How did the first miners mined bitcoin?

[Hyle]

I've got wonder about the method of first miner's(in 2009) mining.
I've heard that mining was conducted by only CPU at then.
Did they used just Bitcoin v0.1 only??
Since I don't know the Bitcoin v0.1 looks like. I don't know the console window was existed at then.
Is here anybody know about the first mining method??

[Nadziratel]

I've got wonder about the method of first miner's(in 2009) mining.
I've heard that mining was conducted by only CPU at then.
Did they used just Bitcoin v0.1 only??
Since I don't know the Bitcoin v0.1 looks like. I don't know the console window was existed at then.
Is here anybody know about the first mining method??

The 1st block on Bitcoin blockchain is : https://btc.com/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f
we call as "genesis" this one. It is estimated that this first block was created by satoshi. But I don't know what equipment he's using. Perhaps you can find information on this topic in the old forum.

[kryptqnick]

I've got wonder about the method of first miner's(in 2009) mining.
I've heard that mining was conducted by only CPU at then.
Did they used just Bitcoin v0.1 only??
Since I don't know the Bitcoin v0.1 looks like. I don't know the console window was existed at then.
Is here anybody know about the first mining method??

The 1st block on Bitcoin blockchain is : https://btc.com/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f
we call as "genesis" this one. It is estimated that this first block was created by satoshi. But I don't know what equipment he's using. Perhaps you can find information on this topic in the old forum.

If the info on Investopedia is right, the first block was not mined, it was created, so the equipment does not matter in that case, I think:

Aside from the coins minted via the genesis block (the very first block, which was created by founder Satoshi Nakamoto), every single one of those bitcoin came into being because of miners.

From the same article, I can see only what I already knew: that a regular PC of 2009 was enough to mine bitcoins in the early days. So yeah, I think it means that no graphic card was required, and a CPU was enough. I am not sure how to find out the specific equipment that was used. But I think that it would be enough to get a general idea about the popular CPUs of those times. Here's a website that allows seeing such information: http://www.cpu-world.com/Releases/Desktop_CPU_releases_(2009).html. I am pretty sure that all of those models would suffice. Op, why are you interested in that info anyway? I am just curious because it's not like it would be easy to find that equipment nowadays, and it would be completely useless to mine cryptos these days  .

[bL4nkcode]

Yes, bitcoin mining only used CPU on first year(s) of bitcoin, until mining difficulties become more difficult and mining such become slow, hard to find new blocks to get rewarded, then it become GPU untill miners used asic hardwares started on 2013.

[tabas]

bL4nkcode is right.

After a few days, bitcoin was running pretty stably, so I left it running. Those were the days when difficulty was 1, and you could find blocks with a CPU, not even a GPU. I mined several blocks over the next days. But I turned it off because it made my computer run hot, and the fan noise bothered me. In retrospect, I wish I had kept it up longer, but on the other hand I was extraordinarily lucky to be there at the beginning. It's one of those glass half full half empty things.

And the first coins were sent by satoshi himself to Hal as test.

I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test. I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them.

[bitcampaign]

it's not just because the wallet is used, there aren't too many miners at that time so the difficulty level is very small so it's very easy to be mined using a regular laptop or cpu, without having to use heavy mining equipment and the rewards are also quite large, it happens before halving first 2012 around 50 BTC at that time, now more and more miners, the greater the level of difficulty to mine so it requires a high hashrate of mining equipment

[akirasendo17]

I've got wonder about the method of first miner's(in 2009) mining.
I've heard that mining was conducted by only CPU at then.
Did they used just Bitcoin v0.1 only??
Since I don't know the Bitcoin v0.1 looks like. I don't know the console window was existed at then.
Is here anybody know about the first mining method??

The first to mine bitcoin is ofcourse our very own satoshi nakamoto
here is the link and he just mine 50bitcoin, for the first block that is a large reward if only we can mine that big
https://blockexplorer.com/news/genesis-block-first-bitcoin-block-mined-ten-years-ago-today/

[MOProgress]

I've got wonder about the method of first miner's(in 2009) mining.
I've heard that mining was conducted by only CPU at then.
Did they used just Bitcoin v0.1 only??
Since I don't know the Bitcoin v0.1 looks like. I don't know the console window was existed at then.
Is here anybody know about the first mining method??

Honestly, I have also wondered about this. How did the first person mine Bitcoin? please I am interested in know how it was mined.

Thanks.

[1Referee]

If the info on Investopedia is right, the first block was not mined, it was created, so the equipment does not matter in that case

That's right yes. Blocks are built on top of other blocks, but since there is nothing to build on top of, the genesis block needs to be hardcoded into the software.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block

I find it actually cooler that back in the days CPU miners were also full node runners. There weren't many transactions to confirm, but at least everyone had control over what happened with their hashrate. Nowadays people mining at home are a slave of the pool they point their hashrate to. No say in anything. The pool decides what transactions to confirm and what transactions to ignore. 

[tsaroz]

Yes. When I joined the BTC community, they were discussing that it's no more feasible to solo mine from GPU and need to switch to pools. While some were still mining from CPU.
It was later than ASIC miners were introduced that changed the future of bitcoin mining. Bitmain made some good profit with their hardware.

[qwk]

Yes, bitcoin mining only used CPU on first year(s) of bitcoin, until mining difficulties become more difficult and mining such become slow, hard to find new blocks to get rewarded, then it become GPU untill miners used asic hardwares started on 2013.

There was also a short window of time in which FPGAs were used for mining.
They weren't even as fast as good GPUs, but much more power efficient, AFAIK.

[Leviathan.007]

According to what I know, must be much faster then these days and easier to find the block of rewards.

[Artemis3]

Yes but focus to the main question, how were the first blocks, obviously after genesis, mined? When did cgminer actually came to be? What did Satoshi and friends use for subsequent blocks? The answer probably lies somewhere deep in the early posts of this forum...

[seoincorporation]

If the info on Investopedia is right, the first block was not mined, it was created, so the equipment does not matter in that case, I think:
...

The Genesis block was created, not mined. And an interesting part about this is that you can create a new genesis block and add it to bitcoin core, that would start a new bitcoin blockchain from zero. But the issue here is that no one will run a node with your genesis block because is another different blokchain.

[pixie85]

Yes, bitcoin mining only used CPU on first year(s) of bitcoin, until mining difficulties become more difficult and mining such become slow, hard to find new blocks to get rewarded, then it become GPU untill miners used asic hardwares started on 2013.

There was also a short window of time in which FPGAs were used for mining.
They weren't even as fast as good GPUs, but much more power efficient, AFAIK.

I remember reading about people who used these boards. They were stacked into these little towers of single chip boards.
You can even find posts of forum users selling them in 2012.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120715

Look at the price! 31 BTC each!

I think they were used until early of 2013 when asics stormed the market.


You can find youtube videos of people talking about how they used to mine with their home PC in 2011 and make a lot of money.

[qwk]

I've got wonder about the method of first miner's(in 2009) mining.
I've heard that mining was conducted by only CPU at then.
Did they used just Bitcoin v0.1 only??
Since I don't know the Bitcoin v0.1 looks like. I don't know the console window was existed at then.
Is here anybody know about the first mining method??

Yes but focus to the main question, how were the first blocks, obviously after genesis, mined? When did cgminer actually came to be? What did Satoshi and friends use for subsequent blocks?

Okay, to answer the original question:
The Bitcoin client had an option to mine built-in.
Anecdote: Hal Finney turned his off after a while because it made his laptop run hot, AFAIR.
Others left it running, but for a long time only a handful of people actually had computers running on the network.
There was no such thing as a special, dedicated mining software at that time.

I couldn't find a screenshot of the mining option, but here's a general one of Bitcoin 0.1:

[dimastegar]

Yes, bitcoin mining only used CPU on first year(s) of bitcoin, until mining difficulties become more difficult and mining such become slow, hard to find new blocks to get rewarded, then it become GPU untill miners used asic hardwares started on 2013.

Since mining using only the CPU is becoming increasingly difficult to do, the miners are beginning to switch to using the GPU as the main tool to accommodate the needs of the blocks on the Blockchain of Bitcoin network that continues to multiply every day.

[pooya87]

If the info on Investopedia is right, the first block was not mined, it was created, so the equipment does not matter in that case, I think:
...

The Genesis block was created, not mined. And an interesting part about this is that you can create a new genesis block and add it to bitcoin core, that would start a new bitcoin blockchain from zero. But the issue here is that no one will run a node with your genesis block because is another different blokchain.

actually the genesis block was also mined. the genesis block hash that looks like this: 000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f didn't happen by accident, it was also mined. meaning Satoshi ran his computer for whatever amount of time to find a nonce (0x1DAC2B7C=2083236893) that could produce this hash and that is the literal meaning of mining a block that is computing many hashes until you find one that is smaller than the difficulty target (=0xFFFF001D).

the only difference between genesis block and any other block is that it doesn't have any previous block hash since it is the first. and of course the target is the minimum.

[adaseb]

The first miners of the first bitcoin client most likely used the miner built into the bitcoin software. I've done this before with many alts. All you do is go to the console and type in "setgenerate 1" and it will use 100% CPU usage and eventually will find a block.

This "setgenerate" was removed many years ago from Bitcoin for obvious reasons. There are some alts which have it in their source code and you can use that feature however those coins usually end up getting a dedicated CPU and GPU miner software soon.

Then I am assuming there was some Bitcoin CPU miner which was more optimized before the GPU miner software was introduced, and the rest is history.

[luppecuppe]

I'd like to do mining early. I'm really amazed at how far I've been to this. Initially, bitcoin was extracted with very low processing power. Now everyone wants to do it. Especially beginners can try it with inadequate computers for a while. Their systems are failing.