North American Mining Pool

[MantaMine]

~75% of the Bitcoin network hashrate is pointed at 6 pools, of those 5 are in China.

I myself use a Chinese pool due to the large amount of hashrate going toward it resulting in a steady, predictable daily income.

My question to other North American, or South American or European, Bitcoin miners that use pools:

What would make you switch to a North American pool vs a Chinese or the lone Czech one?

[1713509381]

1713509381

[jonnybravo0311]

Bigger means better...

For some reason, people have it in their heads that they need to see a daily income when mining BTC.  I find the concept odd.  You don't get paid daily at your job.  You don't have to pay your electricity daily.  You (likely) don't need to fill your car with fuel daily.

Once people get this concept in their heads, they automatically flock to the biggest pools.  I'll pick on AntPool here, since it is the biggest, which must mean it's the best.  Oh look, they are 0% fee mining!  That's the best ever!!!

Read the fine print.  When AntPool hits a block, they keep the transaction fees.  It's right on their website.  So... that 0% mining really isn't.  Look at the average transaction fees per block.  Today alone after finding 12 blocks so far, AntPool has pocketed over 30BTC.  Those fees are supposed to go to miners.  The very reason those fees exist is because they are to incentivize miners.

This about this another way.  As we continue forward, the block reward diminishes.  It started at 50, then went to 25 and is now 12.5.  Each time the reward diminishes, the fees become more important.  If you stay with AntPool, you continue to make less and less.

So, bigger is not necessarily better.

The change has to start with YOU, and with miners like you.  Because of the "bigger is better" mentality, and the "I need to get paid daily" attitude, people will continue to flock to the big pools.

[MantaMine]

That is an excellent point about transaction fees.  They will become a bigger part of the picture as usage increases and block rewards shrink.

[fabioganga]

I actually always mine on pools that are not necessarily the biggest and most popular, but those who have a decent size of miners and a reasonable fee.

Spreading the hash across many pools and not concentrate all the hashing power into the hands of few is healthy.

[MantaMine]

I actually always mine on pools that are not necessarily the biggest and most popular, but those who have a decent size of miners and a reasonable fee.

Spreading the hash across many pools and not concentrate all the hashing power into the hands of few is healthy.

So you have any specific features you'd like to see in a pool that would draw you away from your current one?

[wavelengthsf]

Why does it matter where regionally the pool's owner is based?

Almost every major pool has multiple instances spread across the world to lower stales. Even if the owners are in China, the miners themselves are globally distributed.

It is pretty trivial to setup a pool these days - so in the event that one of the Chinese ones were shut down, it'd be easy to setup a pool in another region.

[MantaMine]

Why does it matter where regionally the pool's owner is based?

Almost every major pool has multiple instances spread across the world to lower stales. Even if the owners are in China, the miners themselves are globally distributed.

It is pretty trivial to setup a pool these days - so in the event that one of the Chinese ones were shut down, it'd be easy to setup a pool in another region.

The matter is how the pools are run, the high fees, and where the profits are going.  Right now China dominates Bitcoin mining and this lack of competition affects all miners that aren't in a position to reliably solo mine. 

Did not create this thread to start a philosophical debate though, interested in feedback on what feature(s) would motivate you to switch from your current pool.

[-ck]

Pools closer to where your miners are located will lead to less rejected shares, less wasted work, and lower chance of orphaned blocks.

[MantaMine]

Interestingly, the Chinese pools show no data about traffic on each of their servers - US, China, EU.....  I seem to remember that they used to.  Its difficult to gauge how much Bitcoin hashrate is coming out of the US.