Bitminter bitcoin mining pool - shutdown mining 2020-07-01 website 2021-06-01

[Mikestang]

I pointed my dust miners here to check it out, I like what I see so far.  Electricity is too high where I live to mine for profit, so I have a solo lottery S5 and a bunch of usb miners (another ~70GH) that I dust mine with because it's fun to see a little coin trickle in.  The dust miners have been on kano.is but since that pool grew so much recently I am below the payout threshold over there, so hoped them over here to hopefully start seeing payments again.

Question about the perks, Prepay BTC specifically: "Immediate pay for bitcoin blocks. No waiting for confirmations. No lost coins if the block is later orphaned. Note: does not apply to stale blocks."  Am I understanding this correctly that, if you select this perk, the pool will pay out your share of the block reward prior to the 100 confirmations it takes for the 25btc reward to be generated?  And the part about the lost coins is confusing, does this pool pay orphaned blocks?  If you do not select the perk do you then lose coins if a block is orphaned?  Thanks in advance.

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[ATCkit]

I decided it based on which one gave me payouts for all my shares. I think that's why many chose kano over bitminter.

This is the wrong approach. Instead of asking "what is a place where the Bad Thing never happens?" you should ask "where do I get a good end result after good and bad are added up?"

snip

I have some cool stuff in the pipeline. But in the mean time:

Would it be better to double the shift length? This would halve the chance of unpaid shifts but also double the ramp-up and ramp-down times.

Thx Doc. I appreciate the detailed and great response. You're right about the negativity bias and how it fools the human mind.



Yes- IMO, it would better to double the shift length. ( I don't mind that it would double the ramp-up and ramp-down times. That's offset by halving the chance of unpaid shifts.)

PS: I'd love to see what you have in the pipe. You have great reputation. I'm sure it will be good for everyone.

[Crispyato]

I pointed my dust miners here to check it out, I like what I see so far.  Electricity is too high where I live to mine for profit, so I have a solo lottery S5 and a bunch of usb miners (another ~70GH) that I dust mine with because it's fun to see a little coin trickle in.  The dust miners have been on kano.is but since that pool grew so much recently I am below the payout threshold over there, so hoped them over here to hopefully start seeing payments again.

Question about the perks, Prepay BTC specifically: "Immediate pay for bitcoin blocks. No waiting for confirmations. No lost coins if the block is later orphaned. Note: does not apply to stale blocks."  Am I understanding this correctly that, if you select this perk, the pool will pay out your share of the block reward prior to the 100 confirmations it takes for the 25btc reward to be generated?  And the part about the lost coins is confusing, does this pool pay orphaned blocks?  If you do not select the perk do you then lose coins if a block is orphaned?  Thanks in advance.

Awesome.  Your more likely to get some coin here on those old miners.  Yeah you get the pay immediately for your work until the block with pre-pay and orphans are paid.  This is the only pool you won't lose coins on orphaned blocks.  They aren't really lost coins I guess.  The block was orphaned therefore unsuccessful.  You can't really lose what you never had successfully obtained.  IMO you should just select Pro Minter perk.  You can change the diff higher, prepay, unlimited workers,  auto worker and notifications. Plus the donation helps the pool.  I'm curious with the cons of prepay.  The pros are obvious and must have in most situations IMO.  IE... Could I be adding speed after hitting a block to help confirm when it hits and have more payout as a result?   Maybe you should give a perk breakdown Doc.

[Crispyato]

I decided it based on which one gave me payouts for all my shares. I think that's why many chose kano over bitminter.

This is the wrong approach. Instead of asking "what is a place where the Bad Thing never happens?" you should ask "where do I get a good end result after good and bad are added up?"

snip

I have some cool stuff in the pipeline. But in the mean time:

Would it be better to double the shift length? This would halve the chance of unpaid shifts but also double the ramp-up and ramp-down times.

Thx Doc. I appreciate the detailed and great response. You're right about the negativity bias and how it fools the human mind.



Yes- IMO, it would better to double the shift length. ( I don't mind that it would double the ramp-up and ramp-down times. That's offset by halving the chance of unpaid shifts.)

PS: I'd love to see what you have in the pipe. You have great reputation. I'm sure it will be good for everyone.

I'm glad you responded to this ATC, I over looked it.   Yes please double shift time.  Its taking longer to hit blocks these days, would be awesome.  I started testing here with a gpu when the s1s came out, bitminter fueled  interested in mining.  Minting and shifts made more sense when I was new.  Took me down the rabbit hole.  White paper.  Maybe I should have asked more questions then.  Someone may have talked me out of turning my apartment into an s1 furnance when new rigs were coming out.  I'd love to see whats in the pipe also, don't suppose you can give a hint?

[Icon]

any chance to override/lower the var min diff.. Got some old USB miners that 64 diff is too high  for more poor old miners..

Thanks

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[Crispyato]

any chance to override/lower the var min diff.. Got some old USB miners that 64 diff is too high  for more poor old miners..

Thanks

Icon

Activate "Easy Mode"  Perk Then change to whatever diff you like or Pro Minter to just unlock all perks.

Click  My Account-Donations and Perks-Select "Easy Mode" to just change diff... or "Prominter" to unlock all perks and select the ones you like.   

Yeah, a fee goes to the pool.  Its nice here you have the choice of what you pay for.  If I deactivate all perks I would still donate.  Karma

Then go to worker page, click the settings button on your worker, and change the diff to what you like.  Restart your miner and allow 20 minutes for the change.  The message says it takes 20 min, but I usually see it right away.

If you stare at your speed you may see some crazy highs and lows.  Just what real time looks like on some good servers.  Check you hardware stats for an average and to play with voltage and clock speed along with your diff.  I don't know which usb you have and if your using bitminter app.  Been a while for me  on the app so I don't know options for clocks/volts, but you may need to use cgminer/bgminer to change voltage and clock if your usb firmware won't do it.

You can always deselect the perk after you test them out if you are not satisfied.

Sorry, I probably rambled on.  I've had way to much coffee..

[Mikestang]

Your more likely to get some coin here on those old miners.

Cool, thanks for the answers.

What are the physical locations of us1.bitminter and us2.bitminter?  Is one better for west coast?

[Crispyato]

Your more likely to get some coin here on those old miners.

Cool, thanks for the answers.

What are the physical locations of us1.bitminter and us2.bitminter?  Is one better for west coast?

That one, I don't know.  I've been using us1 for east and west rigs.  It works fast on both.  I'm curious as well.  Doc?

[jonnybravo0311]

A quick trace route shows us1 looks to be located in CA.  The trace route for us2 stops in Philly...

So, looks like us1 is better for west coast and us2 for east, based solely on the results of the trace routes - which is by no means at all comprehensive evidence

[gt_addict]

Aries, looks like you're determined to crush this block lol

[Crispyato]

Good enough answer on the server for me.  Nice Aries.  Crush that block.  Diff is going down today too...

[AriesIV10]

  haha -  I am trying to shake this bitcoin out of the tree! 

[gt_addict]

  haha -  I am trying to shake this bitcoin out of the tree! 

Shake you're money maker!!! 

[Mikestang]

Thanks, I'm on the west coast so I will keep using us1.  I am having a few other issues here, maybe you all can help.

Firstly, I am seeing fairly regular "Stratum connection to pool 0 interrupted" and "Stratum from pool 0 requested work restart".  Why all the work restarts all the time?

After about 24 hours on this pool I've noticed my usb sticks do not seem to be performing like the have previously.  One of my gekko compacs constantly gets "no valid hashes for over 10 secs, attempting to reset" and it only hashes at about 1/3 speed of what it should be.  4 of my 6 nanofury sticks are down about 20% in hash speed also.  The worker page on the website constantly shows my miners at 0 hash rate even though they are hashing away, often when I refresh some of the 0s will get replaced with a hash value, but then another miner might show 0.  I think this is all related to the min. difficulty of 64 on small miners that do 2GH-14GH each, but I'm not sure.

I added the easy mode perk for low difficulty and set appropriate difficulties under each worker in the field "minimum difficulty".  I waited for a while (website said it could take 20 mins) then restarted my miners but they do not seem to be mining at the reduced difficulty that I set, did I do something wrong?

I would like to give this pool a shot but if I can't get my miners to cooperate here I'm going to have to move them back to kano.is.  Thanks in advance.

[DrHaribo]

Connecting to the closest server will decrease your rejected (stale) work by a tiny bit. If it takes you from 0.11% to 0.06% rejected work then you will be earning 0.05% more bitcoins.

Currently both US servers are in the eastern US.

I'd be interested in hearing some stats from people who have tried the different servers for a day or two each and compared reject ratios.

Regarding mining with old USB sticks: the minimum difficulty is currently 64. You can't get below that. But mining will work fine. It will not make your USB sticks fail and need to reset. It will not cause lower actual hashrates. If those things happen then it's for other reasons. What it WILL do is make the website's estimated hashrates very inaccurate. The website will often show you at zero hashrate. Mining still works and your hashrate in the shifts should be closer to reality: https://bitminter.com/shifts (make sure you are logged in to be able to see your hashrate in shifts)

Firstly, I am seeing fairly regular "Stratum connection to pool 0 interrupted" and "Stratum from pool 0 requested work restart".  Why all the work restarts all the time?

New work from the server is normal. But how often do you get disconnected? Did you try us2.bitminter.com:3333 and eu1.bitminter.com:3333 and do you get a more stable connection there?

[jonnybravo0311]

Connecting to the closest server will decrease your rejected (stale) work by a tiny bit. If it takes you from 0.11% to 0.06% rejected work then you will be earning 0.05% more bitcoins.

Currently both US servers are in the eastern US.

Hence my caveat:

...based solely on the results of the trace routes - which is by no means at all comprehensive evidence

[gt_addict]

On the subject of servers I've got all my minera pointed at "mint.bitminter" they are registering and hashing but would there be any advantage if I pointed them to the eu server seeing as I'm in the UK?

[AriesIV10]

Connecting to the closest server will decrease your rejected (stale) work by a tiny bit. If it takes you from 0.11% to 0.06% rejected work then you will be earning 0.05% more bitcoins.

Currently both US servers are in the eastern US.

I'd be interested in hearing some stats from people who have tried the different servers for a day or two each and compared reject ratios.

Regarding mining with old USB sticks: the minimum difficulty is currently 64. You can't get below that. But mining will work fine. It will not make your USB sticks fail and need to reset. It will not cause lower actual hashrates. If those things happen then it's for other reasons. What it WILL do is make the website's estimated hashrates very inaccurate. The website will often show you at zero hashrate. Mining still works and your hashrate in the shifts should be closer to reality: https://bitminter.com/shifts (make sure you are logged in to be able to see your hashrate in shifts)

Firstly, I am seeing fairly regular "Stratum connection to pool 0 interrupted" and "Stratum from pool 0 requested work restart".  Why all the work restarts all the time?

New work from the server is normal. But how often do you get disconnected? Did you try us2.bitminter.com:3333 and eu1.bitminter.com:3333 and do you get a more stable connection there?

Very Interesting.  Which one would work best?  Does anyone have any results/tests?

mint.bitminter.com:3333
us1.bitminter.com:3333 (United States) is this West Coast?
us2.bitminter.com:3333 (United States) where is this (East Coast)?
eu1.bitminter.com:3333 (Europe)

I personally have connected to min.bitminter.com and live on the East Coast.  Would us2.bitminter.com:3333 (United States) work better/more efficient for me?


EDIT - EDIT

SORRY DrHaribo, you answered my East Coast / West Coast question in the quote I quoted you.  Thanks for not being condescending!

I would still like to know:  I personally have connected to min.bitminter.com and live on the East Coast.  Would us1.bitminter.com:3333 or us2.bitminter.com:3333 (United States) work better/more efficient for me?

[jonnybravo0311]

Read a couple posts up... Doc stated both us1 and us2 servers are on the US east coast

[AriesIV10]

Read a couple posts up... Doc stated both us1 and us2 servers are on the US east coast

oops