Bitcoin Forum

It seems that at the current level of difficulty, pooled mining is at least as efficient, if not more efficient given the luck factor, over solo mining.

I'm just wondering what the advantages to solo mining still might be, given the option to pooled mine and maintain consistent returns over the same timeframes?

Well, the BIG advantage of solo mining is that... yout can keep all the money for yourself!  ;)

With slush's pool you can refuse donation as well if you really want.

Even 2 or 4% seems small compared to the possibility of not finding a block for way longer than the "average" time.

The difficulty factor will soon be at something like 35,000.  Even with a 5870 (or half of a 5970), the average generation time will be the better part of a week.  Your luck could be bad and then you don't get anything before the difficulty rises yet again.  I'd say if you have at least a 5870 (300+ Mhash/s) then stick it out for a little longer, otherwise join a pool.  Slush has had a few problems recently, but I still consider his pool the best (for now anyways).  I have 5 CPUs in his pool, and it does add up after awhile.

Yeah, I mean,

No one feels like they're wasting loads of time and Kwh on... not finding a thing?

I've not been able to leave my rig running 24/7, it's down maybe a few minutes a day while I reboot, but I guess I don't don't see how pooled mining poses virtually any disadvantage?

1 disadvantage there for sure is.

miner who's block makes it to the block chain has 50 crisp new bitcoins with no past.
not traceable, not linked to any transaction other than the creation at the beginning.

every other bitcoin has more traces.
call it bitcoin numismatics or paranoia but solo mining has this extra little feature : )

Do you mind elaborating just a bit on that? I've not heard of this as of yet. Not quite sure how the pooled coins having a record, or past, is an issue? Thanks

it's not an issue. it's a difference
some collectors may pay a premium for a key pair of uncirculated bitcoins
pooled miners get bitcoins from the pool operator, thus their coins have a history+1
can not write more simple that that. sorry

That makes sense.

What's the reason, if any, that some may pay more for uncirculated coins, other than asthetics?

numismatics for sure
pleasure of doing the 1st transaction? (paying for something really worth to hide all traces, including your origin of bitcoins?)

future will tell. and maybe there already is a black market for virgin bitcoins.
& you gotta trust they will not get used, of course (both miner & buyer will have copies of the key pair)

As somebody quoted here, solo mining can be  extremely beneficial in terms of money but it has it's own hazards.You should go for it only if you have the capability to confront the challenges.

By capability do you mean multiple 5790's with adequate cooling? ;)

Solo mining has the advantage of strengthening the network itself. Pooled mining creates single points of failure, which could be attacked or compromised, which could result in large portions of the computational power being used to revoke transactions at will or be lost (slowing down transaction confirmation). It would take several weeks to recover from the loss of slush's pool for example.

So solo mining does not directly provide you with any benefits, but it strengthens the network, resulting in a more stable currency.

I really doubt this. I'm pretty sure that at least 70% of hashpower will be up on solo in less than day, which does not give any real advantage to overtake the network by anybody else. And the rest of 30% are the slow CPU miners, which don't want to mine on their own. So in reality, the pool add this hashpower, because without pool it will never come to network.


I think this is little tendentious. As pool is generating correct blocks, pool miners also making the currency more stable. There is only one real threat, this is "cartel mode" of strong miners or pool itself. DDoS of pool or any other serious pool outage does not make network weaker that without any pool.

The average generation time will certainly be less than the better part of a week.

An %40ish increase in difficulty is certainly significant, but %40 is much less than %200

Edit: Miscalculated

Go here:

http://developer.wolframalpha.com/widgets/gallery/view.jsp?id=76444b3132fda0e2aca778051d776f1c

If you put in a difficulty of 35,000 and a hash rate of 320 Mhash/s (HD 5870), you get 5.437 days.  5.437 is not the better part of 7?

Whups, looks like it will be that high.