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How can I generate BitCoins? Where can I get the miner(?) program for it? Are there any clients that use only secured connections?

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I think you must have a decent GPU to mine successfully, because mining speed is rather low, and CPUs are generally 10×-50× slower. – goodrone Jun 15 '11 at 14:43

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4 Answers

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I would honestly told you: if you are asking this question, don't mine!

Mining bitcoin is not easily profitable anymore, require heavy investments in hardware, paying heavy electricity bills.

If you want some bitcoins, buy them or offer goods/services for bitcoin. Just forget about "mining", this is now an expert field.

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They removed the option from the official client since it just used the CPU for mining. There are other specialized miners now that you can use instead.

Also, most people join a mining pool since it is very hard to successfully mine a block on your own these days.

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Shameless plug for Area51 Bitcoin proposal: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30763/… – D.H. Jun 14 '11 at 19:28
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The bitcoin miner program is the official client you download from the bitcoin website.

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I downloaded it/installed, but I just can't find where can I "generate" bitcoins :O – LanceBaynes Jun 14 '11 at 6:06
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There should be something under a menu item that says "Generate Bitcoins." – Wuffers Jun 14 '11 at 13:55
If you are mining by yourself (that is not as part of a pool) you need to wait until your block count stops increasing. Then your client will start generating hashes. Just a warning, without pooling it is VERY difficult to generate bitcoin. – jmreicha Jun 14 '11 at 21:22
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There is no mining possibility in the official client anymore so it isn't strange that you can't find "generate bitcoins". See my answer. – D.H. Jun 16 '11 at 5:52
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I wrote a beginners guide at http://startbitcoin.com - This will help you get your feet wet and decide if you want to mine bicoins more seriously. If you mine using the standard bitcoin client you will almost never get any bitcoins. The site above shows you how to join a pool that will get you incremental bitcoins and help you get a return on your investment. Unless you have about $6000 in mining equipment, you need to join a pool

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