[4+ EH] Slush Pool (slushpool.com); Overt AsicBoost; World First Mining Pool

[disclaimer201]

NMC payouts were sent and automatic payouts are enabled again. Thank you all for your patience.

RobertRibbeck: Exactly as I promised 19 hours ago.

Thank you for keeping your word mate. You set a good example. Others would have likely ran with the money.

Obviously, there were too many scams lately and people became paranoid. Trust is a central issue with Bitcoins. If you want people to continue to work for you, you have to start trusting somebody. Read the 225 pages of this thread and it's easy to see Slush has no reason to run anywhere with the money. This is a cool project to be involved in. Much better than most daytime jobs. It's safe to say the pool is his baby and he does it for fun! Money is important, but it's not all about the money, contrary to what some people might believe.

[sd]

Sorry to make you all feel like that but to me even $0.5 is very expensive when the money is not mine but the bank's and I have to give it back. Thank you again slush ! It really mattered to me you kept your word.

Sorry but I have to ask - How did you manage to spend $5k ( usd? ) on hardware and yet you only have about 900MHash/s ? Are you mining on FPGA's or did most of your hardware fail?

[notawake]

Sorry to make you all feel like that but to me even $0.5 is very expensive when the money is not mine but the bank's and I have to give it back. Thank you again slush ! It really mattered to me you kept your word.

Sorry but I have to ask - How did you manage to spend $5k ( usd? ) on hardware and yet you only have about 900MHash/s ? Are you mining on FPGA's or did most of your hardware fail?

Not trying to defend freaking out over 50 cents, but I presume that he's mining on multiple pools, but only showing the hash rate for one of his pools in his signature, which is the only source on his hash rate that I see.

[trilby]

Sorry to make you all feel like that but to me even $0.5 is very expensive when the money is not mine but the bank's and I have to give it back. Thank you again slush ! It really mattered to me you kept your word.

Sorry but I have to ask - How did you manage to spend $5k ( usd? ) on hardware and yet you only have about 900MHash/s ? Are you mining on FPGA's or did most of your hardware fail?

even at 5k on fpga's that is a very low figure

[sd]

Not trying to defend freaking out over 50 cents, but I presume that he's mining on multiple pools, but only showing the hash rate for one of his pools in his signature, which is the only source on his hash rate that I see.

That sounds like the most likely explanation.

[RobertRibbeck]

NMC payouts were sent and automatic payouts are enabled again. Thank you all for your patience.

RobertRibbeck: Exactly as I promised 19 hours ago.

Thank you
Was what I was waiting for
My Scripts involving namecoins worked as expected
I just needed some namecoins from you to test them

[slush]

Just for curiosity I changed thread poll. Please check what do you personally prefer. Of course other methods than bitcoin payouts have some additional expenses, so they're might be interesting only for people earning enough coins...

As an example, 1oz silver bar is roughly 14BTC + shipping.

[trilby]

For me personally gold/silver would be the best option (that is till asteroid mining becomes a possibility). But this will really vary from person to person.

I will always put my faith in precious metals as they will always be required. Unfortunatly cryto-currencies will only be as strong as the algorithm they use.

[notawake]

Just for curiosity I changed thread poll. Please check what do you personally prefer. Of course other methods than bitcoin payouts have some additional expenses, so they're might be interesting only for people earning enough coins...

As an example, 1oz silver bar is roughly 14BTC + shipping.

I think we have an economic incentive to keep payouts in BTC. If we want to maintain the value of each Bitcoin block we generate, we should minimize the amount of conversion to other currencies. Currently, some miners may be converting all their BTC immediately. But part of the reason Bitcoin has value is because some people are not doing this. If the pool automatically converted BTC to other currencies, the value of each block we generate would decrease.

Additionally, there's some administrative overhead involved with this extra step. Either you take less profit margin or pass on the extra cost onto the other miners. Both options are not good options.

[slush]

I think we have an economic incentive to keep payouts in BTC.

Basically you're right, keeping bitcoins and spending them for goods in Bitcoin world is the best possibility. But of course a lot of miners directly sell coins on market, that's the reality. Refusing to offer some interesting payout methods don't make things better.

Actually there are some merchants accepting bitcoins for gold/silver, so payouts in gold *do* help the economy much better than selling them on MtGox for USD and push BTC price down. Of course pool payouts in Bitcoin will be here forever, I'm just thinking if there's enough interest to play with some alternatives.

[bulanula]

A bit off topic but since you all wanted to know : I have spend that amount on a crazy setup that did not quite work out but I will make it work in the end. ATM I mine with different pools.

[Thralen]

I keep meaning to save my BTC towards more silver and gold but never quite get there. Jumped to stock up on peanut butter with the last decent size batch of BTC I had gathered (since PB prices are in the middle of going up and total price raises to consumers is estimated that it will be in the 40%-50% range). Before that it was fancy coffee... What can I say, I could get those with what I had or I would've had to wait much longer to get enough for more PMs. Aside from that I don't really make enough btc mining to be interested in alternate payouts, although if the namecoins had an option to be paid out in BTC instead of NMC, that I might go for.

Thralen

[notawake]

I think we have an economic incentive to keep payouts in BTC.

Basically you're right, keeping bitcoins and spending them for goods in Bitcoin world is the best possibility. But of course a lot of miners directly sell coins on market, that's the reality. Refusing to offer some interesting payout methods don't make things better.

Actually there are some merchants accepting bitcoins for gold/silver, so payouts in gold *do* help the economy much better than selling them on MtGox for USD and push BTC price down. Of course pool payouts in Bitcoin will be here forever, I'm just thinking if there's enough interest to play with some alternatives.

I thought you are suggesting the possibility of changing all payouts to something other than BTC payouts and I didn't realize that you are actually suggesting additional payout options. My apologies.

[slush]

As somebody asked (sorry, I cannot find that post right now), I added "confirmed_nmc_reward" and "nmc_send_threshold" to user's JSON stats.

[slush]

although if the namecoins had an option to be paid out in BTC instead of NMC, that I might go for.

I has been thinking about this month ago, even before merged mining started. I realized that it's not profitable for anybody.

a) Miners interested in keeping namecoins will get much less namecoins, because now they get much more than is corresponding their hashrate (because many users don't claim their namecoin wallet).

b) Miners interested in selling namecoins to BTC will get much less bitcoins, because when pool start automatic conversion, it will push price on namecoin exchange to almost zero (pool still has over 50% of namecoin hashrate).

c) People not interested in namecoins will get virtually +0% to their btc earnings, because pool push merket price to zero.

So I decided to *not* trade namecoins automatically and let people to handle their namecoins on their own. Honestly - selling namecoins for bitcoins is a matter of few clicks once per week, so I don't think it's a big deal. I know that some other pools are trading namecoins for bitcoins automatically, but I simply don't think it's good decision for miners.

[naypalm]

As somebody asked (sorry, I cannot find that post right now), I added "confirmed_nmc_reward" and "nmc_send_threshold" to user's JSON stats.

Thank you Slush! 

[Thralen]

although if the namecoins had an option to be paid out in BTC instead of NMC, that I might go for.

I has been thinking about this month ago, even before merged mining started. I realized that it's not profitable for anybody.

a) Miners interested in keeping namecoins will get much less namecoins, because now they get much more than is corresponding their hashrate (because many users don't claim their namecoin wallet).

b) Miners interested in selling namecoins to BTC will get much less bitcoins, because when pool start automatic conversion, it will push price on namecoin exchange to almost zero (pool still has over 50% of namecoin hashrate).

c) People not interested in namecoins will get virtually +0% to their btc earnings, because pool push merket price to zero.

So I decided to *not* trade namecoins automatically and let people to handle their namecoins on their own. Honestly - selling namecoins for bitcoins is a matter of few clicks once per week, so I don't think it's a big deal. I know that some other pools are trading namecoins for bitcoins automatically, but I simply don't think it's good decision for miners.

Thanks for the answer, it does take into consideration some things I hadn't thought about. For now I've just been letting them build up and figured I'd get around to selling them off for BTC when I get around to it. With those couple of clicks you were talking about. I already set up the account to do it with so... Just thought it might be a time-saving step to get them awarded in BTC instead. Thanks for explaining why it would be more of a waste than a bonus.

Thralen

[Deafboy]

Mining for gold bars? This sounds wonderfull as optional feature!
As someone mentioned before, mined BTCs should not be exchanged directly for other currencies / comodities and should be spent in shop like any other currency instead, but this option is irresistible for me. Too cool to be true

[bulanula]

Price of NMC will keep on being a little more stead if you exchange manually once a week than say automatically every time NMC is generated.

[FoxMURDER]

ROFL that'd be so cool to tell friends, that im 'mining gold. on the internets!'