Should I solo or pool (6 Ghash)

[marvinmartian]

My rigs are currently running stable at around 6 Ghash.  Was just toying around with gribble on btc-dev and see that on average it should take me 1 week to generate a block (eg., 50 btc).  I'm only mining 4 btc per day with pools (eg., 24 btc per week).  So I'm starting to wonder about mining on my own.

Any other solo miners out there at around this Ghash rate?

[3phase]

http://bitcoinx.com/profit/index.php will tell you that you need 11 and a half days to generate a block right now.

This means that you should be making almost 30 BTC per week (7 days non stop mining) on average (with a REALLY big variance).

Getting 24 BTC per week from a pool is too low, unless you have about 18% downtime with your miners (4.30 hours a day on average). If you don't really have that downtime, change your pool. 

[Jack of Diamonds]

http://bitcoinx.com/profit/index.php will tell you that you need 11 and a half days to generate a block right now.

This means that you should be making almost 30 BTC per week (7 days non stop mining) on average (with a REALLY big variance).

Getting 24 BTC per week from a pool is too low, unless you have about 18% downtime with your miners (4.30 hours a day on average). If you don't really have that downtime, change your pool.  

There are 20-30ghash pools that don't find blocks for weeks.

I wouldn't solo at 6ghash. The variance will absolutely kill you at this difficulty.
Point in case: http://btcpool24.com

The top miner has mined for 8 days soon at 3-8 ghash/s, and their reward is going to be about 9 btc max if the block is ever found.
The owner removed bonuses for those new miners as well, there's just a finder's fee of 1.95btc for the 1st block.

Just not worth it, you are losing potentially hundreds of dollars mining solo or in very small pools. It takes a long time for variance to even out.
It might even be that difficulty increases while you or a small pool are still working on that block, further lessening your chances of finding anything.

[AnnihilaT]

bring your 6GH to my brand new pool and it you will be pulling the major hasing work and have nice stats and an interface as well!  Would love to have you!

[CNMOH]

Definitely a pool. If you decide to go solo, you may never see a single bitcoin in your wallet.

[gnaget]

I'd vote solo.  I am running 6 GH/s as well, and I am running my own private pool for the statistics.  Yeah, there is more variance, but you get to keep the transaction fees, and at the current price point, I for one am not going to be selling in the short term.

[sadpandatech]

I'd team up with someone else about your size.  (points at gnaget) if they are willing.  At 12 ghash and current difficulty you're looking about 6days +=0to3 days for variance... 

[marvinmartian]

Well, I wouldn't be against teaming up with some people to find out.  6 days +/- 0-3 doesn't sound bad at all.  Then again, I did have a type-o in the OP.  4 btc/day = 28btc/week.  So that's not far off from the above afaics.

How much extra are transaction fees?  I can't imagine they're that many.

[josephholsten]

While people are still accepting no-fee transactions, you may as well join a no fee pool. Once transaction fees actually become profitable, switch back to solo. If you're worried about downtime, you might set up a local pool instance just as failover.

What exactly are you thinking the advantage of soloing is?

[cryptomint]

Going solo with 6 Ghash is a big gamble.

Variance can be brutal, keep that in mind.

[EskimoBob]

marvinmartian, like mentioned in many other forum threads, https://krokodill.triplemining.com are close to nonexistent.
1% of the block is partly distributed amongst the minipool owners (miners with at least one friend mining with them).
The rest of the 1% fee goes to the jackpot.
At your mining speeds, you will be doing really well with us and probably earn more than in any other huge pool.
Try us out for 24h and see how it works out for you.

See you soon 

[Meatball]

Go pooled.  Solo variance will _kill_ you.  I've been mining for a few months now with about 7 GH/sec and doing pooled the entire time.  I found 2 blocks the first week I was mining, which immediately made me kick myself for not solo'ing.  But I stuck with it, and guess what, I haven't found a single block with 7 GH/s for my pool(s) in almost 2 months...

So yeah...go pooled.

[marvinmartian]

What exactly are you thinking the advantage of soloing is?

Mainly ignorance about how transaction fees are dealt with.  I thought part of mining each block got you the transaction fees (eg., the 0.0X fee you pay when sending coins).  So I'm curious about how much extra one might make off those fees.

[josephholsten]

http://blockexplorer.com/ is a great resource for that kind of info. For an idea of the range of fees you might recieve, here are two blocks at either end of the spectrum:

http://blockexplorer.com/block/0000000000000542877c40ade7a45a3655ee2141b956eef4e9f070450ebdfcaf had 0.0005 in fees
http://blockexplorer.com/block/0000000000000719a1468efd7059b21ce07d4d854b4b7c50d3f67e04da335ed1 had 0.98578541 in fees

[marvinmartian]

But that's for the entire block, no?  If so, then splitting from basically 0-1 btc between a bunch of other miners doesn't seem worth it given the variation in block-solving time at lower Gh/s. 

I even just got stung on slush's pool with that 6+ hr block.  I think I'll stick to rotating among a few of the larger pools.

[DrHaribo]

If you'd consider mining in my pool (http://bitminter.com), I'd sure appreciate the help getting this new pool going.

I'm paying 5% extra until we have created 60 blocks, so it should be better for you than solo mining.

[linkme]

join my team @ pool.betcoin.co I've done the solo mining gig, "back in the day" it was great and i fluked a few blocks but now the variance is just too high, even the smaller pools are feeling it but with great variance can come great profit/loss obviously, so just test your luck out if your a gambling man.

[iopq]

it literally doesn't matter if you're fine with never ever finding a block
because the variance means you could find more blocks instead of less as well

[marvinmartian]

Variance is the mind killer ...

[EskimoBob]

(a copy)
I was just thinking what a morale booster this will be for all the small pools, when guys with 3-5GHash/s rigs show up and start putting the small guys on the map. Not just hoping from one pool to another, but really sticking with us.
You do not loose any BTC and probably make even more. So what, if you have to wait few days for payout. Let your GPU(s) do the work and spend your own time doing something else... read a book if its raining.

In the long run, the whole bitcoin mining community will probably win... or soon we all be slaves to Big Pools and they can rob us blind if they please.

Like they say, fuck the globalization, leave big mining pools!

OK, I'm going fishing now (no computers for 2 days, YEEE!)

Ya'll, please, sing along:
   I'm a gonna fishin 'cause everybody's fishing
   And I'm a gonna fishing too