Bitcoin Forum

Thought I'd share my recent experience with switching pools.

I started mining in June 2011.  I had been using Deepbit from the beginning, mostly utilizing proportional payouts as opposed to PPS.  I'm not a pool-hopper and I have an average-sized mining setup (~1.8 G/hash).

I've read all the arguments about the disadvantages of Deepbit, it's threat to network security, etc.  None of them really convinced me to switch pools.  After all, I chose Deepbit at the beginning, and aside from some (increasingly more frequent) DDOS attacks, I received my payouts regularly and I was very comfortable with my setup.  Why fix what ain't broke?

Then I realized there's a little thing called math.

Two days ago, I switched to ABCpool.  It took me 10-20 minutes to create my account, modify my .bat files for CGminer, and get hashing.  I'm now receiving 8-10% larger payouts daily.  I suspect I could get even more with GPUmax, but at the moment I'm comfortable with my new change.

So, wtf is going on here?  What is prohibiting people from switching to pools that will necessarily guarantee them larger payouts on a daily basis?  And why the hell am I not using GPUmax?

Here's what I suspect:  People will typically defend their decisions to the bitter end, especially when money is involved, and perhaps even more adamantly when there actually IS good reason to believe their initial decision was a bad one.  After all, do you really want to admit you made a bad monetary decision to begin with?  Besides, you're in such great company!

Seriously.  Do math.  It helps.  I really think that a lot of Bitcoin users pathologically lie to themselves to create the illusion that they're profiting to the best of their ability.  They give their balls credit for risking (and losing) profits, but unfortunately ball self-esteem doesn't translate to a fat wallet.

Have you done your math? 

Welcome to discovering human nature. All you need to do is look at your own (in)action to understand why everyone else is doing it.

Some people have an issue with the way they are able to such a good PPS rate and be table and reliable at the same time.

Join p2pool, no fees, you receive transaction fees too, no trust required, no downtime

deepbit=so much fail

In what way? If you're aware of their PPS fees and you want good up time and a simple config, why is it so much fail?

No downtime is better than "good uptime"
No fees is better than deepbit

p2pool also pay the transaction fees

Not exactly 'fail' though, is it?

You needed ten months to figure that out? Wow. If I were you I wouldn't have made this thread to be honest. If this is how average miners calculate, we can expect GPUs to still be running when Asics are ruling the hash rate.

p2pool is probably among the last pool i'd join, among others.

What would make you switch to another pool? i ask cuz i am about to start one

1000% payout rate.  ;D

Yeah, because I totally don't think about anything I ever do.

Why shouldn't I have made this thread?  These are largely unconscious processes such that we don't usually notice them.  And sometimes although we do notice them, we don't really care because we create a justifiable reason for not caring, one that's more powerful than money is. 

Looking back, for me it was something along the lines of, "Why fix what ain't broke?  I'm already pulling in steady profits."  Keep in mind I don't pay for electricity as part of my rental agreement, so 8-10% larger payouts to me is NOT the same as 8-10% larger payouts to someone that pays for electricity.

If I'm reading through the forums and I click the "show unread posts since last visit" link and I see all these ads for "Need hashing power!  110% PPS!" or "120% PPS limited offer!" as I suspect you do too, why don't you continuously join these pools?  Well, you need to trust them to a certain degree.

I trust Deepbit (still do) because a lot of people have been using them successfully.  I was one of them and I grew to know that I could count on steady, regular payouts from  Deepbit.  I recently joined ABCPool for similar reasons...but the numbers are a lot prettier.

The thing is that the math is not ALL that matters -- whatever should mathematically bring you the greatest profits is not necessarily the best idea (BitScalper, anyone?).  Trust is important too, and Deepbit has earned a lot of it. 

For the same reasons I don't switch my pool either (though i have a back-up pool). The only difference is that I did the math back in June. Deepbit would likely be my last choice if my pool(s) went down. This has happened close to never for the time I've been mining. It's clear you didn't care as long as it worked. You lost even more because you could have mined namecoins alongside Btc from the beginning of October already. It wasn't much at times, but it's a clear extra income. It doesn't take any effort to redirect your miners to a different pool. It takes less than 20 seconds per miner.

You can't hop on p2pool  :D

which means less income.

any sane hoppers will do the same.

Wrong, it means more income for normal people.

i'm not normal people.

i'm more interested in getting my wallet.dat fat.

What pools still use proportional payouts?

random pools that are created for the sole purpose of pool hopping. usually fails for pool hoppers because the pool gets stuck at 40%, and because no sane user will continue mining beyond that point, everyone abandons the pool.

Deepbit and Slush.

All the little ones dried up and blew away? Also, Slush is time weighted, which makes it a little more of a gamble. (Still fun to try though)

Not much of a gamble.  Really hard to hop out such that you have -EV.  You might leave some profit on the table or hop too late so in effect you are mining for fair value part of the time.

It is less profitable but not less risky.  As greener pastures have dried up the hoppers have begun raping the crap out Slush pool.  Score was never really effective at preventing hoppers it just limited their profitability and when there were juicier targets Slush pool was "protected".

I personally "do math" every 1800 blocks and whenever the exchange rate moves over 15%. I have to, when electricity rolls in at 0,17$ there arent that large margins involved.

I suspect there are a number of factors at play here but my guess is that for most people it's just that they stand to gain very little from switching away from Deepbit and it's not worth the brainpower/time it'd take to determine the best new choice and get everything set up, and the chance that they could be wrong again, and more wrong than they are already.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_(economics)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis