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I've got a little over 20gh/s total, not even sure if that is respectable but I've been at it only around 2 weeks now. Anyways, my new blade was hooked up last night, just a few rounds ago it found a block.

I've done some searching and can't really find the answers to confirm my understanding.

If I were mining solo, would my odds of finding a block been different?

25btc in a block, trading right now @$750usd, did I basically miss out on $18k?

I understand the benefits of a pool, but my equipment will be lucky to mine a whole BTC over time, just feeling like my ounce of luck got burnt up in the pool...

Mind blown.

amazaballs.

Seriously?

I'm new, how should I look at this? Is finding a block within a pool extremely rare for someone only pushing 20gh/s? I'm honestly asking because I don't know.

No it's not that rare.

Don't kick yourself - you wouldn't have gotten that block if you were solo mining since the work your miner would be doing would be different than that issued to the pool. You can think about all the what-ifs all you want, but then life would suck...

Statistically, are the odds of finding a block different when mining with a pool?

I understand going solo that months could pass with nothing, or maybe nothing his ever, but to even hit 1 block in a year has so much upside potential.

No, odds are the same; at current difficulty and 20gh/s mean time to generate one block is 1514.9 days.


Yes, but difficulty rises quickly, so in 6 months the odds of ever finding the block with 20gh/s will be much closer to 0.

You certainly were lucky!  :o

As already mentioned by al.matic, the mean time to generate a block at 20 GH/s is currently over 4 years!

If you are interested in the calculation, the formula is:

mean time (seconds) = difficulty * 2^32 / hashrate (hasrate in in hashes/sec, i.e. 20 x 10^9 for 20GH/s, and current difficulty = 609482679).

Even for a 100 GH/s miner the mean time to generate a block is about 10 months, and at 1 TH/s you could expect an average of around 1 per month.

How much did you get out of that block you found?

Hardly anything, I'm pushing 20gh/s in a pool, same as any other round.

If I had more equipment I would feel less bent. I mean, no way my gear will ever generate 25btc later on through the pool. I'm over it, but if I had a system pushing enough to make up for it over time it would never have bothered me in the first place. It's the part of pooled mining (opportunity cost) that I never paid attention to because I heard it was so unlikely at my speeds.

It's unlikely just like the lottery.  But eventually somebody picks the right numbers.  Odds will favor the bigger hashers (the ones buying 500 lotto tickets a day) but there's always the guy who buys one on his birthday.

If you want to gamble that way you might as well play Satoshi Dice and hope for a big payout from a 0.001 bet  :D

Can you explain what that means? Genuinely curious.

Generally speaking when a miner is issued work by a pool, that work is based on the pool sending the work to a specific user.  It's like there are 25 contracts out there and the pool sends out 25 contracts, and 1 user can do all 25 and return that work.  The work issued to a miner can only be submitted by the miner to count for a solving block.  You can't take it somewhere else and submit it (many people have thought of this idea and thought they were brilliant).

So if you are solo mining you would be working on a different project so to speak.  You can read all the technical stuff if you search the forums or read the white paper.

Basically you can't turn in somebody else's homework.  If you solo mine it would have been a different set of work and you probably would not have solved it.

In either case (solo vs pool), the luck factor would be the same, amirite?

Is this statement accurate "I am just as likely to find a block solo mining, as I am in a pool." ?

I understand that the pool rewards everyone trying contributing by sharing out the reward block. And that you could probably go for years solo mining and not see any return. But its equally possible, though improbable, that you could find / solve a block in your first five minutes.

I'll try to explain in a simple manner. Imagine, there's a massive field divided into small parts. When a pool mines, all the pool's miners dig holes in each of the parts. Each person gets it's own part while the pool operator tells you which parts to dig next. The miners dig and dig until one of them finds a block (in this example buried underground). Everyone who contributed to digging in that field gets a certain amount of the block depending the amount of holes they dug (shares). Though some pools have various methods but they all loosely situate around this method. However, if you are mining solo, you are in a different but still massive field, but you are the only one digging. See the difference?

Sell those coins on an exchange for US Dollars NOW.  The price of BTC is on a surge right now, created by China just discovering BTC, it will crash HARD, and very soon.

If you don't, you'll be holding 25 BTC worth $90 each when you coulda sold them for $900 each.

After the price crashes you can buy them back if you want.

For the past 6 months, I've found 3 blocks @ Eclipsemc.com with my 9~GH/s.

Meh, would probably have found 0 if I had solo mined, can't predict the future and can't affect luck :)

Either you're using an alt account or you made your account long after Y-I-FU.  I assure you China did not just discover BTC.  Zimbabwe maybe, but not China.

You think Avalons were made in Kansas City?

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