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?

[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.