Mining pools from back in 2010-2011?

I'm trying to assist someone with a project. He was mining bitcoins around 2010, 2011, or maybe even 2012. It wasn't for a long period, so it might not be worth much, but who knows? We want to at least check and see if there’s any potential value there. First things first, we need to figure out where he mined those coins. I’m hoping some of the more experienced folks here can help us out with any websites or apps that were around back then. Maybe he would recognize something. So we’re looking for any tidbits of info, anything at all that could point us in the right direction. I know it’s a tough task, but it would be awesome to have a bit more info to see if this is even worth pursuing.

Opening of Bitcoin mining pools are usually announced here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=41.2000 (last page) Check if there's a topic that rings a bell. Or better if you can use the forum's search function: On the menu, click "SEARCH". (upper-left)Tick the options: "search in topic subjects only".Set the message age accordingly; about "Between 3650 and 9999 days", or lower for allowance.Untick "check all" and expand "Choose a board to search in, or search all", then tick "Pools" under Mining.Fill up the search with "pool", and press enter. The search window should look like this: -edit- fixed image link

Asking in the mining related board may be of help too. With some luck, the older miners or pool owners may be able to help... See: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=14.0

Somehow this topic comes up again and again. Is this some kind of scam attempt?

In ~2010 it's also possible he was just solo mining... At that time, the bitcoin core reference client versions had a solo cpu mining capability built right into the gui... It was removed in version 0.13.0 (2016~ish). Since he seems to remember only a very little bit, i would also keep this option in mind, since solo cpu mining trough the core wallet itself was by far the easiest way to mine (btw, before somebody gets any idears: it was removed in ~2016 because it was very, very, very inefficient and even at the time it was removed it was a very, very, very bad idea to do this... Doing this right now would just be throwing away money).

Thank you very much, will check that out! Good idea! Will do that, thank you! Oh, I didn't know that. I can promise you that this is not a scam. Thank you very much, will check that out! Solo mining, ah. I will ask him about that too! Ok, thank you guys so far! I will make a new subject in the mining category and hopefully come back with more questions if this situation develops!

This specific thread? Maybe, maybe not. In general though?  Yeah, I suspect a lot of these "Someone I know was mining in 2007" and "Someone I know received some bitcoins back in 2005" messages (years chosen for comical effect) are related to either the friend being scammed, the poster being scammed, or an attempt to scam unsuspecting members of the forum. The more they can remember about that time, the better the chance of figuring it out. If they started in 2010, then they were almost certainly CPU mining with just about any desktop computer. There's a very good chance they were solo-mining using Bitcoin-Qt and any bitcoin they successfully mined are stored on the hard drive of the computer they were using at the time (and nowhere else). Mining would have been as easy as just downloading the Bitcoin-Qt software and runing it. If they started in very late 2010 or early 2011, then there's a pretty good chance that they were using a computer that had a very good graphics card.  In that case, they may have had to download some specialty mining software along with Bitcoin-Qt and needed to figure out how to configure it. Around this time the first pool (Slush's Pool) started, so it's possible they may have configured their equipment to use that pool. By mid-2011 FPGA mining was catching on and CPU mining was all but dead.  GPU mining was still viable, but it was fading fast. The chances that they were pool mining is increasing at this point, and there were an additional 2 or 3 pools that opened up I think. By early 2013, ASIC were created, and mining quickly moved from CPU, GPU, and FPGA to ASIC. The return on mining without ASIC quickly became meaningless. Quite a few more pools  started opening up, some of the more popular being F2Pool and Antpool.

So I was also mining in 2012ish and I had a Butterfly Labs piece and a HashFast Baby Jet. At one point I had 70 BTC but I sold them all long before BTC broke 1000. The pool I used was the Eligius pool aka LukeJr's pool. In 2012 until 2014ish I was getting small payments of BTC every day - like .01 - .10 BTC, but then eventually difficulty and electricity made it unprofitable. I still have the HashFast in storage but it's basically an expensive paperweight at this point. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Eligius The upshot of Eligius pool was that you didn't need to register for an account. You could just have an address and then the coins were mined directly into it.

I found some information but you will have to use Google search to find their websites. Mining pools from 2011 probably are no longer active in 2022, their websites can be dead. After hours of searching, I found that thread Bitcoin Mining Pool List. It is a damn hell helpful list for you to check old mining pools. Bitcoin mining pools historical timeline Visual Analytics of Bitcoin Mining Pool Evolution: On the Road Toward Stability? Slush Pool. The world's first and oldest Bitcoin mining pool has mined nearly 1.3 million BTC since inception. Reading other sources, Slush Pool is not the oldest bitcoin mining pool, it's not correct. A Short History of the World’s Largest Bitcoin Mining Pools Mining pools on bitcoin network (2009 - 2020) Mining pool announcement threads 2011 BTC Guild - Pay-per-Share Pool Eligius: 0% Fee BTC, 105% PPS NMC, No registration, CPPSRB Youbtc.net Bitminter bitcoin mining pool - shutdown mining 2020-07-01 website 2021-06-01 Bitminter mining pool shutting down [20 gh] NMCBit pool 3% fee prop 6.6% PPS [OFFLINE] SIMPLECOIN.US [PPLNS/SMPPS] [0Th]Ozcoin Pooled Mining |DGM 1%|Stratum+VarDiff port 80|NEW CN mining| 2012 [4+ EH] Slush Pool (slushpool.com); Overt AsicBoost; World First Mining Pool [CLOSED] MaxBTC.com Pool - Closed Indefinitely Aug 3rd 2013 [1200 TH] EMC: 0 Fee DGM. Anonymous PPS. US & EU servers. No Registration! [ANN] CoinLab Protected Pool [NR 1] Triplemining.com <> BIG jackpot every week <> I created a topic for Bitcoin Mining History

WOW, you got the history down, that's great info.

bitminter? they shut down a while ago.

Why would you need to deposit coins on the "mining address" after registration with some user id and password? Was that some sort of cloud mining? I did some mining on Eligius pool in 2011. I only needed to supply my own mining payout address of my own non-custodial wallet. I don't remember all details, maybe some minimal registration was needed to be able to view your own mining stats and request a payout when minimal payout limit was reached. Are you too lazy to search pool announcement threads here at bitcointalk? Good luck with your 17BTC... not your keys, not your coins...