News

There’s a growing pile of mobile games that pay small amounts of Bitcoin as you play—but the concept is not just limited to gaming. In fact, you can earn Bitcoin by listening to podcasts through the Fountain app, without any additional ads, hurdles, or hoops to jump through. It’s just awarded inconsistently, and not at all times.

Like some of the games we’ve covered, including Bitcoin Miner and SpaceY , the Fountain app offers rewards through Bitcoin’s Lightning Network in a collaboration with payments firm Zebedee. And the app really is simple and straightforward to use.

Fountain is a fully featured podcasts app that supports all of the same shows that you might listen to through Apple’s Podcasts app or other major alternatives, though it tends to highlight Bitcoin-centric shows in its rankings. But Fountain also offers some unique bonus features, like the ability to follow users, share clips, and financially support participating shows.

That last point is one that could really draw in Bitcoiners, and it has clearly helped foster a community of Bitcoin fans around the app. Here, users pay small amounts of Bitcoin (satoshis, or sats, the smallest denomination of BTC) to not only support their favorite podcasters and shows, but also to help give them more visibility in the app in the process. Fountain says that over 15,000 shows have opted into being paid Bitcoin by listeners via boosts.

But Fountain’s Bitcoin economy thankfully extends far beyond just the shows that have opted in, and you can earn Bitcoin for listening to any show you’d like—though not all the time.

For the first several days that I earned Fountain, I earned nothing at all. The “Earning” icon at the bottom of the listening screen appeared to be faded, and when I tapped it, the app noted that whether or not you earn BTC on a given day is determined at random… as is the rate paid if you do luck out.

Eventually, I stumbled into earning some satoshis—but most of the time, it was a tiny amount. For example, on some days, I’d earn one satoshi per minute for the first 10 minutes that I listened to any show that day. How much is 10 satoshis worth? About $0.006 as of this writing. That’s less than a penny.

But eventually I saw higher rates—again, apparently at random—and once earned 8 sats per minute for the first 10 minutes, coming out to about $0.05 for that day. That’s almost nothing.

On the other hand, that’s free Bitcoin that I wouldn’t have earned using another podcasts app, and with no obvious downsides like bonus ads inserted into shows. In fact, most of the Bitcoin-paying games we’ve played are so overloaded with ads that they muddle the fun, even while paying out pennies’ worth of BTC at most. Here, it truly is the cherry on top.

After a few weeks of off-and-on listening with the app, I’ve earned 140 satoshis—or about nine cents’ worth—which can be withdrawn to any Lightning wallet. If I were married to another podcast app, then barely a dime’s worth of BTC would do nothing to pull me away.

But Fountain works just as well for me as anything else I’ve used on iOS, so I might as well “stack sats” while I listen to Decrypt ’s “What’s the Meta?” and other shows I love.

For listeners immersed in the Bitcoin podcasting space, Fountain provides a way to not only earn Bitcoin by listening, but also pay it back to support their favorite creators.