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

[paraipan]

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

+1 totally man haha

[macrum]

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.

What a nice Idea! The only thing why I wont't use it, is the ratio between the Silver OZ and the shipping fee. It would be extreme, if they would be sended every time 14 BTC + shipping (1 to 2 BTC in my case if they are sended from CZ to AT) The next Problem would be the toll rates if the reciepent is outside of the EU.

Of course this would be a lot better than converting the BTC to USD and then into some precious metals.

[Idzy]

mining for gold/silver does sound interesting. 

[DeathAndTaxes]

The largest issue becomes "friction" and "trust".

If miner cash out often & quickly they don't have to trust the pool BUT then coinage overhead and shipping overhead eats into the yield.

If miners cash out infrequently & build balances they have higher yield (less lost to coinage overhead and shipping) but need to trust the pol more.

Given how some miners freak out when a $0.50 payment is one day late that seems implausible.

[kkurtmann]

I like the mining for gold on the internet idea. It would be nicer if the exchange value were back at July rates

[LoupGaroux]

If the mining for metals thing becomes a reality, it might make sense to have a few localized acquisition points, 1 in Europe, 1 for the Americas, 1 for Asia and Australia and so on. Buying precious in Europe and sending it to the US for example has one paying for the metals, adding fairly expensive insured shipping to the US, and then the receiver facing custom duties when it arrives, and calling a lot of attention to a flow of wealth that one might have otherwise not wanted a governmental agency to be able to monitor. Not smart to ship precious metals incognito, one loss of a couple of ounces of gold will cure you of that thinking for ever. If you had local sourcing it could be shipped domestically and handled in a much quicker and more secure manner.

You might even be able to find better values on some aspects of the conversion, and certainly save some money on shipment costs. I would be interested in this, but would want to make sure that my transactions are safe, private and cost effective.

[disclaimer201]

+1 innovative idea, once again
+2 it's a service paid in bitcoins, could push btc forward and counter hoarding of bitcoins & increase btc movement/distribution
+3 enhanced security to built up wealth, bitcoins were invented as a means of currency but I'd feel safer with some of that wealth non-virtual
+4 trust, if you already trust Slush's pool to send you your coins...(some other guys are offering it already, but can you trust them...?)

I'm guessing it will all come down to trust and accountability

[bulanula]

The largest issue becomes "friction" and "trust".

If miner cash out often & quickly they don't have to trust the pool BUT then coinage overhead and shipping overhead eats into the yield.

If miners cash out infrequently & build balances they have higher yield (less lost to coinage overhead and shipping) but need to trust the pol more.

Given how some miners freak out when a $0.50 payment is one day late that seems implausible.

[bulanula]

mining for gold/silver does sound interesting. 

I've been doing this since the very very beginning of my mining exploits, back with slush's pool in actual fact.

Every bitcoin I've mined has been spent on silver and gold coins.

Having a direct link from the pool would be a compelling reason to join back up here, but of course, actual rates and types of gold/silver coin would be an issue. Does slush *really* want to get into the bullion dealing business?

BTW - for those seeking gold, nice small bullion-grade coins are the Mexican 2 and 2.5 peso coins. At current rates, they're costing me around 40-50 BTC each, which is achievable with a smallish mining setup every week. Seeing a gold coin appear in the post every week makes this mad enterprise worth it.

Whether the constant extraction of value from the BTC economy to precious metal bullion is good for the Bitcoin economy is a question best moved to the Economy forum... (the answer is no, it's not that good for all miners to be doing this). For that reason alone, it'd probably be best for the pools to get out of the 'extract value' business and let miners pay other Bitcoin-accepting merchants for their bullion, as it increases the BTC velocity and viability of the currency. If all miners simply cash out from the pool directly, then the value of mining will crash very quickly. All sellers and no buyers - this is a very serious issue BTW.

Where are you getting the coins from mate, since I am in the UK too. Thanks !

This is the same with NMC -> automatically being to BTC. Price will crash soon. We  need to unload the BTC for $$$ with precision. It is a bit like quantitative easing

[RobertRibbeck]

Thanks for forcing me to try another pool

made more elsewhere for the time you were down just on pay per share of only my gpu's

no more shares worth little or nothing after 15 min
no more "invalid blocks"
no more waiting for payout
no more rejected shares because your pool can't play with phoenix
no more problems & promises

I can't say you got what I was'nt or the big miners got it
but it sure wasn't this small miner

oh one last slam to me namecoins DIDN"T payoff with the last of my bitcoins
Guess you'll have some LAME excuse for that too

[bulanula]

Thanks for forcing me to try another pool

made more elsewhere for the time you were down just on pay per share of only my gpu's

no more shares worth little or nothing after 15 min
no more "invalid blocks"
no more waiting for payout
no more rejected shares because your pool can't play with phoenix
no more problems & promises

I can't say you got what I was'nt or the big miners got it
but it sure wasn't this small miner

oh one last slam to me namecoins DIDN"T payoff with the last of my bitcoins
Guess you'll have some LAME excuse for that too

Care to tell us which pool you are using now sir ? Thank you.

[disclaimer201]

Thanks for forcing me to try another pool

made more elsewhere for the time you were down just on pay per share of only my gpu's

no more shares worth little or nothing after 15 min
no more "invalid blocks"
no more waiting for payout
no more rejected shares because your pool can't play with phoenix
no more problems & promises

I can't say you got what I was'nt or the big miners got it
but it sure wasn't this small miner

oh one last slam to me namecoins DIDN"T payoff with the last of my bitcoins
Guess you'll have some LAME excuse for that too

made more elsewhere while the pool was down? wow, you are a clever boy. We all sticked to the pool and got nothing!

no more invalid blocks? other pools have those too, be sure you will lose out on those as the pool will raise fees accordingly

"no more waiting for payout"- you can simply set your payout to be the current amount of confirmed btc, and be paid very shortly after

no more problems & promises - good luck with that on other pools!

[Tartarus]

Thanks for forcing me to try another pool

made more elsewhere for the time you were down just on pay per share of only my gpu's

no more shares worth little or nothing after 15 min
no more "invalid blocks"
no more waiting for payout
no more rejected shares because your pool can't play with phoenix
no more problems & promises

I can't say you got what I was'nt or the big miners got it
but it sure wasn't this small miner

oh one last slam to me namecoins DIDN"T payoff with the last of my bitcoins
Guess you'll have some LAME excuse for that too

Shrug, sounds like you've switched to a small pool that does pay for invalids.  Personally after a run of bad luck on small pool I'm about ready to hop back over here once the block finishes.  And do recall slush said NMC would get paid out later (and I've cashed all mine out just fine).  But whatever, to each his own.

[naypalm]

[...] Btw this is pool support thread, you should really move somewhere else and not spam here :-).

[AniceInovation]

Slush, one sugestion:
-On the Hall of Fame, add some camp with the user in question, with what place he is, what's its current hash rate and how many block he has found up.

[slush]

What a nice Idea! The only thing why I wont't use it, is the ratio between the Silver OZ and the shipping fee. It would be extreme, if they would be sended every time 14 BTC + shipping (1 to 2 BTC in my case if they are sended from CZ to AT) The next Problem would be the toll rates if the reciepent is outside of the EU.

You're absolutely right, shipping prices and gold premium *are* the issue. Delivering a gram of gold around the world every week will have insane overhead, far from stock price of 1oz gold and I'm not sure if people are aware of this. If it will be successful, maybe it will be possible to have more places for sending (at least EU/US), but at the beginning there will be definitely only one location and it will be probably USA, not CZ, because I don't want to handle gold packages personally; I'm not a bank nor gold mine :-).

[slush]

Actually I don't want to handle gold personally, for both security and legal reasons. But I have connection to trusted company which can process secure gold delivery. So as far as you trust me and I trust them, there should be everything fine :-).

trust, if you already trust Slush's pool to send you your coins...(some other guys are offering it already, but can you trust them...?)

[slush]

Having a direct link from the pool would be a compelling reason to join back up here, but of course, actual rates and types of gold/silver coin would be an issue. Does slush *really* want to get into the bullion dealing business?

As I claimed - not directly, for security and legal reasons. But thanks to high interest here it's probably worth of try. Actually I'm really surprised that 40% of people checked gold/silver payouts option in poll, but I'm not sure they'll *really* use it after they realize that price for 1gram bar + shipping will be far from London fix for 1oz :-D.

I also agree that

[slush]

no more shares worth little or nothing after 15 min

Quote from Meni Rosenfeld's paper about pools, part "Myths":

The value of my score will decay if I quit a score-based pool, so it forces
me to stay.

Score and payouts are additive. The score you were rewarded for shares
submitted in the past will decay the same way whether you stay or quit; the score you
will receive for shares you submit in the future does not rely on the past. Your total
payout is an independent sum of the two factors.

Score-based methods are disadvantageous for intermittent miners.
The expected payout per share in a hopping-proof method is always the fair solo average
no matter when it was submitted, so your expected total reward over a period of
time is equal exactly to the total value of the shares you submitted, no matter what
your mining pattern is.

It's probably the best response which I can provide, because I told the same many times before, obviously without an effect for some users :-).

no more variance thanks to "invalid blocks"

I slightly changed your quote, to be more correct. Every pool has invalid blocks, only few of them "protect" users by higher fee. It lower their payout variance, but the final effect is same unless pool operator is Mother Theresa and pay for invalid blocks from his own pocket.

no more rejected shares because your pool can't play with phoenix

phoenix is crippled in serious way and author is aware of this. Actually latest phoenix work without issues for *most* users as 1/3 of all miners on my pool is phoenix. What's an issue?

no more problems & promises

Well, I know there was many problems lately, unfortunately only few were caused by my incompetence or lack of support. I already apologize for that and cannot do more. About promises - I'm filling them.

oh one last slam to me namecoins DIDN"T payoff with the last of my bitcoins

Hm, can you describe it more? Are they pending on your profile for some reason? I'm not aware of any problem with payouts.

If you hate me for some reason, you can leave - I don't keep you by force. But there's no need to make such drama about that. Thanks.

[slush]

Slush, one sugestion:
-On the Hall of Fame, add some camp with the user in question, with what place he is, what's its current hash rate and how many block he has found up.

Hm, can you describe it more? I probably don't understand. You mean -> slush, make the stats better? :-)