200 sats from Satsback; I'd made a purchase through them on eBay in March, and as they clearly note, you'll get credited with your sats but they'll be "pending" until the merchant confirms that you didn't return the item. In this case, it took nearly six weeks. Which is fine, but until this week, I wouldn't have called Satsback legit because I'd had no evidence of it working, even while my dashboard there showed a positive balance.
I've "earned" thousands of sats at Ember and FreeBitCoin. I haven't received a single sat from either, since both only distribute onchain and require a huge amount to withdraw (and Ember also has a bunch of other rules: like only doing it during the last two weeks of the month, after entering a bunch of their prediction tournaments, and after conducting a human sacrifice2). I've also lowered the amount of time I bother spending on either site/app as a result.
There are TONS of apps that will "earn" you sats, but if you haven't actually gotten those sats under your control, they might as well be Flooz, and you haven't stacked anything.

Footnotes

  1. Amazingly, they've now reduced this to 1 sat, which is really pathetic since they also won't let people withdraw. If you're going to pretend to pay people, you should at least pretend to pay them well.
  2. That last one isn't true. Probably. I haven't met the other criteria yet.
38 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 6 May
typo in your title?
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Yes! Thanks for catching it before the edit window expired!
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SN not only allows you to withdraw instantly and virtually for free, but they encourage you to do so. I once responded to a post saying that my highest balance lightning wallet was SN and k00b replied to me- wrong answer. Haha.
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Ha! Yeah, I set up auto withdrawals once I hit a pretty low threshold and love not having to worry about tracking sats here.
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It's great. I used to just buy gas gift cards from bitcoin company when my balance started to get up there but since the 100k monthly territory fee kicked in I haven't really had that problem. Usually I have around 125k sats or so when it's time to pay the fee and whoosh back down. Then build it up over the month and do it all over.
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LOL I remember reading this exchange between the two of you
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I like to keep my sats in zapping distance.
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This is an excellent reminder to stay focused on the fundamentals. Thanks for that!
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Totally agree with you ! Just noticed the 1 sat in Bitcoin Magazine too.
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I havent tried withdrawing yet, but I do know that this site is actually worth looking at. Especially the content, and the people. Its a great community.
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Hey. Gotta tell you that I've sithdrawn from freebitcoin.
Yes, you're correct that there's nothing yours until it's not in your bags...
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Good to know -- I've heard enough to suspect they're legit (or least are for now -- folks once got sats out of Bitcoin Mag, too), and maybe I'll someday manage to get some out from them.
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Lol you made me open up the apps that have been lying dormant on my phone. Stackers are so generous with their zaps that I have been sheltered from the bloodbath out there haha. Simple Bitcoin slashed its max 21 sats payout to 12; ZBD slashed its token 50 sats to 26. Very humbling haha.
You also made me withdraw my earnings from Cointiply. I have been storing them for the longest time, but you can’t be too safe haha
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Glad to have "helped" here! :-) And yeah, the small fry payouts on a lot of apps has meant I'm not really paying attention to them. I really should look and see which ones I might as well completely delete (like Bitcoin Magazine).
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The Bitcoin Company offers automatic withdraws and allows you to send a portion of your rewards to open sats. It would be great seeing similar features offered in Fountain.
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I know the Fountain folks are working on upgrading some of their payout functionality (went through a complicated series of things before I could make a payout work, but did get it in the end; but they mentioned the changes while I was talking to them). Here's hoping that autowithdraw is a part of it.
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Grab your sats while you can and run!
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not your keys, not your your coins. The few apps that I use of that style I can barely withdraw, I do it and take out my Wallet without thinking, many people like to accumulate within these platforms and you don't have to be very understanding that it is a faucet that will run out at any time. and goodbye to what your balance shows
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I haven't had any issues with ZBD yet, they always let me withdraw with no problems, but I've never accumulated more than 10k sats there.
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I did cashed out in a month for 10000 sats which is their cutoff