Bitcoin Forum

Is there a a magic number for solo mining? Aka lets say your mining at 2,000 Mhashes. Would it be be more profitable doing it solo than in a pool since you have a higher chance of finding a block?

The pool just minimizes the "luck factor", that’s all. Although I think that you shouldn’t mine solo if you can’t expect to get at least a block per difficulty period. Check here (http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php).

So no, there’s no magic number. There’s only personal preference.

I think the key factor in solo vs pool mining is your current probability of finding a block before the next difficulty increase. So even with a high hash rate it would be better to do pooled mining when a difficulty increase gets close.

I'd say that's about right.  I use a week as the cutoff, since you will grow really impatient if it takes longer than that to generate a block.  One week at the current difficulty level corresponds roughly to one overclocked 5870.  Definitely try pool mining first so that you can test to see that everything is working correctly.

so after another month or so later from now, solo mining at 5870 is pretty much pointless?  I guess you can still get lucky like winning the lottery.

I wouldn't say it's pointless, but you need to have a lot of patience if you are going to solo mine with only a single GPU.  I think most people would willingly pay the 2-3% to see a steady stream from a pool.

At this point, is it still profitable to solo? mathematically speaking.  I will probably have to join a pool soon, just not exactly sure how it all works yet.

As soon as I get another block I'm joining a pool... I have been mining practically non-stop at 270~275 Mhash/s since 2/22 at 11AM with my OCed 6870, but no luck

mathematically speaking it's always better to run solo, no matter what difficulty or hashrate.
on pools you will always lose some hashes due to network-overhead (~2-3%) and probably some due fees to the operator.

but then again on pools you dont need much patience, you will see results (even if those are small) more or less instantly
and you are not depended on your own luck.

With a 2'000khash/s (2Mhash/s) you can obtain about 0.05 BTC / day on a pool. So, on solo, it would take an average 1000 days to gain a block of 50 ? :D (the calculator (http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php) says 957 days). Good luck :D

that's why it says "mathematically speaking".  ;)

If you're going to switch, there's no logical reason to wait until you get another block before switching.

The work your miner has done so far counts for nothing. There's no "partial work" that you would lose by switching to a pool now rather than later.

You have the same chance of generating a block if you have never mined before, or if you have mined for a month (with or without generating blocks). Your past mining history doesn't affect your future chances in any way.

OCing takes care of any overhead and operator fee... After OC, you can at least get the same as stock solo in the long run, plus the security and steady income is nice

^ yea I know it doesn't affect my chances, but I'm feeling that I'll hit it soon :p I've been on a dry so run it bound to end right? XD and having 2 50 BTC blocks would look much sexier. besides, my Mh/s isn't bad so solo mining isn't too bad

If I had a penny for each homeless gambler who had made their decisions based on that "feeling".

...get even more solo.  ;D

don't get me wrong, i'm not saying "don't use pools",
actually i'm using pools myself (with ~1.5Gh/s), to get a steady income that i can count on without the need of much luck,
but "mathematically" it could be more solo.

So if someone wanted to do some kind of blockchain-based app using modified bitcoin code they could probably attract more and more miners at BTC 0.05 per day of 2MH/s mining {as|if} the difficultly of mining bitcoins increases?

-MarkM-

they could only attract more and more miners if there's some value in whatever they "generate".
they could actually be buying hashpower for bitcoins, if they pay better, than the bitcoin-market, a lot of miners will switch,
but that's kinda unlikely.

It is not the hired miners' concern what is being mined. They are offered 0.05 bitcoin per day per 2MH/s and that is all they need to know, in fact if they need too much info - more than a secure private blockchain-using network wishes mere miners to know - then either some kind of non-disclosure contract would probably have to be involved or maybe the mining jobs would only be offered to the royal family of the nation hiring the miners or maybe it would be decided mining is too sensitive a job it should take place only on the mint's own supercomputers...

-MarkM- (None of your biz what we mine, you want bitcoins or not? ;) Okay so we mine poker chips and have players, so what? Want bitcoin?)

i didnt say it's miners' concern, or should be, i just said it has to be something valueable (to someone at least).
i would even search for aliens if it pays better than generating bitcoins.  ;D

But then you will end up finding aliens, which are not as useful as bitcoins.

Bigot! ;) :D

-MarkM- (Note to Martian BotCoin mint: do you wanna hire bigotted miners? (Why not, you bigots?;)))

it wouldn't be me finding aliens, it would be the one i'm hashing/searching for
and if he/she pays me in bitcoins, it'd be as useful to me (at least) as generating (less) bitcoins myself.

just like compute4cash, its 'customers' don't care what their processing-power is used for, as long as they get paid (and don't know about bitcoin).

Exactly like that, yes! There is no point chancing making the earthling miners jealous or envious by flaunting the high value of the 'special dirt' they are hired to dig up, especially if that might give them crazy ideas like mining the stuff for themselves instead of mining it dirt cheap for 'aliens'. Especially if it has martial applications in the planet-domination field.

It is kind of similar to if the fed pre-printed umpteen years worth of bills ahead of time, or a casino bought massive numbers of plastic disks up front far more than they are likely to actually need for years but at such dirt cheap prices heck why not, they might come in handy one of these years or decades if things go well.

Having players choose whether to buy a ten their fiat currency per month subscription to a site OR crank out five such memberships per ten minutes divided by the number of other players choosing that option might devalue the memberships. Better to first get to a point where subscriptions amount to 300 local fiats per hour before starting to open up the mining "opportunity" maybe. Just an idea, but it is being looked into. Uh, by aliens, of course. No-one here but we earthlings, those Martians are oxymorons.

-MarkM- (Martial applications? What Martial Applications? MI1594 (Martian Invasion 1594) is just a game to we earthlings, isn't it?)