the first miners

[blazing]

I'm curious to know who, back in 2009 was mining and how many bitcoins could you mine per day with an average personal computer?

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[Bitcoin Oz]

I'm curious to know who, back in 2009 was mining and how many bitcoins could you mine per day with an average personal computer?

I mined about 200btc with a pentium 4  pc in a couple of days.

[blazing]

I'm curious to know who, back in 2009 was mining and how many bitcoins could you mine per day with an average personal computer?

I mined about 200btc with a pentium 4  pc in a couple of days.

What made you decide to start mining?

[AmDD]

This seems like an interesting thread.

I first heard about Bitcoin about a year ago but I didnt read into it much and forgot about it until about a month ago when I stumbled on it again. I wish I would have read more the first time around...

[Raize]

I mined 100 BTC in a few days in late 2009 using two or three computers (the same one built both blocks) I was previously using for SETI@home. I don't remember their specs, but they weren't anything special. I actually stopped because they were using significant amounts of power to generate something that didn't seem to have any purpose or value, and went back to SETI@home.

What made you decide to start mining?

I'll be honest, it was greed. Also, part of it was having the opportunity to be part of something new, but in the end I ended up stopping, so I can't say either really convinced me all that much.

[blazing]

I mined 100 BTC in a few days in late 2009 using two or three computers (the same one built both blocks) I was previously using for SETI@home. I don't remember their specs, but they weren't anything special. I actually stopped because they were using significant amounts of power to generate something that didn't seem to have any purpose or value, and went back to SETI@home.

What made you decide to start mining?

I'll be honest, it was greed. Also, part of it was having the opportunity to be part of something new, but in the end I ended up stopping, so I can't say either really convinced me all that much.

How much could the coins be sold for at that time? Surely it was not greed for money....

[FreeMoney]

I mined 9 blocks with 2 laptops' CPUs from June to Sept 2010.

[Shadow383]

I didn't find bitcoin until early 2011, but I remember my 6970 was making several BTC per day, and that still wasn't enough money for it to be deeply interesting.

Wish I'd put some more cards on it at the time, in retrospect 

[zvs]

I didn't find bitcoin until early 2011, but I remember my 6970 was making several BTC per day, and that still wasn't enough money for it to be deeply interesting.

Wish I'd put some more cards on it at the time, in retrospect 

i started in late march as i recall, about a month before the real big crowd came in, and also in plenty of time for the price jump to $35.  i was selling all the way up though, so didn't get too much in at $30+

but my 5830's paid for themselves in like 5 days or so

[mig91]

what was the difficulty past 09->10 ?

[FreeMoney]

what was the difficulty past 09->10 ?

It stayed at 1 for a long time and because that is the minimum difficulty blocks were actually found an average of longer than 10 minutes apart.

When I discovered Bitcoin in early summer 2010 difficulty was 45, a few days later it made it's only max jump (4x) ever to 210.

[stepkrav]

a friend of mine told me about btc around 2010, i downloaded the client by then but got bored to try mining. I didnt think bitcoin was something useful to care about. Silly me...

[goxed]

a friend of mine told me about btc around 2010, i downloaded the client by then but got bored to try mining. I didnt think bitcoin was something useful to care about. Silly me...

I read an article in Slashdot in late 2010, downloaded the client, and didn't care much, since the client was not able to connect to the network behind my workplace firewall.
Then I read on  slickdeals.net forum that 5830 was flying off the shelves in Jun 2011 because of mining. The rang my bell! And soon I ordered 3 6950 GPUs and got into the race.  Unfortunately the difficulty was sky high last summer, but each bitcoin was selling around $20, so it seemed lucrative.   

[fcmatt]

In 2010 i down'd the client and played around. Did not mine any blocks though for the effort.
In may-june 2011 went all in and bought 2000 in hardware to mine with and it has been huge success.
Just steady selling. Don't bother time the market. Great return on investment and starting to get better again.

[meebs]

Reading this thread is like reading a bunch of stories about people who bought shares of apple for $7 each in 02...

I wonder how quickly 1 ghash/s would of solved blocks back in the day.

[The-Real-Link]

  Indeed.  Makes me curious about the "old days" as well.  Started in Nov. '11 myself so I'm quite late to the fun.  Oh, to have known what it would've become back when you could buy coins for a penny or less!  But hey, the same is said with every great investment or such and not all of them always pan out.

[fcmatt]

  Indeed.  Makes me curious about the "old days" as well.  Started in Nov. '11 myself so I'm quite late to the fun.  Oh, to have known what it would've become back when you could buy coins for a penny or less!  But hey, the same is said with every great investment or such and not all of them always pan out.

Right now is so much better then six months ago... Enjoy the price above 10
With diff only climbing slowly it is still good times.

[arklan]

for now... ASIC arrivals/block reward halving both occurring within roughly a couple months of each other is gonna make a hell of a winter.

[fcmatt]

for now... ASIC arrivals/block reward halving both occurring within roughly a couple months of each other is gonna make a hell of a winter.

Dont worry. Bitcoin fans love buying coins after they do a run up in price. Go figure right?

[arklan]

for now... ASIC arrivals/block reward halving both occurring within roughly a couple months of each other is gonna make a hell of a winter.

Dont worry. Bitcoin fans love buying coins after they do a run up in price. Go figure right?

indeed. not worried about it - just watching with interest. ...and hoping to scrounge enough for some new hardware...

[Slushpuppy]

Start mining Litecoins right now and you can feel just like an 09 miner! Kinda

[mig91]

Start mining Litecoins right now and you can feel just like an 09 miner! Kinda

do you believe that litecoin price will go up ?

[Slushpuppy]

Some silverbugs have an irrational fear of being  a goldbug, and some goldbugs have an irrational fear of being  a silverbug. Same situation here, but litecoins will confirm transactions faster.

[Shadow383]

Some silverbugs have an irrational fear of being  a goldbug, and some goldbugs have an irrational fear of being  a silverbug. Same situation here, but litecoins will confirm transactions faster.

What does that make Devcoin? Lead? Faeces?

[theGECK]

I don't consider myself one of the first miners, but I started in February 2011, back before Slush had instituted his controversial "score based" system, when MyBitcoin was the most popular online wallet, and when we got really excited for Bitcoin to peak over $1 in trading. When I got my ATI 5870 for $200 on sale, I could mine 5 on a bad day, and even my netbook could expect to get .1-.5 BTC every day. I bought two 4GB flash drives for 16 BTC each (including shipping) and 2 lbs of coffee for 55 BTC when it was below $.55/BTC. I've bought several ounces of precious metals (not gold) because I've always wanted to have Silver rounds.

I've really enjoyed my experience with Bitcoin, and I expect to keep mining with my GPU as the ASICS come online and the reward drops because I don't do it as much for the reward as to keep the network up and running. I believe in the concept, and want it to succeed. With that said, Litecoin really does make me feel like I'm back in the early days, able for my normal CPU to make 3-5 BTC each day - now if there was only something I could do with them

[theGECK]

This thread made me go back to look at my old posts. This one was interesting to me: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4327.0

In that thread, we complain about the difficulty going up to 76k from 55k (versus the 2,400k that we have today - that's a 32x increase in difficulty since I started GPU mining!), I feel I have to clarify between "share" pricing and the score based model, the price per share we calculated was approximately .0006/share, and at 10Mhash/s you could expect to make .1BTC each and every day.

Also in that thread, somebody complains because they are only mining 4 BTC each day and it wasn't profitable anymore. Hope he held onto them!

The friend I talk about in that thread actually sold off his bitcoins on the day of the Bitcoin bubble bursing, for $32 each. He pocketed about $800 for only a few weeks work.

[Shadow383]

This thread made me go back to look at my old posts. This one was interesting to me: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4327.0

In that thread, we complain about the difficulty going up to 76k from 55k (versus the 2,400k that we have today - that's a 32x increase in difficulty since I started GPU mining!), I feel I have to clarify between "share" pricing and the score based model, the price per share we calculated was approximately .0006/share, and at 10Mhash/s you could expect to make .1BTC each and every day.

Hah, you beat me - I remember though shortly after I joined seeing people complain that Deepbit was "taking over the network" as they approached 1TH/s

[theGECK]

For anybody to have 1 THash/s was considered a threat to bitcoins' stability! That was far too much for any one pool to have, and if we let one entity have 1THash/s, they certainly will gain too much power and take over the network.

Ah, memories - I'm also remembering watching the actual graph of bitcoin hash power to discover when the botnets were being tested for their profitability. You'd get a sudden spike of 20-30% hashrate and then it would drop off. Then you could try to trace that back and see if you could identify if it was a botnet, or possibly a government agency who wanted to spike the difficulty to ruin Bitcoin! So many conspiracy theories, it was great! It reminded me of when you could trace back an email to let them know that they were sending spam.

[Fcx35x10]

For anybody to have 1 THash/s was considered a threat to bitcoins' stability! That was far too much for any one pool to have, and if we let one entity have 1THash/s, they certainly will gain too much power and take over the network.

Ah, memories - I'm also remembering watching the actual graph of bitcoin hash power to discover when the botnets were being tested for their profitability. You'd get a sudden spike of 20-30% hashrate and then it would drop off. Then you could try to trace that back and see if you could identify if it was a botnet, or possibly a government agency who wanted to spike the difficulty to ruin Bitcoin! So many conspiracy theories, it was great! It reminded me of when you could trace back an email to let them know that they were sending spam.

good point!

[greyscale]

ah to have been one of the first miners. I envy you guys. Although the really smart ones would have been those who just bought up all the bitcoins for pennies that you guys mined.

[bcpokey]

The entertaining story of the guy who sold 10,000 BTC for a pizza in 2009. Imagine how silly that must feel today

[repentance]

I wonder how quickly 1 ghash/s would of solved blocks back in the day.

Ummm, every ~ten minutes.

ASIC arrivals/block reward halving both occurring within roughly a couple months of each other is gonna make a hell of a winter.

The proposed lowering of the threshold for transaction fees might make remaining part of the network attractive to some people who can't afford ASICs or who see them as ridiculously expensive shovels.  Mining returns get so much attention it's easy to forget that it's only important to Bitcoin in the short-term whereas Bitcoin literally can't survive long-term without validating transactions being profitable for those who maintain the network.

[Luno]

Ahh, the 49'ers of Bitcoin:

During the subsequent waves of California gold miners, the first miners in the first gold rush from 1849, are referred to as the "49'ers".

They are still kult and mentioned as the fortunate ones that just had to bend down and pick up fist sized nuggets. What people fail to mention is that gold was $20.67 / ounce. A miner could get as little as $16 / ounce. Shovels was a $100 at the local mining supply store.

Like the 10.000 BTC pizza, a hungry miner would pay 2-3 ounces for a meal.

[mskwik]

I know I CPU-mined a couple blocks to get the initial coins for bitcoindarts, this was when mining was all in the official client rather than separate miners.  Ran it for maybe 2 weeks and picked up 4 blocks before stopping, wasn't really worth it at that point (could have bought them instead at $3/block) but there was a lack of useful exchanges at that point so was easier to mine for the startup capital.

[Raize]

How much could the coins be sold for at that time? Surely it was not greed for money....

You're absolutely right, it was the long-term greed of money that got me started, but the immediate greed of money that made me stop. I saw it as something that would be worth something "someday", much like anyone else. But I stopped because it wasn't worth anything *right then* and it was costing me ~$40/month to run the CPUs constantly and that was money I needed for other things. "O ye of little faith" is what I wish I could tell the 2009 version of myself today. In the end, I lost the hundred Bitcoin I had mined anyway, because they had no monetary value and I later formatted the drive.

Also note, I use "greed" as just an emotional state, here. I don't necessarily deem a state of emotion a bad or good thing, as rational greed gives some the foresight to care for their future, while irrational greed could drive others to crime. We should *always* be looking for better opportunities and striving for a better life, though, because as we do, people who are also rationally-greedy will attempt to cater to those desires, and lower the cost of them for everyone.

Put simply, I wanted Bitcoin cause I thought it would be worth something. After a month of realizing it was still worth nothing, I gave up mining it.

Like the 10.000 BTC pizza, a hungry miner would pay 2-3 ounces for a meal.

This is very true. When ngzhang's FPGAs were first coming out, I sold ~250 Bitcoin to purchase two of them. I should have held on the Bitcoins and used cash instead, or simply purchased Bitcoins with cash and held on to what I had. They haven't quite paid themselves off, and they are about to become worthless once ASICs drop. Also, if I would have tried to have made a living off of Bitcoin, as I was seriously looking to do at one point early this year, it would have required ~$14,000 in FPGA devices. I was estimating at the time of ngzhang's second batch that I could buy 35 of them which would have generated me about $1,000/month in February 2012, but after the block reward halving and difficulty increases, would be getting me just over $600/month (I have very low utility costs). Considering the repayment rate on a $14,000 small business loan, even without rent, I was sure to not have made a living off of it. On the other hand, had I purchased $14,000 worth of Bitcoin at $5/coin, I would have owned more coin than mining when the ASICs drop, and obviously I could sell it for about a %150 net gain today.

The people that made money during the Gold Rush were the ones that bought and held or sold goods for gold and held a percentage while people were going nuts after gold. And, of course, the guys selling the pickaxes and shovels.

I know I CPU-mined a couple blocks to get the initial coins for bitcoindarts, this was when mining was all in the official client rather than separate miners.  Ran it for maybe 2 weeks and picked up 4 blocks before stopping, wasn't really worth it at that point (could have bought them instead at $3/block) but there was a lack of useful exchanges at that point so was easier to mine for the startup capital.

This is a good point, too, from 2010. The lack of any good exchanges meant most of the trading was on the forums. I lurked here, never made an account, but even after Bitcoin was a couple pennies apiece the one thing I was thinking to myself was "Man, imagine if I had kept spending $40/month mining, I would have been mining for the last 8 months and spent over $360 on stuff that ends up being worth just pennies." I estimate I could have made ~3200 Bitcoin at the time and sold at ~$100 for a loss of $200 in extra utility bills, but if you think I wouldn't have sold it at $1, much less the $13 of today, you'd be fooling yourself, I would have sold much earlier. And as for lazlo's, 10k, it would have to take someone of immense willpower to know they could quit their day job and run the risk of the price someday falling to have held tens of thousands of Bitcoins without selling *some* of them. And therein probably lies the problem. Do you sell now to have enough fiat to make it another month, or hold the coin and stop the leaking and work for your fiat instead? Or do you become an exchange and buy and sell coin yourself? A pool operator and try to operate off the proceeds/fees and live off your saved coin?

I was also lurking when Artforz first "broke" Bitcoin. I think a reasonable number of us thought that was the end of Bitcoin (again, ye of little faith). I actually quit reading the forums after that point because I figured with double-spending risk the network would go nowhere. I came back and started mining with my GPU in November of 2010 when the hoopla around Wikileaks donations using Bitcoin was at its peak. But at that point I was mining only maybe a couple Bitcoin in a day with a cruddy GPU or two.

Honestly, if you want to know what some old miners are doing, I can only really speak for myself, but I won't be participating in the first ASIC wave. And I'll probably skip the second and third, too. I might upgrade my FPGAs, but frankly, I'm done with mining, it's been the least profitable for me. I'll just be buying and probably mostly selling from now on.

[FuzzyBear]

I'm interested in how many BTC were in existence when the price jumped to $30? was it comparative to LTC at the moment? and there will be no way of knowing, but i wonder how many BTC have been "lost" due to a format of HD, stolen, lost wallet.dat file etc... and how would this affect the LTC value compared to BTC value...

[Meni Rosenfeld]

I'm interested in how many BTC were in existence when the price jumped to $30? was it comparative to LTC at the moment?

About 6.5 million. I think the current number of Litecoins is about twice that.

[FuzzyBear]

I'm interested in how many BTC were in existence when the price jumped to $30? was it comparative to LTC at the moment?

About 6.5 million. I think the current number of Litecoins is about twice that.

ok so it would take twice the buying power of what it took to raise LTC to where BTC was when it bubbled... and i bet there is probably fewer losses of LTC as well.. ty for the info and happy new year

[Raize]

ok so it would take twice the buying power of what it took to raise LTC to where BTC was when it bubbled... and i bet there is probably fewer losses of LTC as well.. ty for the info and happy new year

This isn't entirely true. We're honestly not sure what it would take. My guess is there is a significant number of Bitcoin that is lost in comparison to Litecoin, which Artforz might still be hoarding hundreds of thousands of. Similarly, some one entity appears to have sold (by what we know of BitcoinDaysDestroyed and the mass sums of old 50 BTC wallets that all went into Gox) ~400,000 Bitcoin in July 2011, and that might have only been about half or even a quarter or less of what they'd mined since 2009.