With this and subsequent halvings, see a potential for more soloing?

[jacobmayes94]

I have been considering this, that the block reward halving over time may increase the number of people who no longer find it profitable to mine on pools, and more switch to solo mining, albeit with less hashrate and energy expended. The price of bitcoin keeping up with halvings may make this point of mine moot, but if the price isn't rising in line with halvings "quickly enough".

I find it profitable to mine with scrypt and ETH on pools, and I am making a reasonable sum of cash for doing this, total 0.05 BTC a day expending roughly 2000 watts of power at 11p / kWh day rate at present, 0.45 pence per kWh night. which I am HODLing. Sha mining though at a profit is practically dead in the water for me personally even with my reasonably electricity costs. The price of the S7, for example is just way too high considering the upcoming halving and the power it uses. A couple more diff jumps like we had would make mining in a pool pointless unless you had free power.

It makes more sense to reduce hashrate and power usage but still be in with the chance to find some coins, better yet solo at nodes like CKs or even your own node if your  connection is good enough; while earning actual bitcoin through mining via proxy (scrypt, etherium or whatever else) or  goods and services for bitcoin, or the most profitable venture for me personally; buying the coins.

Seems like the S7s sold like hotcakes at insane prices on ebay even recently, I was expecting the cost of an S7 on the open market to fall more quickly than it has. For the cost of 3 S7s I could buy a KNC Titan which has a much much bigger profit margin when used correctly. But a higher up front cost*

I have seen more examples of solo mining, or attempting to recently. Almost like early on, solo mining was the norm for the home user, then they joined pools for less variance, and I am wondering if it may slightly go the other way once more with the halvings, maybe not so much this halving, but the next one, unless the price had increased substantially at that point. While it may be harder for the individual to profit, it may work out better and contribute to the decentralization of bitcoin as a whole. Any individual finding a block would mean so much more to them, and an incentive to keep mining would be the promise of a potential payout.

I am unsure, I would like to see other opinions on this. 14nm equipment when available to the home miner may change this. Think of all those thousands of individual miners IN pools, who are finding blocks, if you suddenly switched loads of them to solo, some of them would still be finding blocks; just without a regular payment. Depending on hashrate.

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[SFR10]

The thing is, there are too many different types of miners out there and each base on their plans do things a bit differently. Some prefer to have a stable earning rather than finding a block all by themselves (in which takes longer as everyone knows). IMO I doubt seeing more switching to solo mining (even some of those that have mining farms and yet mine in a pool). Best case scenario is what condition we have now, continues beyond halving (assuming there will be good spike so it would be worth mining for most). The sad part is most mining rigs up until S5 will end up unprofitable for most out there and there will be a lot of waste of turned off mining rigs sitting on the basements.

[Daisy14]

The sad part is most mining rigs up until S5 will end up unprofitable for most out there and there will be a lot of waste of turned off mining rigs sitting on the basements.
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I guess antminer should be able to find a way to recycle all those old mining rigs.


With the halving, I see more miners adding altcoin mining as a supplementary source of income, not just btc alone.

[jonnybravo0311]

Theoretically, you should make the same amount of coin regardless.

However, theory is not always accurate in practice.  Let's take a look at some numbers...

For this exercise, let's assume you're a hobbyist miner and you've got 10TH of hardware.  Let's also assume that the hash rate of the bitcoin network remains constant (I know this will never happen, but for the sake of the discussion, let's suspend belief for a minute).

Ok.  As of right now you're asking yourself should I take the chance and solo mine, or stick with a pool?  Let's find out.

With 10TH you expect to find a solo block after ~966 days.  At that point in time, the block reward will be 12.5 coins.  There are ~52 days left of 25 coin block rewards.  Your 10TH expects to earn 1.34628BTC in that time.  That leave us 914 days of mining where your expected earnings are 0.01294BTC a day.  This means you would expect to earn 11.82716BTC in that time.  Added together this means you'd expect to earn 13.17344BTC total.

So, assuming everything remains as it is, you'd be better off mining in a pool earning 0.67344BTC more than you would going the solo route.

[unholycactus]

I suppose so, I'll switch mine to solo mining when winter comes for heat.

[pogress]

With 10TH you expect to find a solo block after ~966 days.  At that point in time, the block reward will be 12.5 coins.  There are ~52 days left of 25 coin block rewards.  Your 10TH expects to earn 1.34628BTC in that time.  That leave us 914 days of mining where your expected earnings are 0.01294BTC a day.  This means you would expect to earn 11.82716BTC in that time.  Added together this means you'd expect to earn 13.17344BTC total.

So, assuming everything remains as it is, you'd be better off mining in a pool earning 0.67344BTC more than you would going the solo route.

The only difference between pool and solo mining is stable small payments versus one lucky big one, the expected earnings are the same. Unless you mining just dust amounts you dont need, I dont see reason to do solo mining and just try to get lucky (or most likely get nothing).

Because you can find the block anytime with solo mining, the math might be  ((52 / 966) days * 25 coin) + ((914 / 966) days * 12.5 coin) = 13,17288 BTC

Added together this means you'd expect to earn 13.17344BTC total.

[alh]

I almost expect that the halving may reduce solo mining by individuals. My thinking is that since solo mining is more or less a "lottery" (i.e. luck) scenario, folks might be less interested.

If somebody is going to buy a lottery ticket (an actual one), do they play the $10 million one, or the $100 million one? Even if the odd are 20 times worse for the $100 million lottery, the outsize number motivates folks to the bigger possible payout, even if they are less likely to win.

[jonnybravo0311]

With 10TH you expect to find a solo block after ~966 days.  At that point in time, the block reward will be 12.5 coins.  There are ~52 days left of 25 coin block rewards.  Your 10TH expects to earn 1.34628BTC in that time.  That leave us 914 days of mining where your expected earnings are 0.01294BTC a day.  This means you would expect to earn 11.82716BTC in that time.  Added together this means you'd expect to earn 13.17344BTC total.

So, assuming everything remains as it is, you'd be better off mining in a pool earning 0.67344BTC more than you would going the solo route.

The only difference between pool and solo mining is stable small payments versus one lucky big one, the expected earnings are the same. Unless you mining just dust amounts you dont need, I dont see reason to do solo mining and just try to get lucky (or most likely get nothing).

Because you can find the block anytime with solo mining, the math might be  ((52 / 966) days * 25 coin) + ((914 / 966) days * 12.5 coin) = 13,17288 BTC

Added together this means you'd expect to earn 13.17344BTC total.

The part I bolded in your statement is exactly what was just proven incorrect.  If the block reward was not halving, then yes, you'd expect to earn the same if you were solo mining or pool mining.  However, because the block reward is indeed halving, then the math clearly shows you making more by mining on a pool than you would trying to go at it solo.

[alh]

So in short, you would be best off to solo mine, as long as you hit a block in the next 7 weeks. If that is NOT true it makes more sense to pool mine until after the halving.

So the fundamental question is: Are you feeling lucky enough in the next 7 weeks to go solo???

Depending on you hashrate, you might actually be able to not hit a block until after the next halving in 2020.

[jonnybravo0311]

If you've got enough hash to expect to hit a block in the next 52ish days, which right now translates into just over 185TH, then statistically you'd have the same earnings solo mining as you would pool mining.

Solo mining is always going to be an all-or-nothing gamble.  Just because statistics say 185T should hit a block before the halving doesn't mean you will.  Then again, you might hit a couple.  If you're mining on a pool, that variance is reduced.  You might earn a bit less than 25 coins, you might earn a bit more.  Chances are real good you'll make close to the expected earnings on a pool.