How was the supply of Bitcoin distributed initially?

[aysg76]

My question is, unlike today when coins are initially pre-mined and then distributed through ICO, how was Bitcoin initially distributed?
I know about mining and I am aware of the fact that mining reward was 50 BTC initially which is the good way to distribute the supply but what actually miners were mining in the start? Who were doing the transactions? How does the initial ones get the Bitcoins in their wallet?

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[franky1]

My question is, unlike today when coins are initially pre-mined and then distributed through ICO, how was Bitcoin initially distributed?
I know about mining and I am aware of the fact that mining reward was 50 BTC initially which is the good way to distribute the supply but what actually miners were mining in the start? Who were doing the transactions? How does the initial ones get the Bitcoins in their wallet?

blocks do not need to contain transactions. so initially people were mining bitcoin with thier home computers CPU at a low hashrate that didnt put much stress on thier computer. the blocks a pc would create was mostly empty of user transactions and only had the block coin reward. after a few weeks people just made transactions to themself or others just for the sake of debugging bitcoin code to make sure it worked. take the transaction from satoshi to hal finney. hal wasnt treating what he received as a 'payment' or income. it was just a proof of concept/function test.

this happened alot, people were accumulating coin but not actually 'spending' them for value. just using them for debugging tests. the first value spend transaction was where someone[initially] jokingly wanted to get some pizza and was just saying how many coins someone would get for the favour. . someone else accepted the challenge. and that made the history of whats now known as 'bitcoin pizza'
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0
this set a precedent of 10,000btc for ~$30 of pizza = 1btc=$0.0003 and soon people started to think of making exchanges and price monitors to allow for trading it for value.

the main valuation(not price) was based on how much time/electric wastage it took someone to get a block reward of 50btc. with dozons of people mining. not everyone was getting rewards or not getting them often so instead of mining for 2 weeks just for 50btc some thought, well thats 70 cents of electric it would have cost. so thats 1btc for more than 1 cent if i mined it. so ill make an offer to buy bitcoin

people started wanting to sell stuff for bitcoin. such as alpaca socks and other small gimmicky stuff
(the first big fame usage of coins was to trade value for illegal stuff. where people diidnt want their credit cards directly associated with the items they got(but i wont drag up bitcoins darker part of history. lets just leave that in the past))

when things transitioned to GPU mining. costs of mining went up. with more people involved but still only the ~6 blocks an hour meant there wasnt enough reward for everyone to get a reward regularly. so with higher cost to mine and less chance of a success. buying the coin was cheaper than mining it. .. and this continued to rise and rise. and with people wanting to get coin to buy certain things. buying it seemed easier, faster and cheaper than mining it.

and there we go. natural economic evolution at its best. the rest is history

[squatter]

My question is, unlike today when coins are initially pre-mined and then distributed through ICO, how was Bitcoin initially distributed?
I know about mining and I am aware of the fact that mining reward was 50 BTC initially which is the good way to distribute the supply but what actually miners were mining in the start? Who were doing the transactions? How does the initial ones get the Bitcoins in their wallet?

There weren't many transactions in the early days, mostly just miners mining coinbase rewards to themselves. Most blocks just had a single transaction -- the coinbase transaction.

This is the first known peer-to-peer transaction, between Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney.

[mocacinno]

shitcoins and scamcoins are premined and distributed using ICO's. Good, open source, community coins that add value are not premined and wouldn't touch the ICO concept with a ten foot pole (just my own opinion tough).

At the start, anybody could mine bitcoin if they wanted. If you found a block header whose sha256d hash was under the current target, and you used one of your own addresses in the coinbase transaction, you got 50 BTC (plus fees).
You could have done this without telling anybody, so nobody knows exactly who mined these first blocks, eventough some early miners are know to the world

[franky1]

I would say it was distributed dishonestly 

dishonestly? how?
in the first 4 years 10.5m coins were created. lets take the first 2 years (5.25m coins) it is said that those who were actually excited to be involved so early on in the first couple years when the coin had no value that they earned their involvement by debugging it and using it for no other reason but wanting to make a robust system
yea yea i know some people think its unfair that satoshi has ~20,000 block rewards he is assumed to have mined in them first couple years (1m coins) but he was so pivotal to the bitcoins genesys and evolution he deserves it. remember back then. the coins had no value so while he was hoarding them they were not worth anything.

as for those later gpu,fpga,asic mining. they put their efforts into what they earned and the value thy got was ~roughly on par with thier efforts. same for those buying it. many were working out how much effort it would have cost to mine it and evaluated its better to mine it. so they too got their coin at fair value.
nothing dishonest about it at all.. thats natural economics one person puts effort into something, another person values those efforts

[Darker45]

My question is, unlike today when coins are initially pre-mined and then distributed through ICO, how was Bitcoin initially distributed?
I know about mining and I am aware of the fact that mining reward was 50 BTC initially which is the good way to distribute the supply but what actually miners were mining in the start? Who were doing the transactions? How does the initial ones get the Bitcoins in their wallet?

~snip~

franky1 has already given us a long historical narrative of how the earliest supply of Bitcoin was distributed. That was a long but nice read.

I don't know if this one is also considered part of the initial distribution. But aside from mining there was also the first faucet, or something like that, (https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/) developed by Gavin Andresen some time in 2010. In fact, he made a thread here announcing the launch of this faucet. There was an easy 5BTC giveaway for each customer. Funny how we are chasing after Satoshis today when full Bitcoins were freely given away years before.

[franky1]

My question is, unlike today when coins are initially pre-mined and then distributed through ICO, how was Bitcoin initially distributed?
I know about mining and I am aware of the fact that mining reward was 50 BTC initially which is the good way to distribute the supply but what actually miners were mining in the start? Who were doing the transactions? How does the initial ones get the Bitcoins in their wallet?

~snip~

franky1 has already given us a long historical narrative of how the earliest supply of Bitcoin was distributed. That was a long but nice read.

I don't know if this one is also considered part of the initial distribution. But aside from mining there was also the first faucet, or something like that, (https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/) developed by Gavin Andresen some time in 2010. In fact, he made a thread here announcing the launch of this faucet. There was an easy 5BTC giveaway for each customer. Funny how we are chasing after Satoshis today when full Bitcoins were freely given away years before.

yep good example. gavin back then was doing the give away because he realised not everyone was getting a mined block reward so unable to help debug the code as they had no coin to do tests with. he didnt see it as a 'value' giveaway back then but a technical support initiative to allow more people to use and test the network.
once bitcoin did find a value people started to decide to create a testnet to use to test for debugs before releasing the code into a valuable network so that those testing it could test it without having to 'buy' coins.

[CryptoBry]

My question is, unlike today when coins are initially pre-mined and then distributed through ICO, how was Bitcoin initially distributed?
I know about mining and I am aware of the fact that mining reward was 50 BTC initially which is the good way to distribute the supply but what actually miners were mining in the start? Who were doing the transactions? How does the initial ones get the Bitcoins in their wallet?

~snip~

franky1 has already given us a long historical narrative of how the earliest supply of Bitcoin was distributed. That was a long but nice read.

I don't know if this one is also considered part of the initial distribution. But aside from mining there was also the first faucet, or something like that, (https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/) developed by Gavin Andresen some time in 2010. In fact, he made a thread here announcing the launch of this faucet. There was an easy 5BTC giveaway for each customer. Funny how we are chasing after Satoshis today when full Bitcoins were freely given away years before.

I remember the many Bitcoin faucet programs still existing in 2015 but many of them are not anymore giving the most coins and just distributing crumbs when I started to get aware on this cryptocurrency. Many people got benefited with the original faucets but many of those who were granted Bitcoin just sold them when the coins got good value at around $10 or $20 -- hey that was already a lot of money when you hoarded a lot with faucets. Faucets were like the airdrops happening these days from different new projects. Nowhere it did dawn them that eventually Bitcoin can reach thousands of dollars years after.

Honestly speaking, people who were able to get involved with Bitcoin in the early years of its introduction are quite lucky ones of all the billions walking on the planet. Sometimes luck can really come into you unexpectedly. As for us who are Bitcoiners years after, we have to work hard to get our share of the pie and have to use our hard-earned money to be a part of the Bitcoin bandwagon. However, I am not complaining.



 

[Mandoy]

It is Satoshi Nakamoto that mined first the first 50 bitcoins. The other miners also mined to get bitcoins at that time, the same as Satoshi Nakamoto did. Bitcoin distribution in mining will depend on the power of your hashrate, the capacity of your hardware to mine bitcoin blocks.  Unlike the altcoins of today which has pre-mined coins for distribution bitcoin has zero premined coins. In order for someone to have bitcoin you have to mine it and the distribution will be based on the proof-of-work.

[aysg76]

My question is, unlike today when coins are initially pre-mined and then distributed through ICO, how was Bitcoin initially distributed?
I know about mining and I am aware of the fact that mining reward was 50 BTC initially which is the good way to distribute the supply but what actually miners were mining in the start? Who were doing the transactions? How does the initial ones get the Bitcoins in their wallet?

<unquoted>

This is one of the most informative post I read on forum and it cleared many of my doubts related to working of Bitcoin. Thanks!
Glad to read other valuable posts too. I'm happy that this thread wasn't ruined by signature spammers which I was being scared of (looks like the discussion was beyond their purview  )

[franky1]

I remember the many Bitcoin faucet programs still existing in 2015 but many of them are not anymore giving the most coins and just distributing crumbs when I started to get aware on this cryptocurrency.

the 'faucets' of say 2012-2015 were not really faucets distributing mining rewards. instead what they were was websites with loads of google ads, which google then paid the website owner fiat. the fiat then bought aged/used btc from public exchanges and gave crums out to people
EG if a website owner made $30 a week, he would buy $30 of btc, but only give out maybe at best $15 of btc to its viewers. it was more clickbait than anything. but not distributing fresh block rewards

[mersal]

My question is, unlike today when coins are initially pre-mined and then distributed through ICO, how was Bitcoin initially distributed?
I know about mining and I am aware of the fact that mining reward was 50 BTC initially which is the good way to distribute the supply but what actually miners were mining in the start? Who were doing the transactions? How does the initial ones get the Bitcoins in their wallet?

<unquoted>

This is one of the most informative post I read on forum and it cleared many of my doubts related to working of Bitcoin. Thanks!
Glad to read other valuable posts too. I'm happy that this thread wasn't ruined by signature spammers which I was being scared of (looks like the discussion was beyond their purview  )

You should have created self mod thread if you don't want to see spam in your thread.

Initially the mining difficulty was low so people mined bitcoins easily for fun and later they might realized how profitable it turned into.

1 million bitcoin in satoshi's wallet mined too,right?

[YuginKadoya]

I remember the many Bitcoin faucet programs still existing in 2015 but many of them are not anymore giving the most coins and just distributing crumbs when I started to get aware on this cryptocurrency.

pretty much they will not going to give you much Bitcoin as to a few they are getting, Because they are just getting theirs with ads but in a form of fiat money.

Many people got benefited with the original faucets but many of those who were granted Bitcoin just sold them when the coins got good value at around $10 or $20 -- hey that was already a lot of money when you hoarded a lot with faucets. Faucets were like the airdrops happening these days from different new projects. Nowhere it did dawn them that eventually Bitcoin can reach thousands of dollars years after.

Well from the start of faucets earning seems kind of big for beginners and back then I guess there are referal platform that is why they can accumulate more bitcoin than what most people do now, And right now the faucet earning are just a waste of time and effort even though you can surely get a little portion from it many are considering it a waste because there are plenty more ways of earning big with Bitcoin now.  

Honestly speaking, people who were able to get involved with Bitcoin in the early years of its introduction are quite lucky ones of all the billions walking on the planet. Sometimes luck can really come into you unexpectedly. As for us who are Bitcoiners years after, we have to work hard to get our share of the pie and have to use our hard-earned money to be a part of the Bitcoin bandwagon. However, I am not complaining.

Well, we can not complain anything since luck is part of life, A few people turns very lucky gaining access to bitcoin on their early stage but I guess we are still lucky to the people that have an early access in earning it then blew that opportunity up away, example people that mine for bitcoin then kind of loss their private key and sometimes mined a couple of bitcoin lets say 50 BTC then he decide to stop because he thinks that the price would not go up until his PC broke and decide to throw it in the dumpster what kind of feeling you thing that person could feel after knowing how large Bitcoin now?

[franky1]

Well, we can not complain anything since luck is part of life, A few people turns very lucky gaining access to bitcoin on their early stage but I guess we are still lucky to the people that have an early access in earning it then blew that opportunity up away, example people that mine for bitcoin then kind of loss their private key and sometimes mined a couple of bitcoin lets say 50 BTC then he decide to stop because he thinks that the price would not go up until his PC broke and decide to throw it in the dumpster what kind of feeling you thing that person could feel after knowing how large Bitcoin now?

think about lazlo. 2010 he paid 10,000 btc for 2 pizza ($85million at todays value)
yep there is a news report of someone who threw his hard drive away with hundreds of coins on a private key stored in it
even i have a regret story where in 2013 i bought a now defunct asic for 60btc.
asic hardware now worthless but at todays value its $510,000 of btc spent to get it
even satoshi gave hal 10btc($85,000) thinking it was only worth $0.00066 in CPU power usage cost

[Wintersoldier]

I know that the distribution of bitcoin before, when it is the early times of bitcoin, they use the bitcoin faucets, wherein, they provide free 5 bitcoin for each IP for beta testing, and people will have the chance to return it back. There's allot of bitcoin faucets before, then lately, transaction of bitcoin happens. In that time, the miners are very few so as the volume of circulating bitcoin isn't that much.