Bitcoin Forum

Is there any programs out there to record the hashes from solo mining.  I'm just curios how many it will take me to get a bit coin.  Thanks.

You can get the estimate here:

https://blockexplorer.com/q/hashestowin

It's just based on the current Difficulty value.  Note that this is to get 50BTC - you never get individual coins from mining, just blocks of 50.

I'm pretty sure most miners can be configured for solo mining (I know GUIminer can be for a fact). Again, all miners will display the current hashrate. I do believe that for solo mining to be worthwhile you need somewhere in the figure of 15GH/s + ... but don't quote me on that (could be +/- 3GH/s).

Solo mining is like gambling. You could literally spend a rear mining and never get a block. A block might also be invalid. The flip side is you can literally find a block in 10 minutes on any speed ,but this is highly unlikely.

Im a gambling man but not even I would bother with solo mining. Id rather earn a constant supply of small amounts then gamble it in one of the many gambling BTC sites out there ;) Better odds

53 days to get a block at that rate for me =\

My method of estimating solo block time is as follows:

Deepbit is currently 5269GH/s and they are finding blocks about every 31 minutes. If you are averaging 1GH/s it will take 5269 times longer for you to find a block (on average) than deepbit.

31min * 5269GH/s @ 1GH/s = 113 days



If you mine with a pool you will always be paying something for the privilege (percent fees or transaction fees), and you also trust the pool operator to not cheat. Because of this, solo mining pays better in the long run. The disadvantage with solo mining is the variability. You might find a block in 1 day, you might never find a block. You take 100% of the reward for your 'luck' and also 100% of the risk.

If you can afford to pay your direct costs and carry the other costs for an extended period of time, I recommend solo mining. For reference I'm paying about $5 for 1GH/s (without optimizing) excluding the depreciation cost of hardware, real estate costs (rent, taxes), etc. You have to be mentally prepared to check your miners daily without seeing any results.

If you need the incoming to cover your operating costs, pool mining removes much of the variation particularly if you use a PPS pool such as Arsbitcoin arsbitcoin.com (http://arsbitcoin.com).

From my research it seems to me like you'd need a very powerful rig to have a good chance of mining many coins solo.

Just go on a pool. I tried solo for like a month with a cpu back when I started out lol and never got any  ::)

Care to share the research? My measurements show slightly less than 1BTC per day when pool mining with the highest paying pool (arsbitcoin) including PPS payout, random disconnects, and downtime. By my calculations I should find a block on average every 48 days, so I will make more solo mining. We'll see how the experiment goes.

this makes things a bit easier to calculate (http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/old_calculator.php), plus gives the 50 and 95 percentiles.

Research is probably not the right word, I just mean my reading nothing formal.  If you're getting 1BTC per day mining in a pool, that seems to indicate you have at least a decent rig.