Pool hopping is based on the premise of avoiding "blocks of death", those 3+ hour sessions which have the same payout as 10 minute ones.

You abandon a pool to switch to the "freshest" block when it reaches 43.5% (or thereabouts).  If the solution is found before then or shortly after, great.  You get your full share.  If the solution is found several hours after that, great, you've received a minimum of 43.5% for a disproportionately short participation.  Meanwhile you've likely participated in several short blocks in other pools.

I'm unsure but I think the pay for last share pools increase the payout of this strategy over and above simple hopping from proportional pools.

In other words, it has NOTHING to do with connection reliability (you can run more than one miner per GPU each in a different pool if you want that) and everything to do with collecting more than your share for work submitted.

It'll be interesting to see the value of namecoins in 2 months then.  Since they are basically a bonus for anyone mining in a combined pool  why would they keep any sort of a price relative to bitcoin difficulty?

I think anyone accumulating namecoins over the next 3 difficulties (whether through buying or mining) speculating based on an NMC difficulty runup and historical NMC to BTC price/difficulty parity may be in for a rude shock once block 24000 rolls around.  I know I'll only be mining during the subsidized periods and selling as soon as the NMC are available.

I could be wrong on the conclusions on mean/median expected increases relative to maximum theoretical, I'll go back and re-examine the threads.


Since the last submitted work is compensated at a higher rate in the non-proportional pools you get a higher percentage of payout relative to total work submitted if you join such a pool "late."  While it's impossible to determine when the pool will solve the block it is possible to avoid those pools until they searched a large portion of the solution space -- let's say 70%, meaning the solution is guaranteed to be in the remaining 30%.  In order to hop OUT of a PPS pool you need some other pool to hop INTO, and non-proportional pools make the best candidate since solo mining is not practical.

And my mistake, eligius isn't the pay-per-last-(n)-shares in that rotation, mineco is.

Anyhoo, I'm now convinced either way.  If your rigorous math is correct it could be a big win, if my uninformed guesswork is on the right track it's also a (much smaller) win.  I see very little downside in switching to opportunistic mining.

Huge inflation and historically high unemployment are not a good combination.  When someone "opts out" of the labor market they need to "opt in" to the crime market if they wish to feed their children on rapidly diminishing savings.  Perhaps not the optimal strategy when the goal is social stability.

Social stability is one of the prime reasons businesses and employees alike aren't itching to relocate to e.g. Chad or Somalia.

I have no illusions as to being one of the "fittest" when it comes to physical prowess or ruthlessness based survival.  When the cries of "eat the rich" are the only thing you hear I will be elsewhere.

Could be seeing the results of CNN coverage.  Got a my sells at 14.91, 15.91 and 16.91.  That should do it for the next few days.  If those get taken I'll sell the rest later.  I think our forum member contrary indicator is more reliable than any other -- I'm banking on having a rally to sell into.

I believe the bot trading is distorting the charts making die-hard chartists see things that aren't there.  The large volume while flatlined (relative to historical activity w/o bots) is making the MACD and friends look like it's trending up when in reality it may be showing divergences which just aren't there.

In other words, heavy bot activity is NOT representative of trader sentiment, the very thing charting is supposed to measure.

So, mostly sitting on the sidelines and gathering data for my bitcoin strategy.  Slowly going long through mining in accordance with long term trend.

Here's a snippet of code from a popular pool hopping piece of software:

#SET THESE
bclc_user  = "FSkyvM"
bclc_pass = "xndzEU"
mtred_user = 'scarium'
mtred_pass = 'x'
eligius_address = '1AofHmwVef5QkamCW6KqiD4cRqEcq5U7hZ'
btcguild_user = 'c00w_test'
btcguild_pass = 'x'
bitclockers_user = 'flargle'
bitclockers_pass = 'x'
mineco_user = 'c00w.test'
mineco_pass = 'x'
#REALLY

Those pools are currently being exploited via opportunistic mining.  How lucrative is this exploit?  Well, here is a quote from another site from a user of this script:


Now I realize the theoretical opportunistic mining payout increase is only about 10% so the above may simply be variance and a whole heaping helping of luck.  But what could be happening here is a subtle interaction between "unexploitable" or pay-per-last-share pools and pay-per-share pools.  Hopping *into* a PPLS pool (e.g., eligius) at the end of the round is far more lucrative than hopping OUT of a PPS pool at 41.3%.  Since all pools switch on an announced solved block pretty much at once that could be exactly what happens when PPS pools are hopped at 41.3% to a PPLS pool.

Oh, and if you are mining in these pools you may consider running that opportunistic mining script to level the playing field and keep up with the top earners in those pools, just in case I'm right.

Yeah, said I wouldn't sell but seeing this got me transfering BTC to mtgox again. =)

Big buyers will show themselves when there's some volume and a bigger community.  There just isn't enough space in this tiny teardrop of a pond for even a medium sized fish to splash around in.

To get an idea of what that's like for any "big buyer" go ahead and try to trade on one of the exchanges with 20 btc/day volume.  You'll feel cramped even with a tiny wallet.

That's why people with a few hundred K or more to put to work can't get into BTC, it's just too small of a market.  Once we've grown from a community of 6,000 to say 600,000 (and if the 18% forum member growth rate is sustainable you can reasonably expect that size community some time next year) I think you'll start seeing more of that.

Never denied being a closet bull the entire time I've been selling.  Been right to sell as soon as I generated coins since I started dumping at $24.  Last sale was at $13.88 and now it's all long and strong.

Not bullish enough to put money back IN except possibly as hardware.  And for that I'll want to see $100 5830s on the 'egg again, and way fewer $150 used ones on ebay.

And here is how that's done.

1. mine bitcoins
2. buy namecoins

Namecoins reach price/difficulty parity with bitcoins (or close enough), and long term stability ensues.

Here is how it's NOT done:

1. mine namecoins regardless of loss
2. subsidize a 2 day profit bonanza for people who mine in 2 days what you will mine in the following 40

But hey, free money is free money.  I'll take it.

Exactly right.  The diehard NMC miners were happy to mine at 25-40% discount to bitcoin for many, many weeks before difficulty adjusted.

There's no guarantee it'll shoot back up to an expected .04 btc/nmc exchange to reach parity. You might see the same old same old .033 at best, like we did leading up to the 2 days of profit bonanza.  NMC miners are eager to give away their mining power during the slow times, and who am I to argue?

Last time I got in during a difficulty slump, mined, and did not sell at .6 (the high point during the mining "boom").  I've been sorry ever since.   I did get out at .033, and will try to time my exit during the "slump" once again.  Of course I'll mine for 1-3 days every 6-10 weeks when it's profitable, and not at all when it's simply stupid.

I, for one, would be ecstatic if my 2x5830 rig returned anywhere near $500 over the next 4 months.   I started mining at $8/btc and under 500k difficulty.  I lucked out and received a bit over $300 since that time.  Most of that in the first 7 days.  I recycled some old hardware so I consider my cost to be $207 for 5830s shipped and $55 for a 750 watt PSU, leaving the rest to pay for $.046/kwhr power.

All I can say is "good luck" and here's hoping!

Exactly.  At that point the risk will be lower and income more projectable.  I will have a better idea of my competition's limits, in other words.  ATM it's just faith-based gambling on BTC price going to ludicrous levels and a big question mark re: how low of a return other miners are willing to accept.

I suspect the 7 series will be out or at least announced, so that question mark will also be addressed.

So far us bears have been right, FWIW.

Me, I've stopped selling at $13.5 and lower.  Just no point spending inordinate amounts of time to squeeze out another $1-2.   Considering cost to produce a BTC is about $6 even without accounting for hardware wear & tear for most of the world I don't see a huge downside until I see difficulty plummeting -- and by that point since difficulty follows price it'll be too late to get away from the falling pyramid anyway.

If BTC survives to see "long term" it's going higher.  Gonna gamble on zero or big bucks, from now on it's a slowly accumulating long speculation for me.  The BTC I've sold until now have now covered GPUs, power supply and power for about 4 months and I'm not going to sell at or below production cost.  I'd rather gamble on another run-up in the next 3-4 months.

I've been holding my seat for a week now.  Can I let go yet?

Oh, and my power is .046 + tax, or roughly 6 cents a kw/hr.  I'm not adding capacity because I really don't see even $130 5830s paying for themselves any time soon.  I'll possibly add at 2 million difficulty and $6 BTC.

I think there are now two cycles which no longer apply.

1.  The Weekend Effect -- miners have lived through enough of these to know NOT to sell on Saturday/Sunday.  They accumulate coins and dump on Monday.  Traders are still vulturing cheap coins.  There's still a bit of an effect, but nowhere near as large as the Evening Effect and Weekend Effect 2 months ago.

2.  rally/consolidate/flatline/dive.  We're far to stable to notice this cycle.

So yeah, time to change strategies.  Easy and free money was nice, but 2/3 of the total hashing power added over the last month is learning fast.

Here's a thought -- next time difficulty of NMC spikes, stop mining NMC and mine BTC. Then BUY NMC with the BTC you generate instead of subsidizing BTC miners by stubbornly mining NMC at -40% return (yes, people were mining NMC at a .037 exchange when the actual exchange was .025).  Exchange rates equalize or better, people return to mining NMC.  Difficulty keeps going up, and we're off to the pyramid races.

And yeah, the few days a month NMC is more profitable than BTC to mine is not a good time to mine & hoard NMC.  At least it wasn't last time.  Wish I had sold as soon as I mined.

Yup, miners have wisened up to the weekend effect and simply don't sell until Monday, extending the effect.  People change their trading strategies to take new information into account, they adapt.  Or become extinct.

No doubt.  Bulls are far from having throw in any towels, and even some of us bears are actually bulls in drag.  Hell, half this board *still* expects to see $100 by end of year.