(Newbie question) are transaction fees now more valuable per block than reward?

[Geraintjdotcom]

Hi,

First newbie question, have looked around for a bit but couldn't find an up to date answer;

Given that the reward per block has now halfed to 25btc, and some graphs at blockchain.info seem to show quite good values for the transaction fees (although I may be reading the total fees per day and not per block) is it worth now solo mining to get the transaction fees as the pools don't seem to include any recognition of the transaction fees?

Connected to this question, what value of hash rate does solo mining become valuable? (Given pools are reflecting the drop to 25btc per block, but not the increasing value of fees over time.)

Any insight, or clues as to how I could figure this out for myself would be fab! (Please don't say google it, I did try and that's how I ended up here!  )

Ta
GJ

[DeathAndTaxes]

blockchain.info shows total fees per day so the average per block is roughly 1/(6*24) the amount shown.  Many pools include tx fees (like bitminter & p2pool).

The choice of solo mining vs pool mining has nothing to do with transaction fees.  It is all about variance.  If you earn ~1BTC per day then solo mining you will find a block roughly once every 25 days however due to variance you "could" find two blocks in a week or not find any (zero) blocks in six months. 

[Geraintjdotcom]

Ahh, perfect, thanks!

I have tried only 2 pools that both pay a fixed pps, so assumed as thy didn't vary they weren't including the transaction fees. I will look into the two pools you named. Many thanks!

Second point regarding solo mining, if you manage to get enough hashing online to generate 25btc per day in a pool (just a thought experiment here I have access to only a limited resource) I could go solo and on average expect to find a block per day, and then I would automatically collect the transaction fees?

Thanks again!

GJ

[TangibleCryptography]

You will find 1 block per day on average but there may be periods where you go days or even potentially an entire week with no blocks.  Of course you would also have days where you find 2, 3 or maybe even occassionally 4 blocks in a single day. In the long run you would find 1 block per day.

However there are only 144 blocks per day so we are talking roughly ~150GH/s to earn ~25BTC per day.  Don't fool yourself into thinking you can do it with ASICs.  IF/when you get your ASIC miner so will tens of thousands of other people.  Difficulty will rise by a hundred fold meaning you won't need 150 GH/s you will need >15TH/s (or more).

So yes you could do that or you could just use a pool which pays transaction fees and get tx fees regardless of how little or much hashing power you have.

[Geraintjdotcom]

Hehe, no I didn't mean that! Lol I don't expect to get anything like that! I was just using 25 to simplify the maths! I am more interested in the long term lifespan of bitcoin and if the transaction fees are going to adequately compensate for the halfing of the reward every few years. I was hoping that I was reading the block chain.info graphs wrong in that the transaction fees were already as valuable as the reward, but given thats not true, I was trying to figure out what happens to them, and who is claiming them?(And to a lesser extent the value in chasing these!?)

But I have already learned a lot from this thread! Many thanks both!