Bitcoin Forum

It might be a really stupid question but... how do I know if I found a block using the GUIminer when mining solo ?? I am getting about 0.2 for 12 hours so it like getting nothing. Might as wall have a go at solo mining and get nothing OR i might find a block. Soo... Pool mining = pretty much nothing for me... Solo mining = either nothing as well OR 50 BTC !!!

It will show up in your Bitcoin client. Pooled mining is the way to go.

is it really, I would be getting about £2 a day when mining in a pool

Hello Atuss,

if you do solomining you get nothing per day.
Some day, depending on luck, sooner or later you could get
an anctual block and get 50BTC.
With a pool you get regular payments.
In addition to that, you get BTC with a lower difficulty!

regards, talpan

odds are odds.  You could grind away for a year and never score a block on your own, or you could start and get 7 blocks in one day.

I prefer the constant reliable payment from a pool.

lower difficulty  ?? how does that work ?

@jasonstx you would need several serious computers to get that much in a day ... wouldn't you ?

not really, just a whole damn lot of luck...

lol i wonder if it would be worth tossing old cpus and gpu in as solo to just see if you can get lucky and use strong gpus in pools to get a steady flow of coins.

If you want an example of being unlucky, Ive pooled mined for 2 months earning ~350 BTC however I havnt solved a single block myself yet.

Without pooled mining I woulda gone off the edge by now :)

but as I said i am only getting about £2 worth of bit coins (0.22) minus the cost of electricity (i am only using one hd6950 but still) a day, this is like getting nothing, I am not planning on spending any money on a special mining computer so i will not be getting anywhere near 350BTC in two months, and the difficulty is rising like crazy .... :S

at the rate mining difficulty is going up, it is a hell of a gambit to go solo without having a good chance of finding a block before the next difficulty increase.

let's do some overly simplistic math
reward*mining speed/difficulty/time*probability

mining solo
50BTC*1MH/s/100 difficulty/2 weeks*(1/100)=0.0025
50BTC*1MH/s/150 difficulty/2 weeks*(1/150)=0.0011

vs.

pool mining
50BTC*1MH/s/100 difficulty/2 weeks*0.97=0.25
50BTC*1MH/s/150 difficulty/2 weeks*0.97=0.1617

expand this out a year and what you have is something like this:
solo: $90 in electricity with either 0 BTC or a 0.4% chance of 50 BTC (avg. of 0.2BTC)
pool: $90 in electricity and 0.5 BTC

of course the real numbers will be different but it doesn't really matter unless you have a good chance of generating a block before the next difficulty increase. it only makes sense if you are a gambler

Don't think of it as 0.2 Bitcoins, think of it with the exchange rate.  Currently, MtGox exchange rate HIGH is $14.078 USD, so lets make it simple and round that down to $14 USD.

0.2 Bitcoins = $2.80

So you made $2.80 in 12 hours.

Also keep in mind that the exchange rate changes, so tomorrow the HIGH could be $16, making your 0.2 Bitcoins worth $3.20.

I know a healthy amount of html5, php, JavaScript and CSS, so I built myself a little web app for my iPhone that pulls data from mtgox and tradehill (averages their highs and lows), my slush pool data, and then extrapolates my potential earnings.  Not an exact science, but seeing local currency vs the bitcoin really helps keep me at ease.


My favorite game at the local Casino is Craps, which is why I have my "crap"py Asus AspireOne netbook as a solo miner in my closet.  Chances are low that it would ever find a block, but its a sort of set it forget it thing.  If it happens to generate 50 Bitcoins, my gable paid off.  If it does not, at least it was doing something in addition to collecting dust.

here is an old bitcoin calc (http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/old_calculator.php), that also gives you the odds of finding blocks.

you have to paste in the difficulty sometimes.

anyways for my hash rate 320mh average is 242 days with 95% finding one within 727 days(5% take even longer) and as bad as this sounds it is actually worse as the calc doesnt take into account that difficulty goes up every 10-14 days.

Really at this point for most miners, you could go your entire mining cards lifetime and not find a block. Pooled mining is where it is at. You shouldnt think of pooled mining as making you miss out on "lotto" opportunities but actually something that helps you actually realize those lotto opportunities especially when you have no idea when the game will end.

unless you have enough of  gpus that you find an average of one block per difficulty change it is nearly insane to solo mine. Sure in the end the odds are the same, but I would rather not play a dice game where you roll 240 days apart, when the payout is the same over 240 days with daily rolls.

So what?

Bitcoin is not about printing your own money but about collectively building up a peer-2-peer value transfer system.

Statistically the payoff is the same whether you solo or pool.
The difference is in the speed of payout.

Which would you prefer $1 a day for a year, or a lump amount of $365 a year from now. It's the same dollar amount.

Statistics do not guarantee anything. Soloing, you could hit the payoff in one day or have to wait three years+. Pooling evens this out to a very great degree.
So typically pooling is the best choice. However if you want to factor in luck then consider the following:

If you are a person who is known to be unlucky, do not do solo. Pooling is the way to go.
If you are a person who is known to have good luck, go solo. You will earn more as your above average payoffs will not be divided among others.
If you have no idea about your luck or are typical, go with pooled mining.

Can you try to count what is the possibility to get a bloct when solo and hashrate is 800MHash/s ?

This is technically untrue. There is no "luck" in probability.


Yes, you should be able to make a cumulative distribution function of this probability. Wikipedia it, find the formula, plug n' chug.

>This is technically untrue. There is no "luck" in probability.

I said at the start, statistically there is no difference.

Now, if you are going to consider a luck factor(which has nothing to do with probability) that is another thing. Leave it up to the individual as to whether they will consider such a factor. But I don't think this is the forum to discuss philosophy. metaphysics,  or quantum physics.

How do I know for sure IF I ever find a block using solo mining I am actually being paid 50 BTC (or 25 BTC later this year)? It would be a real joke if you find a block and get nothing? Where is the warranty to be paid IF found? And will it be really be paid to the bitcoin client address, not some random address???

The protocol requires that the block have the 50BTC and that it be assigned to some address. It is your mining program that creates the block and adds it to the blockchain. The mining program puts the payout address into the block. So you need to use a mining program that you trust.

Some options:

• Learn to program, and write your own miner
• Learn to program, use an open source miner, and read the code
• Get a trusted friend who can program to read the code
• Trust the word of the many other programmers who have reviewed the code

<Graet> ;;bc,calc 800000
<gribble> The average time to generate a block at 800000 Khps, given current difficulty of 2190865.9701029 , is 19 weeks, 3 days, 3 hours, 15 minutes, and 22 seconds

which of course gets harder every difficulty change at the moment
we are expecting the next increase of between 11 and 12% in 10 hours

of course it would be a killer to wait that long and get an invalid (orphan block)

And that is an average time to generate a block, there is no guarantee that you will generate a block by then.  You could easily end up having gone 38 weeks without generating a block.

yes, and just as much chance of finding one in 1/2 the time, the beauty of variance :D

Not just as much chance, more like also a chance.  The longer the time period, the better the chance that a block will be found by you somewhere in that time period.

When you find a block, it includes the transaction paying 50 bitcoins to you. If someone changed the address, the block hash would change and no longer meet the difficulty requirement, creating an invalid block. The only way the block you mined can ever be used by anyone is if it makes it into the public blockchain, in which case your 50 BTC payment makes it in too.

You might think, "well, maybe someone else will mine a block that replaces mine". But why would they? If they mine a block that comes after yours, they get the same 50 BTC themselves. And because their block would include yours in the chain, it would provide a longer chain and thus one more likely to get confirmations. (Longest chain wins, more or less.)

So as soon as you find a block, every miner greedily tries to find a block *after* it because that makes it more likely their blocks will "stick". A block must stick to pay the reward. A block cannot be tampered with -- a new block would have to be found to replace it.

Of course, there's always a risk somebody mines a block at very close to the same time you do and someone else mines a block after the other person's block rather than yours. Then you lose.

So, the only notification I get when I find one in GUIMiner (on the left) is 25BTCs showing up in Bitcoin Wallet on my right?

http://managedclans.com/gallery/images/15456636728998466028.png

Just want to confirm I understand all this...