Just caught wind that Block's Bitcoin Day campaign actually ran back in April and it was pretty wild – they were giving away free BTC through Cash App. The whole thing felt nostalgic, like they were bringing back that old Bitcoin faucet concept from 2010 when Gavin Andresen was handing out coins to get people into the network.

So the deal was: you could stack up to $80 in free btc by doing three things – buying at least $10 worth got you $5, paying a Square merchant with bitcoin earned another $25, and moving bitcoin to their Bitkey hardware wallet was the big one at $50. Pretty clever funnel if you ask me, basically forcing users through their whole product ecosystem in one week. The campaign ran April 6-10 with a million dollar pool, and from what I can tell it probably dried up fast.

What's interesting is the timing – Bitcoin was sitting around $67k back then with the Fear and Greed Index absolutely tanked at 11. Launching a free btc giveaway during extreme fear is a bold move. Block was betting that getting people actual bitcoin when sentiment is crushed would create more serious holders than a rally-time promotion.

The whole thing is less about charity and more about onboarding. Even if you only grabbed the $5 or $25, you're now holding actual bitcoin in your wallet instead of just reading headlines about it. That's a different psychological thing entirely. Anyway, by now BTC is trading way higher at $80.43K, so anyone who held that free btc from the campaign is probably pretty happy lol