Over 300%.  And of course, BTC has risen in price pretty dramatically - over $700 on coinbase.  The good news is that I have to pay out far fewer coins for my hosting.  The bad news is that we haven't seen any coins come back in.  And, of course, last week I was out of the country with pretty limited internet access and 2 of my Avalons went dark - the 2 I have at my home, not at my hosting.  All they needed was a rPi reboot, but I couldn't get it done until I got back late last night.

Yes there is an effect, however it is minimal and not something you really need to worry about.

First, welcome to mining.

Second, do not use antpool.  No saving on ping is worth it.  Some pools that have EU servers:

My own pool (EU stratum: eu.stratum.bravo-mining.com)
Kano (fr.kano.is, dk.kano.is and de.kano.is as far as I know)
Bitminter (eu1.bitminter.com)

If you need any help, I'm glad to offer it.

My last purchase of gear from Bitmain was early batch S3s in June, 2014.  I have an S5, but that was given to me by a friend.  He had 10 and didn't know how to set them up, and thought they were all dead.  Turns out he didn't know how to properly connect the breakout boards to the PSUs, or how to find the S5s once they were connected.  I set him up, and as thanks he gave me one.

Well, it's official.  Bitmain has released the S9.  Same form factor as the S7, but producing 14TH for 1375W.  At $2100 it's not exactly ROI-friendly.  6 of these would replace my 20 Avalons.

Hopefully Caanan responds shortly with a new miner of their own.

Let's find a couple blocks, shall we?

Sounds like you had a good time on your week-long cruise, traxor .

I was USMC 89-93.  Thanks for your service, Phil.

Not sure why you're asking about slush here... but: https://slushpool.com/stats/ shows you the overall luck for 10/50/250 blocks.  https://slushpool.com/stats/blocks/ shows you stats for each individual block.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day here in the US.  Most people consider it the unofficial start of summer.  The real meaning of the day is far more important and somber.  This is a day to take a moment to remember those brave men and women who have given the ultimate sacrifice and laid down their lives for our country.

As a former US Marine (the 0311 in my username reflects this), I ask all of you to take just a moment and say a silent thank you to those brave heroes for their courage and their sacrifice.

Now, to celebrate the unofficial start of summer, I will give the first person to solve a block tomorrow 1BTC.  You will also be entered into the diff change promo, where you could win an additional 2BTC.  The promo will run from midnight east tonight until midnight east tomorrow (00:00:00 EDT 23:59:59 EDT on 30 May 2016).  Good luck everyone!

Your question:

If the miner was mining solo, then your suggestion of using the coinbase transaction works.  However, as you correctly observe, the coinbase transaction of the majority of solved blocks either belongs to the pool on which the miner is mining, or in the case of Eligius and p2pool, every miner that will get a share of the block reward.

Your friend is incorrect.  There are very few pools that reward the miner who finds the block.  P2Pool does.  The miner who finds the block gets 1/200 of the block reward in addition to any shares he currently has on the chain.  Other pools, like mine, might give the miner who finds the block a bonus during certain promotions, but on my pool, that bonus comes from my own pocket.

Some pools do, however, provide statistics on who solved the block.  For example, if you take a look at my pool, you can see who has recently solved blocks: http://www.bravo-mining.com/index.php?page=statistics&action=pool.  I know kano also provides this information (but you have to be registered and logged in), as does Eligius.  Other pools you'd have to check.  Now, just because you can see who solved the block, that doesn't necessarily give you the person's address to which you could send coins.  I don't provide that correlation on my pool.  Obviously I have access to that data as the pool operator, but it isn't public.

Not sure who the question about still mining was directed to... but yes, I'm still mining - I have about 75TH of gear.  I run my own pool, too .

Create the transaction manually using createrawtransaction.  If the inputs exactly equal the outputs, then there is no fee.  For example, assume you have an input of 0.01 in transaction TXID and you send that 0.01 to address ADDR1:


Once created, you then need to sign it (you use as input the output from the previous call):


Now, you broadcast that transaction:

There was recently a blackout in Seattle... that corresponds to the drop off of this spike.  Who has the 1 EH datacenter in Seattle that blew the grid?

Well, unfortunately nobody hit the block.  I'm going to roll over the last diff's promo prize into this one.  So, everybody who hits a block during this diff is qualified to win 2BTC.  This will be in addition to any promos I decide to run.

So... new diff.  Let's get this nasty round over with and get a few nice green blocks.  By the way, the current CDF[Erl] shows that 1 in 11 blocks would expect to take this long.  Since we're on the pool's 11th block, it is, unfortunately, fitting.  I also believe it to be prophetic - our 11th block is a 1/11 chance of it having taken this long.  Sounds like the right formula to crack it to me

If it did, that would be the first block hit by one of sidehack's sticks ever, right?

I got close... hit a 183G share with one of my A6.  Hoping one of my others steps up and hits the home run .

Well, we are just over the expected blocks per day until the diff change (148 left).  Queue Europe's "The Final Countdown" here...

So, let's get this block solved.  If you find the block before the diff change, you'll get 2BTC.  You'll also be qualified for the diff promo, which would get you another 1BTC.  So, you're looking at potentially 3BTC if you are the only one to hit a block in the next 148.

Feeling lucky?

That's an interesting theory.  It would indicate that Bitmain has not only manufactured the chips, but has in fact produced the next-gen hardware and deployed it.  Also interesting is that Bitmain now has batch 17 of S7 available, and that they are again 2 fan models.  Selling off the old S7s they've had in their own data centers?  Conspiracy or reality?  Hmmm....

The spike is astounding in its magnitude.  We went from a pretty much flat/negative diff change to over 3.5% in a night.

Please don't.  There are far better options out there from which you can choose.  Here, kano, my pool, bcmonster, bitminter... just don't go to f2pool or antpool or any of the big, bad-for-bitcoin pools.