Bitcoin Forum

I apologize if I misunderstood how automatic switching works, but as far as I know it is based on profitability, and that include price. Is it possible to automatically switch to another coin if network hash rate goes above the limit that I set? I would like to select few coins and automatically switch between them, but the only parameter should be a current difficulty.

You can use programs that do something similar to what you describe. Codes that use profitability switching by monitoring the current altcoin prices and difficulties. Check out these posts for details on some of the most popular codes of this type:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1777336.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2965976.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=676942.0

There is a lot of programs to do exactly what are you looking, I bet you can find at least 5 on 2 first pages of this forum

read what he asked guys, he wants to switch based on DIFF, NOT PROFIT
all those programs use PROFIT as a measure to switch

@OP  you may be able to set  custom settings on awesomeminer for it, but other than that, i would like to have the same thing, DIFF based switching. nothing i know of does that (except doing it by hand)

Thank you for helping with clarification. You are right, all I need is a diff based switching. I guess this is a good business opportunity for someone with the knowledge to create what we need.

It's a risky proposition to switch based on difficulty swings.  A lot of coins use dark gravity wave for difficulty changes per block so you can get some wild swings in difficulty.  Plus, there could be a good reason why a coin is dropping difficulty... maybe a contentious fork, a total scam coin, fast-dropping profits, and lots of other scenarios.

This is probably why nobody has built an auto-switching tool based on difficulty alone.

To the OP, is there any specific reason you'd like to share with us as to why you think a difficulty-based coin/algo switcher would be better? I can imagine this could easily be implemented but still isn't done today for reasons listed by the quoted post above mine.

This is for the miners who want to be where the other miners are not.

Typical auto-switchers aim to follow the profit but may end up just following the hash rate, and that becomes a game about who can best optimise their auto-switcher.

Instead I would rather be using my brain (and hopes and dreams) to identify a set of long-term prospects and switch between them according to changing network conditions. Never mind the profit, I'll calculate that in 12 months time.

I picked two coins (Cryptonight algo - one more popular and one less popular) which I want to mine and HODL. No one know what will happen in one year so the current profitability is irrelevant and I decided to focus on number of mined coins. Network hash rate for less popular coin vary a lot, sometimes even 60% in just one day, depending on the current price and profitability. I want to mine less popular coin only when the diff is low, because I will get more coins per day. When the diff goes above certain limit, I switch to the more popular coin with more stable diff. Currently I'm doing this manually, but it would be great if I can automate the process.
I hope that my explanation (with my English) make sense to you :)

Its definately doable.  Most will say just mine the most profitable coin, sell and buy the coin you want because you can buy more than you can mine that way but if you dont want to optimize profit and straight mine it, it is doable although as others have said i dont know if a program exists just based on lowest diff.

I was thinking of coding a rudimentary program to do something like this.  It would require a lot of manual intervention, at least at first, but I'm ok with that.

The big problem with the current programs that are out there is that they rely on pool APIs which only provide current and 24 hour PROFIT calculations (as was pointed out), and the APIs often don't update frequently enough.  Difficulty is typically one of the bigger factors in these profit calculations, but if it updates too late, you'll get stuck switching too late (i.e. on the upward difficulty swing).

It's OK to mine and sell the most profitable coin if you have a lot of GPUs and can mine in one or two days enough for minimum payout. With just two GPUs I need to mine for weeks before payout. Who knows which one will be more profitable in a few weeks (especially if you include transaction and other fees in the calculation for such small amount). That's one of the reasons why the current profitability is less important in my case.