In 2009, the difficulty was 1. The number of blocks a computer could mine at the time varied depending on many factors, but a CPU miner had a hash rate of up to around 3 MH/s. With a difficulty of 1, that corresponded to a maximum of about 60 blocks per day, or 3000 BTC/day.

In 2010, the difficulty rose quickly as more people began mining, and so the number dropped. By the end of 2010, the difficulty was around 15000, so that same 3 MH/s CPU miner only mined 0.2 BTC/day.

BTW, the average time between blocks can be estimated with this:

time in seconds = difficulty * 2³² hash rate

So, the average time to find a block for a 3 MH/s CPU at a difficulty of 1 is 1 * 2³² 3000000 = 1432 seconds

Fascinating, thank you.

It sounds like you are saying that if someone used the same computer and their hash rate remained 3 MH/s, that when the difficulty was "2," they could mine 1/2 the amount, or 1,500 per day? And when it was 10, one could mine 300 per day? It's just a linear progression, if the hash rate remained constant?

If so, that is astounding. According to a website that tracks "difficulty" back to January, 2009, the difficulty rate remained "1" from inception until January, 2010. By my calculation, one person with a run of the mill Pentium II and a hash rate of 3, running 24 hours per day for 362 days (Jan 3 was the first block) would have mined 1,086,000 Bitcoin in 2009.

EDIT.

This is exactly where the "250 BTC/day" mentioned in my original post, was sourced. But that was Feb 16, 2010 and on that day the difficulty was 2.53. Which implies under the formula, even accounting for the fact he was only awake 16 hours per day, he should have been able to mine 790 BTC per waking day. Which is why I am confused. In theory, he should have mined the 250 BTC in just 5 hours. Maybe that is what he meant by "today?" Or perhaps he had an old computer that only had a hash rate of 1? The fact two blocks were mined within 2 minutes of each other but the other three blocks took the remainder of his waking day seems unusual.

Your hash rate and the difficulty determine the rate at which you solve blocks even if you are the only one mining. A 3 MH/s miner will mine 60 blocks per day when the difficulty is 1, even if they are the only miner.

You will notice that in 2009 the average block time was higher than 10 minutes. Normally, the difficulty automatically adjusts in order to maintain a block time of 10 minutes, but there is a minimum difficulty of 1. In 2009, the total hash rate of the network was not high enough to find a block every 10 minutes at the minimum difficulty. In order to mine a block every 10 minutes with a difficulty of 1, you need a hash rate of about 7.2 MH/s.

in 2009 each computer mined a block(solo mining, one cpu=one vote)

you can look at the first 1000 blocks (jan 9- jan19) so average 100 blocks a day
you can look at the next 2016 blocks (upto 3016) (jan19- feb4) is 17 days so average 118 blocks a day
and so on
and so on

then you can look at the "patoshi extranonce pattern" data, or just get extranonce from your own blockchain data
to see which blocks got solved in sequences (meaning same computer, progressing one block to next)
and you can see how many computers were involved over time via seeing how many different sequences were operating

for instance in the first 79 blocks, block 12 and block 65 was out of sequence, suggesting 1 computer mined 77 of the first 79 blocks which was 2 days so 39 blocks a day max mining in first couple days

you can then extrapolate more data for other days after it using the patoshi data/extranonce to kind of guess how many different systems were operating in 2009

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for instance
i just thought of random block 5000.. and looked at the what day it appeared(feb20th)
 and found first block of that day 4932 and last block of day 5048 (uk time)
meaning 116blocks that one day

there were 5 separate sequences happening that day(5 computers)
where the best sequence solved 89 of the 116 blocks

so that random day i picked, had one computer getting 89*50=4450 coin

heres a screen shot of part of that days sequences of extranonce(red is blocknumber) to show 5 columns(computers) of different sequences

And imagine a guy staring at an old harddrive with a 10 000 Bitcoins on it, but he forgot the seed phrase of the wallet.....

I learned from bitcointalk by senior members that if you want to take profit, take profit like 90% of what you have and reserve 10% for something you even don't imagine will happen. It is like a lottery ticket and no risk because you already take profit includes your initial capital.

So it's worth to make a bet with 10% rest for something that can change your life. If it won't happen, you won't lose anything. In contrast, if you take profit with 100% coins you have, you will no longer have a life-changing ticket. I very agree with this advice and glad to learn it here.

Below strategy from JayJuanGee and bitmover is different but it's good one too.

• [ANN] JJG Sustainable Bitcoin Withdrawal Strategy
• https://bitcoindata.science/withdrawal-strategy

I also find it fascinating that people were able to mine from their own home computers considering this was in 2009 where the internet was still relatively new and something that not everyone was very knowledgeable about

Of course we can expect that those who were already mining at that time were basically geniuses of their time because like i said during this time not everyone can do what they were doing so the rewards they got were really well deserved and it would be interesting to talk to someone who mined bitcoin from that time and share to us how they did it and how it impacted their lives

If we talk about the very beginnings, then it should be noted that at that time there were no BTC wallets with seed and that Electrum appeared only at the end of 2011, and it seems to me that wallets with seed did not exist before that.

As for those who are at least publicly known, some are looking for their HDD with thousands of BTC in the garbage dump, others claim that they hid them in fishing rods that ended up in the garbage dump again. In those early days, few people could have predicted that Bitcoin would actually succeed in becoming what it is today.

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The internet was already quite widespread then, at least here in Europe, where I already had ADSL sometime in 2004/05, and dial-up for years before that. Although quality equipment was quite expensive then, because for one LCD monitor that I bought then, today you can buy a solid 100+ cm smart TV or a laptop. I have to admit that I only heard about Bitcoin sometime in 2011, but then it didn't seem like something interesting to me.

Exactly! Those early miners were basically tech pioneers, diving into this new and mysterious world. They had to be real tech geeks, figuring out how to mine with their home computers in a time when not everyone was tech-savvy. Imagine being one of them setting up your rig, cracking the crypto codes. It would be so helpful!