BitMinter

Bitminter was a bitcoin mining pool. Roughly 1% of the bitcoins in circulation came from Bitminter.
Mining was technically difficult in the early days. A text-based mining client had to be run from the command line. Most people didn't know what a command line was. The original idea for Bitminter was for an easy-to-use graphical mining client that anyone could use. This was for mining on graphics cards initially. As client development neared completion the project turned into a full mining pool instead of just the client.
The coinbase signature for this pool is: "BitMinter" Example of decoded coinbase.
Some numbers:
* 728 658 user accounts
* mined for 9 years
* website up for 10 years
* mined 208 232 BTC (new coins + transaction fees)
* mined 6487 blocks that are part of today's Bitcoin blockchain
* mined 1755 blocks before the first halving, creating 87750 new bitcoins (50 per block)
* mined 4671 more blocks before the second halving, creating 116775 new bitcoins (25 per block)
* mined 61 more blocks before the third halving, creating 762.5 new bitcoins (12.5 per block)
* minted 205 287.5 new Bitcoins in total, 0.978% of all the bitcoins that will ever be minted
Timeline:
2021-07-02: Bitminter website was shut down
2021-06-01: Intended website shutdown date - shutdown postponed
2020-07-01: Mining operations halted
2020-06-01: Shutdown announced by direct email to users, Bitcointalk Shutdown announcement on Bitcointalk and social media
2020-05-11: Third Bitcoin halving, reducing block reward from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC
2019-09 to 2020-05: Bitminter hashpower dropped very low - attempts to bring in big miners were unsuccessful
2019-08-12: Last Bitcoin block (#589801The last Bitminter block) mined by Bitminter
2019-08-01: Bitminter reached 700 000 users
2017-07-03: Bitminter reached 500 000 users
2016-07-09: Second Bitcoin halving, reducing block reward from 25 to 12.5 BTC
2014-03-16: Bitminter reached 250 000 users
2014: Small ASIC miners that connect to a PC's USB-port could no longer compete with the big stand-alone ASIC miners. This made the Bitminter (PC) client software obsolete, but Bitminter went on as a mining pool.
2013-08-27: Bitminter reached 100 000 users
2013-05: Peak mining activity; approx. 10% of the world's Bitcoin hashpower was mining with Bitminter, sometimes producing up to 20% of the daily blocks and bitcoins
2013-01: The first ASIC mining machines began shipping to customers. During 2013 support for a few models was added to the Bitminter client software.
2012-11-28: First Bitcoin halving, reducing block reward from 50 to 25 BTC
2012-09-11: Bitminter reached 10 000 users
2012: During 2012 some FPGA mining machines were sold commercially. Support for a few models was added to the Bitminter client software.
2011-11-07: Bitminter began sending all mining income to address 19PkHafEN18mquJ9ChwZt5YEFoCdPP5vYB - 57 blocks were mined with individual addresses prior to this
2011-11-04: Merged mining of namecoin (NMC) started
2011-10-24: Bitminter reached 1000 users
2011-07-20: Bitminter reached 100 users
2011-07-03: First Bitcoin block (#134500The first Bitminter block) mined by Bitminter
2011-06-26: Bitminter launched; the user-friendly alternative with easy-to-use mining software for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
2011-03: Development of the Bitminter software began.
==External Links==
* Main webpage
* Bitminter support thread
* Support thread for the Bitminter client (Windows/Linux/Mac)
==See Also==
* Comparison of mining pools
* Pooled mining
==References==
Category:Pool Operators