Block mining

[Terodius]

Hi. I'm in the process of putting together a rig with dual 6990s with the hope of using bitcoin miner to subsidize the price of my system in the long term. After some calculations, I came to the conclusion that with minepooling I could get around 120 bucks per month with this setup.
I don't pay electricity so the only cost I have to consider is the system itself. However, I am now wondering if it wouldn't be better do try set up my own mining operation instead of going with a pool. I've read it can take weeks and up to months to solve a whole 50 bitcoin block. So I'm not sure what to do...

If i go with mine pooling, I got at least 30 bitcoins per month assured. If I go with my own operation and get lucky, I might get 150 bitcoins in a month, or it might take me 3 months to get 50. I've just started so I'm pretty sure I'm missing a piece of the puzzle here. I'd appreciate advice from a more experienced miner in regards as to what I should do here. Thanks!

[ineededausername]

If you like lotteries, you should solo mine.  Otherwise, go with pools.

[Terodius]

I'm not sure how to solo mine though. Besides, I'd really like someone who has experience with solo mining with a powerful system like a dual or triple high end SLI/crossfire to give me some feedback, maybe tips and such.

[DeathAndTaxes]

You aren't missing any piece of the puzzle.

Mining has high variance.  Very high.  
Think of it is a lottery ticket.

At current difficulty each ticket has a 1 in 5,583,457,484,800,000.
Winning ticket is worth 50BTC
Losing ticket is worth 0BTC.

Each hash is a ticket.  A losing ticket is worthless.  You don't get "closer" to solving a block.  You either win or lose.

So any calculator is showing you the "average" revenue not your actual revenue.  With your hashing power you have roughly a 5% chance of not finding a single block in a year.  365 days, 24 hours, a day, GPU running at 100% nonstop and you still have a 5% chance of not getting a single "winning hash".

I have >10GH/s and I use a pool. A pool by combining the hashing power of multiple users reaches the "long run" quicker.  Either way in the long run (say a decade of mining) you will earn the same amount (minus fees).


To solomine you simply point the miner towards you local wallet instead of a pool server.  The exact syntax varies depending on the miner you are using but they all work generally the same.

Pool mining.  Your local miner -> your account on pool server
Solo mining.  Your local miner -> your local wallet.

[Gabi]

Solo mining->you only mine bitcoins

Merged mining in a pool->you mine both bitcoins and namecoins at the same time. Double the gain.

[slush]

Solo mining->you only mine bitcoins
Merged mining in a pool->you mine both bitcoins and namecoins at the same time. Double the gain.

Not necessary. Settin up solo merged mining isn't so hard (although it is definitely harder than just setup solo mining or even pool mining).

[bulanula]

Solo mining->you only mine bitcoins
Merged mining in a pool->you mine both bitcoins and namecoins at the same time. Double the gain.

Not necessary. Settin up solo merged mining isn't so hard (although it is definitely harder than just setup solo mining or even pool mining).

We need a good guide for this ! I too am interested to learn how to solo merged mine.

[DeathAndTaxes]

There will likely be "easy solo merged mining" and likely merged mining will also eventually be easy for small pools too however there is no rush for anyone to push that.

If your intent is to mine BTC then NMC can be seen as a bonus.  You mine 1 BTC you also get 0.x BTC free (after trading NMC for BTC).  However that ratio DECREASES the more people (well technically hashing power) are merged mining.

When Merged mining first started it provides a roughly 140% bonus.  Which means rather than earning 1 BTC you earned 2.4BTC in a given time period.  Slowly that has decreased to less than 20% bonus right now.  In 4 days when both NMC & BTC difficulty change it will be closer to a 10% bonus.

1 NMC is worth roughly ~0.02 BTC so if NMC hashing power (and thus difficulty) ever reached 100% of BTC hashing power that would mean the "NMC bonus" would be only about ~2% at current NMC pricing.  Now I doubt NMC hashing power will ever be ~100% of BTC.  Not every pool will implement it and some will never merge mine on philosophical reasons but that kinda provides a lower limit.  Of course if price changes that would affect the "bonus" also.

You can estimate the NMC bonus by looking at
a) current difficulty ratios http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.php
b) current NMC price  https://exchange.bitparking.com/main

BTC bonus = (NMC/BTC ratio)(NMC price in BTC)

Thus as of writing:
BTC "bonus" = (9.39)(0.018)
BTC "bonus" = 16.9%  You get 16.9% more BTC by merge mining today than just solo mining (minus fees).

[slush]

1) You need patched Bitcoin client (sources are somewhere on namecoin git repository)
2) Install Namecoin
3) Setup merged-mine-proxy (part of namecoin git repository)
4) Point your miners against MM proxy
5) profit