How to activate the mining process in the standard bitcoin client?

Question

I have done the whole synchronization and now it should be mining bitcoins from what I understand but I don't see anything showing that it is actually mining for bitcoins nor any activity from my cpu… Is this normal ?

Do I need to enter a command to start the mining process or is the process done automatically without having to do anything ?

Are you sure you told it to mine? It defaults off in Bitcoin-Qt, and it's pretty difficult to enable. — Nick ODell, Apr 09 '13 at 00:11
Really ? I did not know this.. Why don't they say this on bitcoin.org ?? Are you sure ? — Vincent, Apr 09 '13 at 00:18
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#Why_was_the_.22Generate_coin.22_option_of_the_client_software_removed.3F — Nick ODell, Apr 09 '13 at 00:42
ok thank you that helped! I am still very new to bitcoins and that is why I have asked... — Vincent, Apr 09 '13 at 01:02
I guess that I have missed to mining days. oh well. If anyone feels sorry feel free to send me a gift... — Vincent, Apr 09 '13 at 01:03
@Vincent they can't send you a gift if you don't publish an address... ;) — o0'., Apr 09 '13 at 08:22

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 06 '16 at 13:37

Warning: doing what is described below will not gain you any coins at all with exceedingly high probability, and just burn electricity (see other answer).

Bitcoin Core still has a built-in miner. It is not efficient, not optimized, does not use any special hardware (like special CPU instructions, GPUs, FPGAs, or ASICs), and is only useful for testing on test chains.

You can enable it by issuing the RPC command setgenerate true, and disable it with setgenerate false. These commands can be issued in the debug console in Bitcoin-Qt, or using an RPC client (like bitcoin-cli) to send it to a running bitcoind instance.

Update: The setgenerate RPC command for mining was removed in version 0.13.0 — RedGrittyBrick, Sep 04 '20 at 16:00

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 09 '13 at 22:43

You do understand that mining using a CPU is pretty much pointless? Please dig around on the wiki address provided by Nick for the specifics. Short version - it takes lots of dedicated GPU cards or specialized hardware to mine any measurable quantity. I've been running a Xeon workstation with a Radeon GPU for almost a month non stop and a) have yet to create more that a tenth of a bitcoin and b) have dramatically seen my electrical bill increase.

How to activate the mining process in the standard bitcoin client?

2 Answers2

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