According to the Bitcoin history, the OpenCL miner was released publicly in October 2010. How was mining done before that? There were about 4 million coins mined until then, so there must have been some mining software out there. Any ideas on what was it and how did mining work in those early days?
1 Answer
Before GPU mining all mining was done on the CPU.
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Was the mining software integrated with the bitcoin client or something, or was there any notable open source CPU mining software?– KirilMar 14, 2013 at 4:11
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2@Lirik The very first bitcoin miner was in the standard client, and it is still the reference implementation. However, it's disabled, because CPU mining is so inefficient. Mar 14, 2013 at 5:23
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@NickODell CPU mining isn't disabled. Its off by default and hidden in the GUI. I can open the debug console and mine on the TestNet with no problems. Mar 20, 2013 at 15:53