probability of generating a block solo mining Bitcoin vs lottery

[drawingthesun]

Right now, If I were to solo mine Bitcoin with a low hash rate (300mh/s) what are my chances of generating a block?

I heard that the chance to generate a block is like playing a lottery, like the odds are 1 in 8,000,000. Is this true?

[1714016486]

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[1714016486]

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[lassdas]

At 300MH/s and current difficulty of ~4.8mio you'll need an average of ~800days to generate 1 block,
difficulty will change soon to ~6.8mio, puts your 300MH/s to an average of ~1000days per block.

You might get lucky and solve a block in 1year, or never, which is more likely.

[drawingthesun]

Haha, wow 3 years. Is it possible to work out the odds of solving the next block? (As in the next 10 minutes)

[zif33rs]

I think your chances at finding a block are MUCH better than winning a lottery. That being said I would think at 300 MH\s it would take you 2 years 73 days to generate a block on average.


zif

[crazyates]

I heard that the chance to generate a block is like playing a lottery, like the odds are 1 in 8,000,000. Is this true?

Sort of. For pooled mining, 300MH/s means you're checking 300,000,000 hashes every second to find a valid share, and should get about 4 - 4.5 shares a minute. A share is anything with a difficulty >= 1. If the share's difficulty is over 4.85 million (the current difficulty), then it's a successful block.

For solo mining, we don't care about diff=1 shares. All we care about are the diff>4.85million, or the block solvers. And yes, a diff=4.85million share will pop up about once for every 4.85million diff=1 shares.

So as far as the lottery analogy is concerned, it's more like 1 in 4,850,000, but that lottery happens 4-5 times a second, not once per day like the PowerBall.

[crazyates]

Short answer: Not worth it. Get a pool. I recommend Ozcoin.

[drawingthesun]

I heard that the chance to generate a block is like playing a lottery, like the odds are 1 in 8,000,000. Is this true?

Sort of. For pooled mining, 300MH/s means you're checking 300,000,000 hashes every second to find a valid share, and should get about 4 - 4.5 shares a minute. A share is anything with a difficulty >= 1. If the share's difficulty is over 4.85 million (the current difficulty), then it's a successful block.

For solo mining, we don't care about diff=1 shares. All we care about are the diff>4.85million, or the block solvers. And yes, a diff=4.85million share will pop up about once for every 4.85million diff=1 shares.

So as far as the lottery analogy is concerned, it's more like 1 in 4,850,000, but that lottery happens 4-5 times a second, not once per day like the PowerBall.

Thanks.

So it is possible to solo mine and be extremely lucky and hit a block right away, except the chance of this happening is currently 1 in 4,850,000

[drawingthesun]

Short answer: Not worth it. Get a pool. I recommend Ozcoin.

Yeah thought so. :) cheers pal.

[crazyates]

Thanks.

So it is possible to solo mine and be extremely lucky and hit a block right away, except the chance of this happening is currently 1 in 4,850,000

Yep. Pretty much.

Short answer: Not worth it. Get a pool. I recommend Ozcoin.

Yeah thought so. cheers pal.

Anytime!

[Amph]

but what about if i get lucky?
easy 25 btc

at 300megahash in a pool you need more than 25 months anyway to get a reward of a block(25bitcoin)

i'm talking at when the diff was 5m

[techman05]

Was funny how you call it a lottery, though I got 2 when I first started learning about bitcoins. The bad of it like you say you need alot of processing power and I didn't and I missed out. ALSO, even if I did I'm not quite sure I had it setup right to deposit to my account and would have been mining for free .

Might have been the fact that I had a fresh index but I wish I had that luck on a more known lottery in my area. I'm going to try again if I ever get my bitcoin miner

[Reverberation1]

I heard that the chance to generate a block is like playing a lottery, like the odds are 1 in 8,000,000. Is this true?

Sort of. For pooled mining, 300MH/s means you're checking 300,000,000 hashes every second to find a valid share, and should get about 4 - 4.5 shares a minute. A share is anything with a difficulty >= 1. If the share's difficulty is over 4.85 million (the current difficulty), then it's a successful block.

For solo mining, we don't care about diff=1 shares. All we care about are the diff>4.85million, or the block solvers. And yes, a diff=4.85million share will pop up about once for every 4.85million diff=1 shares.

So as far as the lottery analogy is concerned, it's more like 1 in 4,850,000, but that lottery happens 4-5 times a second, not once per day like the PowerBall.

4-5 times a second means 84500 (seconds in a day) times 3 which is 338000 and 4,850,000 divided by 338000 is 14, so that's a 1/14 chance a day. So basically 1 block every couple weeks. But somethin' tells me it's a lil harder than that. What do you guys think about this?

[Graet]

I heard that the chance to generate a block is like playing a lottery, like the odds are 1 in 8,000,000. Is this true?

Sort of. For pooled mining, 300MH/s means you're checking 300,000,000 hashes every second to find a valid share, and should get about 4 - 4.5 shares a minute. A share is anything with a difficulty >= 1. If the share's difficulty is over 4.85 million (the current difficulty), then it's a successful block.

For solo mining, we don't care about diff=1 shares. All we care about are the diff>4.85million, or the block solvers. And yes, a diff=4.85million share will pop up about once for every 4.85million diff=1 shares.

So as far as the lottery analogy is concerned, it's more like 1 in 4,850,000, but that lottery happens 4-5 times a second, not once per day like the PowerBall.

4-5 times a second means 84500 (seconds in a day) times 3 which is 338000 and 4,850,000 divided by 338000 is 14, so that's a 1/14 chance a day. So basically 1 block every couple weeks. But somethin' tells me it's a lil harder than that. What do you guys think about this?

nice bump for old thread, but difficulty went up a bit
<gribble> The average time to generate a block at 300.0 Mhps, given difficulty of 65750060.1491, is 29 years, 44 weeks, 2 days, 0 hours, 14 minutes, and 50 seconds
and difficulty going up at least 20% in 6 days

Though a guy on my pool did find a block on an overclocked 333mh block eruptor after mining on it a week or 2 - there is luck involved

[crazyates]

I heard that the chance to generate a block is like playing a lottery, like the odds are 1 in 8,000,000. Is this true?

Sort of. For pooled mining, 300MH/s means you're checking 300,000,000 hashes every second to find a valid share, and should get about 4 - 4.5 shares a minute. A share is anything with a difficulty >= 1. If the share's difficulty is over 4.85 million (the current difficulty), then it's a successful block.

For solo mining, we don't care about diff=1 shares. All we care about are the diff>4.85million, or the block solvers. And yes, a diff=4.85million share will pop up about once for every 4.85million diff=1 shares.

So as far as the lottery analogy is concerned, it's more like 1 in 4,850,000, but that lottery happens 4-5 times a second, not once per day like the PowerBall.

4-5 times a second means 84500 (seconds in a day) times 3 which is 338000 and 4,850,000 divided by 338000 is 14, so that's a 1/14 chance a day. So basically 1 block every couple weeks. But somethin' tells me it's a lil harder than that. What do you guys think about this?

No, it's 4-5 shares a minute, not a second. Actually right around 4.7shares / minute. Also, why did you multiple by 3 randomly? 335MH/s will average out to just under 6,800 shares per day (4.7*60*24). With a difficulty of 65.8Million, it's more like 6,800/65800000, which is almost a 1/10,000 chance.

[drawingthesun]

I was on eclipsemc pool with my ~950GH, got blocks solved every few days.

Whoa dude thats a lot of hash-power. A ASIC farm?

[buyer99]

What hardware for 950GH?

[driksson]

Here you go, got block #255822 with 164.19M difficulty

and the coinbase

http://blockchain.info/tx/08bcaf3c83fa1b900a5828fd24f4000ed398435ef1906c85a01114f9ee0a6a58?show_adv=true

So with current diff, at 86M. your making 5.4 coins (in a pool) per day.. you made 25 coins in 5 days august 30th to september 3rd (solo mining).
Do you still solo mine? have you gotten lucky?
Im thinking of trying.. but dont have 950GH.

[driksson]

Here you go, got block #255822 with 164.19M difficulty

and the coinbase

http://blockchain.info/tx/08bcaf3c83fa1b900a5828fd24f4000ed398435ef1906c85a01114f9ee0a6a58?show_adv=true

So with current diff, at 86M. your making 5.4 coins (in a pool) per day.. you made 25 coins in 5 days august 30th to september 3rd (solo mining).
Do you still solo mine? have you gotten lucky?
Im thinking of trying.. but dont have 950GH.

Got three blocks since Aug 30/31,  I sold one rig so last week was doing solo with one rig, did not get anything.
Now, I got another rig, so will try solo with two rigs again.  Hit 67M just hours ago, but 86 is the target now...

Is it worth it?  I don't think so.  The variance is killing me.  Last week I could have made 18-20 with one rig, but instead I got nothing.
If you have less than 500GH, don't do it.  Even with 1TH, it is a big gamble.

I'd feel more comfortable with 2-3TH or more, but 1TH?

thanks for sharing! bit far from 1 th.. hm ok.

[cardcomm]

Clearly there is some luck involved. I've been hashing less than two months with these and found a block. But I was pool mining, so...

[techman05]

Clearly there is some luck involved. I've been hashing less than two months with these and found a block. But I was pool mining, so...

Did you get a better return for finding it. EclipseMC seems to be finding a lot of blocks since when I run that straight my miners keep stopping and going but none were mine. I haven't found a management strategy that works both to get me the most shares and increase my chance of finding a block in a pool.

[cpengr]

84500 (seconds in a day)

Sidenote, 86400.

[stonehedge]

Massive dredge!

I am having a debate with a friend about the probability of solo mining a block at 4Gh/s at current difficulty and specifically we are comparing it to the UK National Lottery which costs £2 to play with a probability of winning £1,000 of 1:55000 and a probability of winning £50k of 1:2,300,000...(jackpot is roughly 1:14,000,000)

We estimate that the probability of solo mining a block at 4GH/s to be roughly 1:600,000.

Do you think we are approximately correct?

[Gladdy]

with 4 gh you should get around 500 K shares at the pool and the current network difficulty is 43 Billlion , your probability of solving a block is around 9.8 yrs.  so you would spent more money on electricity in those 9.8 yrs to get 12.5 BTC (BTC reward will be halve to 12.5 btc in about 2 yrs from now)
than buying lottery tickets. either ways,  not good investment. 

[stonehedge]

Good answer, thanks!

Definitely better "value" than playing the lottery though even if both are throwing your money away (depending on luck).

[pokeyjones]

had to un-shit my pants - realized posts originally from 2013. because someone asked how long would it take, someone pointed 1ths or so, and had a block in no time. i was... excited and confused.

someone recently lucked one with nominal hashing considering the task. just luck.

there's a difference between hashing and catching.

[numismatist]

had to un-shit my pants - realized posts originally from 2013. because someone asked how long would it take, someone pointed 1ths or so, and had a block in no time. i was... excited and confused.

someone recently lucked one with nominal hashing considering the task. just luck.

there's a difference between hashing and catching.

Lottery sells hope, solo mining sells loss. There is no way around using a pool now, then the luck turns the other way: tiny revenue in comparison to ruffled looking raffle tickets.

[stonehedge]

Maybe I should switch my two antminers off then.  Hope dies hard  

EDIT:  Maybe I'll keep them running for a couple more weeks.  We're off on honeymoon 9 months late due to work commitments and a solo mined block would be a hugely fortuitous way to pimp our break  You've got to be in it to win it!

[drawingthesun]

had to un-shit my pants - realized posts originally from 2013. because someone asked how long would it take, someone pointed 1ths or so, and had a block in no time. i was... excited and confused.

someone recently lucked one with nominal hashing considering the task. just luck.

there's a difference between hashing and catching.

Lottery sells hope, solo mining sells loss. There is no way around using a pool now, then the luck turns the other way: tiny revenue in comparison to ruffled looking raffle tickets.

Isn't mining only for companies that can construct ASIC's now, and even then most of them fail.

[stonehedge]

had to un-shit my pants - realized posts originally from 2013. because someone asked how long would it take, someone pointed 1ths or so, and had a block in no time. i was... excited and confused.

someone recently lucked one with nominal hashing considering the task. just luck.

there's a difference between hashing and catching.

Lottery sells hope, solo mining sells loss. There is no way around using a pool now, then the luck turns the other way: tiny revenue in comparison to ruffled looking raffle tickets.

Isn't mining only for companies that can construct ASIC's now, and even then most of them fail.

And for desperately hopeful romantics feeling lucky...

[stonehedge]

Best share 288K!

Come on my little beauties.  Watch out megafarms, we're coming for your blocks!

[m4nki]

Funny, I just had the same thought and now started solo mining with 60Gh/s.

What are my chances nowadays of raking in the block reward with that gear?

Still better than winning in lotto (which is 1:139.838.160)?

[talks_cheep]

Yeah, count me in too, I'm running a 400 GHs machine on ck solo pool. Wish there was online calculator.

[m4nki]

I calculated the odds of raking in the block reward with 60Gh/s at the current hash rate.

My odds are about 1:21.877.050

So for your 400 Gh/s it would be around 1:3.281.885 if I calculated correctly.

[Cyaren]

Right now, If I were to solo mine Bitcoin with a low hash rate (300mh/s) what are my chances of generating a block?

I heard that the chance to generate a block is like playing a lottery, like the odds are 1 in 8,000,000. Is this true?

wow a funny idea lol...
i wouldnt try it even with a really good hardware because u can never get it... too risky.
You better buy good hardware and go to pool,the profit will be small but constant,which is most important i think

[philipma1957]

  go to bitcoinwisdom


https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty



put in 1gh  you get    0.000002357  divide  25 by that number   you get 10,606,703 to 1 or

1,532,313,302GH/s    for whole network  so 1,532,313,302 to 1  WTF   why are the numbers different.   we make 144 blocks a day


so 144 x 10,606,703 =  1,527,365,294 to one    due to rounding errors it is not a perfect match


so

odds for a block with 1gh = 1,530,000,000  to one
odds for a day with 1gh = 10,600,000 to one   rounded it a bit


10gh = 153,000,000 block
10gh = 1,060,000    day

100gh = 15,300,000 block
100gh =  106,000    day

1000gh = 1,530,000 block
1000gh =   10,600 day

10,000gh = 153,000 block   this is the lowest rental  from nicehash
10,000gh =   1,060  day