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

[kano]

Alright, gotcha, so in the 268 days, 38k-ish blocks have been found, but we've been pipped to the post by others finding them first?

No, it's not a race.
It's simply a random event based on a Poisson distribution.

Every ~4billion times you try hashing, you have a 1 in "Network Difficulty" chance of finding a block.
At the moment, "Network Difficulty" is 16,104,807,485,529.4 and it changes about every 2 weeks.
So any estimate that says more than two weeks is also very wrong.

Thus for small pools like this (and mine) it takes a long time, on average, to find a block.

[DrHaribo]

Bitminter shutdown notice

The Bitminter mining pool will shut down mining activities on 2020-07-01. The website will stay up until 2021-06-01 so you can cash out any crypto currency on your account.

It is unfortunate to have to shut down after 9 years of mining. However, to keep going would not be fair to the few miners we have left in the pool. The efforts of miners who have tried to keep the pool going is greatly appreciated. But the pool has shrunk so much that we might never find another block. Attempts to bring big miners onboard did not work out.

A big thank you to everyone who mined with Bitminter over the years. This has been a grand adventure.

The original purpose of Bitminter was to make mining accessible to those who found other mining software difficult to operate. For many of our users mining in this pool was their first experience with bitcoin. I hope you enjoyed it and that you are still part of the bitcoin community.

Hopefully Bitminter was a useful service for you.

Best of luck for the future.

[gt_addict]

Its such a shame but had a feeling this would happen after the halving. Its such a shame as I have been one of the ones who started here a few years ago with a couple of Antminer USB sticks on your own mining client. It was easy to use and certainly helped me to transition to more involved mining gear.

Thank you for staying with us small/home miners. Its been a pleasure to be involved in such a dedicated pool community.

[Last of the V8s]

Cannot begin to thank you enough. It has been a wonderful ride. A true gentleman with a splendid mine, and an important figure in early Bitcoin. Wish you every success in your next ventures. Thank you, DrHaribo.

[gt_addict]

Just seen the dates. I thought it was this week you will be shutting down. I will stay until the end and fingers crossed we have a last "hoorah" of a block.

Thanks again Dr Haribo!

[MrZipster]

Real shame re: closedown - at near 300 days since a payment, it's been such a turnaround from the 5 blocks in 5 days just before!
Might as well remain until the end though, who knows might get just one more and go out with a bang.
Best of luck in future endeavours DrHaribo.

[philipma1957]

Sad to see it happen.  Thank you for being the first placed I mined.

[o_solo_miner]

Bitminter shutdown notice
The original purpose of Bitminter was to make mining accessible to those who found other mining software difficult to operate. For many of our users mining in this pool was their first experience with bitcoin. I hope you enjoyed it and that you are still part of the bitcoin community.
Hopefully Bitminter was a useful service for you.
Best of luck for the future.

DrHaribo, you did a great job on this, you where my first atempt to mine due to your software!
Thank you for your work!

good luck to you.

o_solo_miner

[HerbPean]

You'll always be my first

Thanks Doc for the great memories !!

[MrZipster]

So out of interest, why have many folks moved on? Assuming hashrate about the same, all pools must pay out about the same, give or take?

[can_ford]

I am sad to see this happen.  I mined my first 0.01 BTC on BitMinter in September of 2013.  I keep a set of 20 Antminer U2s on my desk pointed at the pool even today.  Thank you for providing a pool so accessible during the critical nascent explosion of this marvelous new technology.  Sad to see it close, but if there are not enough miners using the pool, it seems like the only reasonable choice. [New account because previous one (canford) was hacked years ago.]

[philipma1957]

So out of interest, why have many folks moved on? Assuming hashrate about the same, all pools must pay out about the same, give or take?

pool shrinks a bit  say from 2% to 1%

this is about 6 blocks every 2 days down to 3 blocks every 2 days.

this happened a while back. 

then a cold streak.  I left when this pool had back to back .99 cdf  so you hit  2 blocks in  11 days vs  less then 2 days.

during the cold streak when I left 7 of 10 blocks were .90 cdf or higher.

crazy bad variance.

A lot of us left at that time

pools share got lower then 1% 

lower than 0.5% 

so on and so forth.

[MrZipster]

Yep, but note I asked if hash rate stayed the same..

So I suppose I'm asking, why leave in the first place..

If your 2% shrinks to 1%, the leaving 1% must've thought their bread buttered better elsewhere..

But if it's all luck, and your 1 larger payment at BM every 30 days is about on par with 30 way smaller payments elsewhere every day, then why leave?

Just psychological for one or two at first, but that's enough to start the snowball rolling?

Or, were they definitely better off elsewhere?

When YOU moved, if ONLY you had moved, would you have been better off longer term?

So out of interest, why have many folks moved on? Assuming hashrate about the same, all pools must pay out about the same, give or take?

pool shrinks a bit  say from 2% to 1%
this is about 6 blocks every 2 days down to 3 blocks every 2 days.
this happened a while back. 
then a cold streak.  I left when this pool had back to back .99 cdf  so you hit  2 blocks in  11 days vs  less then 2 days.
during the cold streak when I left 7 of 10 blocks were .90 cdf or higher.
crazy bad variance.
A lot of us left at that time
pools share got lower then 1% 
lower than 0.5% 
so on and so forth.

[superbotolo]

I loved using Bitminter. Is there anything similar where you can mine using some low-price and independent solutions, such as USB miners or something similar?

[0bit]

I mined on Bitminter several years ago when I was just getting started with bitcoin mining. I never thought I'd see the day where it would be shut down. But unfortunately, this is the fate of the Bitcoin network. It seems that especially non-chinese pools are dropping left and right these days with the network power now being centralized among a small few players. Sad to see such a historic and important pool to be among those that are shutting down.

EDIT:People with miners seriously need to consider moving their power from larger pools to smaller ones. The whole goal of the Bitcoin network is to be decentralized and fair, but the increasing congregation of hashing power among a small number of pools indicates the network is pulling hard in the other direction

[superbotolo]

I truly think that the Core developers and the community should think about going back to the true nature of Bitcoin, and change the mining rules and requirements so that each and every user can mine and make a (small) profit by contributing to the network.

[philipma1957]

Yep, but note I asked if hash rate stayed the same..

So I suppose I'm asking, why leave in the first place..

If your 2% shrinks to 1%, the leaving 1% must've thought their bread buttered better elsewhere..

But if it's all luck, and your 1 larger payment at BM every 30 days is about on par with 30 way smaller payments elsewhere every day, then why leave?

Just psychological for one or two at first, but that's enough to start the snowball rolling?

Or, were they definitely better off elsewhere?

When YOU moved, if ONLY you had moved, would you have been better off longer term?

So out of interest, why have many folks moved on? Assuming hashrate about the same, all pools must pay out about the same, give or take?

pool shrinks a bit  say from 2% to 1%
this is about 6 blocks every 2 days down to 3 blocks every 2 days.
this happened a while back. 
then a cold streak.  I left when this pool had back to back .99 cdf  so you hit  2 blocks in  11 days vs  less then 2 days.
during the cold streak when I left 7 of 10 blocks were .90 cdf or higher.
crazy bad variance.
A lot of us left at that time
pools share got lower then 1% 
lower than 0.5% 
so on and so forth.

We did back to back .99 cdf and we did 6 or 7 blocks of 10  over .92 cdf

the math of back to .99 cdf is 10000 to 1 shot.

then add in 5 of 8 over .92 cdf

odds are really high for that to have happened.

it is more likely the pool was under attack.

point shit miners that can't hit a block at nicehash to hide them  then rent from nicehash and point the miners to bitminter.   your cost is around 6%.

ie every 100 btc you get back 94 btc.

back in the day the math showed this was happening often.  to a lot of smaller pools.

in that 10 block stretch where bitminter had 7 of 10 over .92 cdf with a back to back .99 cdf

it became obvious to me that any smaller pool could be attacked this way.

I mostly moved to viabtc and nicehash  as you get .96 percent luck or better every day.

about .52 cdf for certain.

Small pools are subject to these attacks unless they have a lot of certain hash from a big miner.

kano.is  has made over 2500 blocks  first 1500 blocks they were .48 cdf really good number.

last 1000 blocks .53 cdf

long bad luck streaks kill off pools. 

You have a ton of other risks involved.

I am the main miner at mmpool.org

we have not hit in 2 years. plus   I am due 1.1 btc if we hit today.

So every day I am at constant risk of the pool shutting down.


I can't do this

at kano.is
ckpool.org
bitminer.com
mmpool.org

I have to point a lot of my hash at a certain payoff pool.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

it is more likely the pool was under attack.
point shit miners that can't hit a block at nicehash to hide them  then rent from nicehash and point the miners to bitminter.   your cost is around 6%.
ie every 100 btc you get back 94 btc.
back in the day the math showed this was happening often.  to a lot of smaller pools.

And scenarios such as that are why Kano banned rental hash.
 A couple years back his pool was also hit but thanks to his near anal obsession to keep complete records in KDB of every share sent/received for entire history of the pool, kano was able to re-run detailed results of share diffs returned from the very large rentals vs expected results, catch what was happening (not just possibly withheld blocks but also a far from typical spread of low to very low diff shares returned) and promptly banned further rentals. Took a month or 2 to notice something was up but once he did he had all the data to verify suspicions and take swift action.

It must also be added that yes, owners of said rental hash were still paid as their 5nd ramped down. While unsavory to pay hash thieves their full 'earnings' it was still the ethical thing to do.  

That said, RIP Bitminter  

[DrHaribo]

Is Bitminter the last 2011-pool to shut down? Or are there any pools from 2011 still running?

2011 was a year a lot of Bitcoin pools started. Not sure how many it was, but it was quite a few.

[can_ford]

Is Bitminter the last 2011-pool to shut down? Or are there any pools from 2011 still running?

2011 was a year a lot of Bitcoin pools started. Not sure how many it was, but it was quite a few.

2011 pools listed on https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools: Eligius (closed), P2Pool (still up?), BitMinter (closing July 1, 2020), BTCMP (closed)

I mined 2013-present first (and last!) on BitMinter, with lots in the middle on GHash (closed) and Eligius (closed).