Mining Pools

[bitsnbits]

Is there a benefit to joining a Mining Pool versus doing it yourself if you have some of the AntMiners or larger rigs? I'm looking at building some large rigs and new to this. thanks!

[NotFuzzyWarm]

You cannot 'build a rig' for mining Bitcoin.
Only ASIC-based miners are able to mine BTC and there is no way in hell a person can build them. They are only available from a very few companies (with very deep pockets to pay for the R&D + manufacturing involved) that specialize in them.

[mikeywith]

Pool mining is the only feasible profitable way to mine bitcoin, even if you invest millions of dollars in gears you are unlikely to make a steady profit mining alone, the network hashrate has grown too huge for a single entity to mine solo, let alone a single person.

With that being said, you should also know that the size of the pool is very important, small pools that don't pay in PPS are more like solo mining than pool mining, your rewards will vary greatly and you might not even get a single reward for the life span of your mining gear.