How to Spot Fake Bitcoin Faucets and Crypto Reward Scams

Real faucets pay tiny amounts funded by ads. Fake ones promise a lot and are designed to take something from you: money, your wallet, your accounts or your device. Here are the warning signs, with the most serious first.

Red flags that mean "leave now"

• It asks for your seed phrase, recovery words or private key. No faucet, wallet support team or exchange ever needs these. Whoever has them controls your coins.
• You must pay to withdraw. "Pay a small fee, deposit, or upgrade to release your balance" is the classic advance-fee scam. Real sites deduct fees from the payout, if they charge any.
• It promises to multiply or double crypto you send.
• You have to connect your wallet and "approve" a transaction just to claim. Malicious approvals can let a contract drain your tokens. A faucet only needs a receiving address.
• It asks you to download a program, such as a "Bitcoin generator", a miner or a claim bot. These often carry malware.

Signs to be suspicious

• Rewards far above every other faucet, such as dollars per claim instead of fractions of a cent.
• A balance that grows fast, with a withdrawal minimum that stays just out of reach.
• No terms, no privacy policy, and no way to contact anyone.
• A domain that imitates a known site with one letter changed.
• Support that contacts you first, especially on Telegram or Discord.
• Payment "proofs" that are only screenshots, with no public payout list.

Wallet safety rules

1. Write your seed phrase on paper, keep it offline, and never type it into a website.
2. Use a separate wallet for faucet earnings, with nothing else in it.
3. Turn on two-factor authentication on your micro-wallet and exchange accounts.
4. Bookmark the real login pages for your wallet services and use only those.
5. On shortlinks, close unexpected tabs and never allow notifications or install extensions. See shortlink safety.

How to check a faucet before using it

• Look for a public, ongoing payout list that shows amounts with masked addresses, such as our recent payouts page.
• Read the terms and the withdrawal rules before you put in time.
• Search the site name with words like "scam" or "not paying", and read recent posts, not just star ratings.
• Start with the smallest possible withdrawal to prove it pays.

If you have been scammed

• If you shared a seed phrase, move any remaining funds to a brand-new wallet immediately. The old one is compromised for good.
• Revoke token approvals you didn't intend, using a reputable approval-checker for your network.
• Report it. In the US, the FTC (ReportFraud.ftc.gov) and the FBI's IC3 take crypto scam reports. Elsewhere, use your national fraud reporting service. Also tell the exchange the funds were sent from.
• Be wary of "recovery services" that contact you promising to get the money back. Many are a second scam.

The FTC's guide to cryptocurrency scams is a good short read on the wider patterns.

ClaimSatoshi will never ask for your password, seed phrase, private key, or a payment to release a withdrawal. If anyone claiming to be us does, it is not us. Here is how to reach us.