Are miner pool thieving away?

[opentoe]

I have a KNC Saturn myself and my Dad also has a KNC Saturn himself. Then we have three other friends that all bought Saturn's. None of did any mining before, this was all new to us. My friends received their miners that first week KNC shipped out and I received mine two weeks later along with my Dad. Thankfully they all were performing very well with great hash rates and low error rates. BTC was $150/US at this time and was $69 way back in July for a low. So not much action going on.

Since we weren't expert miners, this adventure was hit or miss. You basically get your miner, make sure it works good mechanically and set yourself up with a pool. We all didn't want to use the same pool because we couldn't figure out what pool to use. We had no idea. I liked BTC Guild instantly because of the refined web pages, information easily accessible and manual payout process. So me and my dad went with BTC Guild, while the others agreed to use different pools. The other pools were Bitminter, Eligius, and Slush. So we have 5 Saturn's all operating great using 5 different pools. We were going to decide after 30 days which pool we would all stick with.

Right away my earnings at BTC Guild was around .5 bitcoin a day. The first couple of weeks we all practically had the same results. While it took Eligius and Slush to payout FOREVER, they still eventually got paid. Another couple of weeks, bitcoin rising but not much change except we all were getting a little lower earnings. We kept at it. Making sure our hardware was tip top, things running good, low error rates, whatever we could do. Then the bitcoin increase started moving much more quickly. This is when we all started to expereince issues with all of the pools we were on, except Slush's pool. Me and my Dad at the Guild, our earnings just dropped through the floor. We were making %90 less then what we were 3 weeks ago. Eligius connection issues werer rampid and payouts were barely nothing and took forever. Bitminter stats dropped in two weeks more then in one month. The only person still in the game and even making more money was our friend on the Slush's pool. We were all thinking if the bitcoin pricing is rising so quickly we'll make more money, but for some reason that was not true on BTC Guild, Eligius, and Bitminter. I have asked in the forum pool threads about this but the responses I received back were pretty vague and a little hard to understand. The BTC Guild operator was nice and did engage in some conversation but all I wanted to know was why out of the 4 pools we used only one of them was actually making more money due to the bitcoin price rise? I tried the Slush's pool myself and hated the interface so much I just couldn't mine there. I just settled and stayed with BTC Guild since that's where I started.

I can't speak for other pools but why was Eligius, Guild and Bitminter having such a hard time making miners any coin at this point in time? Seriously, are there programming techniques embedded into the programming to stop giving more bitcoin at a certain level or bitcoin price? We were all confused on why this happened since we all thought it was a universal thing that if bitcoin price rose up you would make more. A lot of people will drop the "difficulty" word out, but that only happened once during all this and it was only %2, not like %5 or more.

I'm not luring in people for arguments or such technical speak no one understands, but more of a conventional laymans talk about why such events could have happened. And of course if you don't have anything nice to say, please hold your tongue and move on to the newbie section and scare the kids or something. We are just trying to extract as much layman information out of this so it doesn't get to technical that no one understands it. Of course this is the whole reason why I think pool operators have the upper hand on everything anyway. No one really understands what's going unless they are top contenders on that pool....and you don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Really, thanks for reading and having the patience. This is a small adventure a group of guys took and we are learning as we go and I just happen to be the one that speaks the most...so here I am. And by no means am I affiliated in anyway with Slush's pool at all.

[DeathAndTaxes]

What are you talking about difficulty only rose once and it 2%?

Difficulty has almost tripled in the last month (as in +200%) from ~155 million to 550 million.   Everything else being the same you would be making 72% less.  If you started a little earlier and the initial difficulty was ~100 million you will be making 82% less.

[r3wt]

i wish more people would have mined at slushs pool, but i gradually watched the hashrate bail for greener pastures as time went on.

[RoadTrain]

It's possible that the network has bad luck as a whole.
Luck has been horrible for BTCGuild a couple days ago, and now it's bad for Eligius, while BTCGuild seems to catch up a bit.
The short term luck can affect your earnings significantly, unless you mine on PPS.

[eleuthria]

It's possible that the network has bad luck as a whole.
Luck has been horrible for BTCGuild a couple days ago, and now it's bad for Eligius, while BTCGuild seems to catch up a bit.
The short term luck can affect your earnings significantly, unless you mine on PPS.

This!


BTC Guild luck has been positive by a decent margin the last day.  Just like it was negative by a big margin the day before.  This was explained to you in your OTHER thread, and the main BTC Guild thread already.  Your earnings have been dropping every difficulty change by a large margin for the last month.  You mention 0.5 BTC/day.  Right now your hash rate (~250 GH/s) will only make 0.24-0.25/day at the network difficulty.  This will be affected by luck on any pool, but your expected return is not 0.5, it is 0.25.

I'm not sure how you didn't notice difficulty increases over the last month.  However, in the time frame you mentioned, BTC Guild has paid better than you could've expected (luck has been > what you'd make on a 0% PPS pool for the last 6 weeks).


You had one day of bad luck and apparently lost your mind, making two threads (even after the luck recovered) and also posting about it on the main thread.


EDIT:  Just looked back and you did not start the other thread, you just posted in it.  Still, this exact thing has been explained in two separate threads that you've participated in already.

[r3animation]

I think OP doesn't track the difficulty.

[DrHaribo]

Difficulty has almost tripled in the last month (as in +200%) from ~155 million to 550 million.   Everything else being the same you would be making 72% less.  If you started a little earlier and the initial difficulty was ~100 million you will be making 82% less.

This is very important to understand when you are mining. "Difficulty" is not just a word without meaning that people drop.

I have some miners who don't believe the difficulty is real, and they claim I am stealing their money. They claim they should always get the same pay for the same hashrate. I have others who believe I am the one controlling the difficulty and that I'm cranking it up just to make their lives miserable.

The difficulty is very real and it is an automatic mechanism in Bitcoin that pool operators do not control. You need to understand difficulty if you are mining.

Measuring the luck of 4 different pools is useless. Thinking that the luck yesterday will affect the luck today is called gambler's fallacy. You can read about it on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy

Measuring the income from different pools as you move between them while the difficulty is changing... is worse than useless. The difficulty going up 50% will have an effect on your mining income - there's nothing any pool can do to eliminate that effect. Going back to the previous pool you will find that earnings have dropped there too.

[zvs]

Good example of why ASICs are selling for 2-3x the price they should 

[HellDiverUK]

I think OP doesn't have a clue.

EFA. 

[werauchimmer]

 

Money to buy a Saturn and not taking the time to research the basic concepts. Why not invest in magic beans, next time? Hey, come to think of it: I do have some left over, that can be yours for a very reasonable price! Just contact me via PN!

(Jokes aside: Read what DrHaribo said! No better way to put it.)

 

[DrHaribo]

Guys we were all newbies at some point, nothing wrong with that.

I think the Bitcoin stack exchange is a great resource for people getting into Bitcoin. I posted a new question there so there will be an easily available URL to point people to regarding the "difficulty vs income" issue: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/16526/how-does-a-difficulty-increase-affect-a-miners-income

[zvs]

Guys we were all newbies at some point, nothing wrong with that.

I think the Bitcoin stack exchange is a great resource for people getting into Bitcoin. I posted a new question there so there will be an easily available URL to point people to regarding the "difficulty vs income" issue: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/16526/how-does-a-difficulty-increase-affect-a-miners-income

well, I put some research into it before I invested in those first half a dozen 5830's

already knew what difficulty was and that it was ramping up quickly (but that was also when price went from like $3 to $35)

and also knew  to switch to namecoins when they first started too!

plus, it's $1000 or so vs $6000? 

a poor sap like myself that considers $6,000 a good chunk of money would make sure to research such things first

[os2sam]

Guys we were all newbies at some point, nothing wrong with that

opentoe is no newbie. Has been around quite a while now.

[fizzmine]

opentoe is no newbie. Has been around quite a while now.

We were all confused on why this happened since we all thought it was a universal thing that if bitcoin price rose up you would make more. A lot of people will drop the "difficulty" word out, but that only happened once during all this and it was only %2, not like %5 or more.

Does not compute...

[opentoe]

Guys we were all newbies at some point, nothing wrong with that

opentoe is no newbie. Has been around quite a while now.

I'm a complete Newbie to mining. Take it from the horse's mouth, trust me.

[opentoe]

It's possible that the network has bad luck as a whole.
Luck has been horrible for BTCGuild a couple days ago, and now it's bad for Eligius, while BTCGuild seems to catch up a bit.
The short term luck can affect your earnings significantly, unless you mine on PPS.

This!


BTC Guild luck has been positive by a decent margin the last day.  Just like it was negative by a big margin the day before.  This was explained to you in your OTHER thread, and the main BTC Guild thread already.  Your earnings have been dropping every difficulty change by a large margin for the last month.  You mention 0.5 BTC/day.  Right now your hash rate (~250 GH/s) will only make 0.24-0.25/day at the network difficulty.  This will be affected by luck on any pool, but your expected return is not 0.5, it is 0.25.

I'm not sure how you didn't notice difficulty increases over the last month.  However, in the time frame you mentioned, BTC Guild has paid better than you could've expected (luck has been > what you'd make on a 0% PPS pool for the last 6 weeks).


You had one day of bad luck and apparently lost your mind, making two threads (even after the luck recovered) and also posting about it on the main thread.


EDIT:  Just looked back and you did not start the other thread, you just posted in it.  Still, this exact thing has been explained in two separate threads that you've participated in already.

Sorry, I can't help it if this forum is the most unregulated forum around and holding onto almost $2million USD in bitcoin.

[fizzmine]

Guys we were all newbies at some point, nothing wrong with that

opentoe is no newbie. Has been around quite a while now.

I'm a complete Newbie to mining. Take it from the horse's mouth, trust me.

Hey as long as you know that you don't know something, its easy enough to learn.  Read up on how difficulty works.  This site is very helpful in understanding the relationship to network hash rate and difficulty (as well as predicting the level and time of the next difficulty adjustment): http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

[Trongersoll]

hmmmm simple answer. if your hashrate is constant, every week you will earn less Bitcoin than the previous week. This is because of new hardware coming on line. How much less you will make depends on how much hardware comes online how quickly. Bitcoin is designed to try and create no more than one block every 10 minutes. Adding hash power causes bitcoins to be made faster. the dificulty is adjusted to compensate for the increased speed. Every time someone does something to make themsleves more bitcoins you make less.

The pools aren't taking more than their advertised share. It is just that there is a lot of competition to get a bigger share of a finite number of coins.

[Johanna]

hmmmm simple answer. if your hashrate is constant, every week you will earn less Bitcoin than the previous week. This is because of new hardware coming on line. How much less you will make depends on how much hardware comes online how quickly. Bitcoin is designed to try and create no more than one block every 10 minutes. Adding hash power causes bitcoins to be made faster. the dificulty is adjusted to compensate for the increased speed. Every time someone does something to make themsleves more bitcoins you make less.

The pools aren't taking more than their advertised share. It is just that there is a lot of competition to get a bigger share of a finite number of coins.

Not every week but every difficulty hike... about once every 11 days...

[Trongersoll]

hmmmm simple answer. if your hashrate is constant, every week you will earn less Bitcoin than the previous week. This is because of new hardware coming on line. How much less you will make depends on how much hardware comes online how quickly. Bitcoin is designed to try and create no more than one block every 10 minutes. Adding hash power causes bitcoins to be made faster. the dificulty is adjusted to compensate for the increased speed. Every time someone does something to make themsleves more bitcoins you make less.

The pools aren't taking more than their advertised share. It is just that there is a lot of competition to get a bigger share of a finite number of coins.

Not every week but every difficulty hike... about once every 11 days...

It isn't just the increase in difficulty that causes you to earn less. any increase in hashrate will adversely affect how much you earn.