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

[Fahlcor]

What is up with the large swings in average TH/s per shift?   Why does is it swing that much?

NetDomain hashrate move from 150TH to 900TH.

What would the explanation for that be?   One that makes economic sense.   That was more my question.

Only him can answer that, unless he's running after luck.

I have never seen a swing that large but he was obviously renting.  I was renting at the same time on the same site and seeing their hash rate drop as I increased mine.  Depending which rental site they are using it can swing easy if he is being outbid.  Some rental sites you rent/hour and others you pay a certain amount and if you are highest you get it.  Others can outbid you.

Oo the economics of it I'm up over 200% on my renting in the last few days (2 btc in and 4.2 btc out) so if they are going after the same thing I am then I can understand.  It is definitely luck chasing though.  If we hit back to back reds then I would be down.  But it does only really take 1 block to almost break even.  If we hit 2 or more it is all bonus money.  it all depends on how much you pay for the rentals.

AS you can also see both them and myself renting have not actually helped hit a block either.  At least not the way that I think of blocks anyways.  We did work to solve  blocks but didn't specifically find one ourselves.

Fahlcor

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[Cheeseater]

What is up with the large swings in average TH/s per shift?   Why does is it swing that much?

NetDomain hashrate move from 150TH to 900TH.

What would the explanation for that be?   One that makes economic sense.   That was more my question.

Only him can answer that, unless he's running after luck.

Netdomain is actually a renter of rigs. The large swings are his machines being rented and then coming back online. He's a very nice guy, I would assume the new shorter shifts made this pool more attractive to him. He mentioned that he wasn't satisfied at several other pools.

[Minor Miner]

I have never seen a swing that large but he was obviously renting.  I was renting at the same time on the same site and seeing their hash rate drop as I increased mine.  Depending which rental site they are using it can swing easy if he is being outbid.  Some rental sites you rent/hour and others you pay a certain amount and if you are highest you get it.  Others can outbid you.

Oo the economics of it I'm up over 200% on my renting in the last few days (2 btc in and 4.2 btc out) so if they are going after the same thing I am then I can understand.  It is definitely luck chasing though.  If we hit back to back reds then I would be down.  But it does only really take 1 block to almost break even.  If we hit 2 or more it is all bonus money.  it all depends on how much you pay for the rentals.
AS you can also see both them and myself renting have not actually helped hit a block either.  At least not the way that I think of blocks anyways.  We did work to solve  blocks but didn't specifically find one ourselves.
Fahlcor

Interesting.   So, it is basically gambling (unless the rental cost is priced lower than the expected value), correct?   If it is priced exactly equal to the expected value than it is more a variance gamble?  Right?
So, your expected value of buying 24 hours of 1 PH/s would be:  1 (the amount you purchased) /  254 PH/s (the network size) X 3600 (approx bitcoins per 24 hour period) X 0.98 (bitminter keeps some money) = Expected number of BTC returned.
How does the pricing offered compare to the above?

PS.   I understand that hashing (and not solving) helps others solve the block, that was not my implication.   Everyone doing work helps whether they are the block solver or not.

[Fahlcor]

I have never seen a swing that large but he was obviously renting.  I was renting at the same time on the same site and seeing their hash rate drop as I increased mine.  Depending which rental site they are using it can swing easy if he is being outbid.  Some rental sites you rent/hour and others you pay a certain amount and if you are highest you get it.  Others can outbid you.

Oo the economics of it I'm up over 200% on my renting in the last few days (2 btc in and 4.2 btc out) so if they are going after the same thing I am then I can understand.  It is definitely luck chasing though.  If we hit back to back reds then I would be down.  But it does only really take 1 block to almost break even.  If we hit 2 or more it is all bonus money.  it all depends on how much you pay for the rentals.
AS you can also see both them and myself renting have not actually helped hit a block either.  At least not the way that I think of blocks anyways.  We did work to solve  blocks but didn't specifically find one ourselves.
Fahlcor

Interesting.   So, it is basically gambling (unless the rental cost is priced lower than the expected value), correct?   If it is priced exactly equal to the expected value than it is more a variance gamble?  Right?
So, your expected value of buying 24 hours of 1 PH/s would be:  1 (the amount you purchased) /  254 PH/s (the network size) X 3600 (approx bitcoins per 24 hour period) X 0.98 (bitminter keeps some money) = Expected number of BTC returned.
How does the pricing offered compare to the above?

PS.   I understand that hashing (and not solving) helps others solve the block, that was not my implication.   Everyone doing work helps whether they are the block solver or not.

Well a gamble as to whether or not the pool is going to hit a block in before your shifts pass that you did the work in.

Here is a quick idea of how the math goes.

rent hash as cheap as possible.  Current calc for 1 thash is 0.01437/btc/day.  So if you can rent it for that then any pool you put it against should break even.  But.... If you hit 3 blocks in the time it takes for your shifts to pass then you could make triple.  Also if we find a red block then your shifts could go by without being paid.

So on Nicehash if you rented 1 thash for 24 hours @ 0.01437 would cost .0143 btc.  And because this pool pays on the work you do if the pools hits 3 blocks you should get ~.04 btc return.  Nicehash can be all over the place with speed and other people bidding higher on the site.

On MyRigRental you rent out physical boxes that people ( like me) have listed there for a set price/time.  They you point those at Bitminter to work for you.  This is alittle bit more controlled as you know you won't have to fight for your hash power but at least you will get quality boxes.

But.... the pool has been very lucky lately.  Back to back to back now I heard another (yippie) green blocks would not be considered within the law of averages.

I'm personally going to hold off renting now until I see another red block go by but that is just me.

we will see how lucky I feel later tonight ;-)

Fahlcor

[Fahlcor]

I'm feeling lucky.  And I want my name on a block in the worst way...

[Walter Rothbard]

Hey, Doc, I just wanted to say thanks for this very educational post.  I'm still thinking about it, days later.  Part math, part psychology, and a great lesson in thinking rationally.

Here's how the psychology of variance works.

The situation: you work for one hour and get nothing, then you work another hour and get double of normal pay.

People perceive this in different ways.

Overly negative person (very common): "OMG! I worked a whole hour and got nothing!". Those people can earn millions and still feel they are losing, because there was that one little thing which was not perfect. That's why they paid a 10% fee to mine PPS at Deepbit. After months of mining it felt like nothing had gone wrong, there was not a single moment with horrible pay. That was their only focus and they were happy. Overall they got the lowest mining payouts in the history of Bitcoin.

Overly positive person (common with gamblers): "I got double pay! I really hit the jackpot this time!". These people can gamble away their entire life savings and still feel that they are winning, as long as they get a small win every once in a while in between the huge losses. That's how casinos make a lot of money. They let players win small sums frequently. That keeps them hooked and makes them gamble away all the money they can get their hands on. Even the casino making it look like the player "almost won" counts as a win in the head of some players.

The reality? Overall you got average pay. This is where rational thinking is, and this is where you want to be.

Notice how those other two people looked at only part of the picture and then got very emotional about it, while you looked at the whole picture and stayed rational. This difference is important. There are entire businesses built around taking advantage of the psychological weaknesses of those other two people.

[hayseed]

Doc or Fahlcor (Since you said you had it working)

I have setup a west hash account and tried pointing at bit minter but I keep getting
"Error: Extranonce1 size and extranonce2 size greater than 8"

I have modified the worker with different difficulty settings from 16 to 128 and tried the override of
stratum extranonce2at 4 and 8.

But keep getting the error.

At another pool I had no issue with an order.

Thanks in advance for hints of the secret sauce to make it happy 

[DrHaribo]

"Error: Extranonce1 size and extranonce2 size greater than 8"

Try us2.bitminter.com - it has extranonce2 size of 4 bytes.

I'll be switching mint.bitminter.com (us1) from 6 to 4 bytes in the future.

Like right now we have 3 blocks confirming but I can't see what I earned for each anywhere until they confirm and then auto pay.

For unconfirmed payments there is only the unconfirmed balance on the account details page. Hmm. Maybe I could add your share from the block in the block list. There's not much room though.

Hey, Doc, I just wanted to say thanks for this very educational post.  I'm still thinking about it, days later.  Part math, part psychology, and a great lesson in thinking rationally.

You're welcome

[hayseed]

"Error: Extranonce1 size and extranonce2 size greater than 8"

Try us2.bitminter.com - it has extranonce2 size of 4 bytes.

I'll be switching mint.bitminter.com (us1) from 6 to 4 bytes in the future.

Did the trick Doc !!

Thanks,

[cenicsoft]

For unconfirmed payments there is only the unconfirmed balance on the account details page. Hmm. Maybe I could add your share from the block in the block list. There's not much room though.

Yes, that would be good. It's no longer easy to figure out how much you can expect per block when you have TH/s coming in and out of BitMinter. To me, pay per shift is useless.  You only get paid when a block is found. Everything else is noise unless you are on a pool that pays for work done regardless of blocks being found.

[hayseed]

"Error: Extranonce1 size and extranonce2 size greater than 8"

Try us2.bitminter.com - it has extranonce2 size of 4 bytes.

I'll be switching mint.bitminter.com (us1) from 6 to 4 bytes in the future.

Did the trick Doc !!

Thanks,

Wrote too fast. While it does not give the error and does show hashing on the order. Nothing is
showing up under my account on bit minter. I had reset the worker being used and it shows not
even a single share in 20 mins.

I pinged the us2.bitminter.com which matched what showed under the order 204.27.61.162.

I have canceled the order, made a new worker and created a new order with new worker name. Will advise
again later.

[HerbPean]

For unconfirmed payments there is only the unconfirmed balance on the account details page. Hmm. Maybe I could add your share from the block in the block list. There's not much room though.

Yes, that would be good. It's no longer easy to figure out how much you can expect per block when you have TH/s coming in and out of BitMinter. To me, pay per shift is useless.  You only get paid when a block is found. Everything else is noise unless you are on a pool that pays for work done regardless of blocks being found.

I agree, the "expected" payment per block was nice, even if it's not totally accurate (which is normal) I hate to see it go down as time go by but it was a nice information for me. ;-)

[DrHaribo]

It would be very useful if those who want the "estimated pay per block" number back could explain what they get out of it.

Here is how I see it:

The shifts page shows how much work you did at which time and how well it was paid. The payment for a block is many of these lumped into one bigger number, which is much less informative.

Imagine you do a little mining for a couple hours in the morning. Later you mine a couple hours in the evening. We find a block and both the morning and evening work is paid. Later we find another block and only the evening work is paid, as the morning work is no longer among the 10 latest shifts.

Looking at the two payments you got one big first and then one small payment later. You could look at the time the blocks were found and correlate that with your work in the 10 latest shifts at the time, and you'll understand what's going on. But most people won't. They will believe they are being punished for not mining 24/7. Or that "I need to wind up that PPLNS-thing, so I get paid fairly again."

Looking at the new shifts page you can instead look at how much work you did in the morning hours, and in the evening hours. And you can see that the morning work was paid an average rate, while the evening work was luckier and received double that.

I really believe this shows much better the relation between work you did and the pay you received.

What is perhaps missing is showing the 10 paid shifts on the block page (when you click a block in the block list). Would that be of help?

[DrHaribo]

Wrote too fast. While it does not give the error and does show hashing on the order. Nothing is
showing up under my account on bit minter. I had reset the worker being used and it shows not
even a single share in 20 mins.

I pinged the us2.bitminter.com which matched what showed under the order 204.27.61.162.

I have canceled the order, made a new worker and created a new order with new worker name. Will advise
again later.

You are sure you are using the correct user_worker name? Most importantly, that it starts with your correct user name and an underscore?

[Fahlcor]

Wrote too fast. While it does not give the error and does show hashing on the order. Nothing is
showing up under my account on bit minter. I had reset the worker being used and it shows not
even a single share in 20 mins.

I pinged the us2.bitminter.com which matched what showed under the order 204.27.61.162.

I have canceled the order, made a new worker and created a new order with new worker name. Will advise
again later.

You are sure you are using the correct user_worker name? Most importantly, that it starts with your correct user name and an underscore?

I user Fahlcor.worker with password 123 and it works fine for me.

and yes you need to use US2.bitminter.com as the otherone won't work.  I'll leave that up to Doc to figure out.

Fahlcor

[Fahlcor]

I'm feeling lucky.  And I want my name on a block in the worst way...

Not feelin so lucky now... :-(

oh well I'm still up 2 btc on the week from the renting game...

need to wait for the  next red to pass.

Fahlcor

[HerbPean]

It would be very useful if those who want the "estimated pay per block" number back could explain what they get out of it.

Here is how I see it:

The shifts page shows how much work you did at which time and how well it was paid. The payment for a block is many of these lumped into one bigger number, which is much less informative.

Imagine you do a little mining for a couple hours in the morning. Later you mine a couple hours in the evening. We find a block and both the morning and evening work is paid. Later we find another block and only the evening work is paid, as the morning work is no longer among the 10 latest shifts.

Looking at the two payments you got one big first and then one small payment later. You could look at the time the blocks were found and correlate that with your work in the 10 latest shifts at the time, and you'll understand what's going on. But most people won't. They will believe they are being punished for not mining 24/7. Or that "I need to wind up that PPLNS-thing, so I get paid fairly again."

Looking at the new shifts page you can instead look at how much work you did in the morning hours, and in the evening hours. And you can see that the morning work was paid an average rate, while the evening work was luckier and received double that.

I really believe this shows much better the relation between work you did and the pay you received.

What is perhaps missing is showing the 10 paid shifts on the block page (when you click a block in the block list). Would that be of help?

I clearly understand that many people tend to misinterpret that statistic. Since i mine 24/7 here, it just give me an approximation of what i should get for a block (short or long block). But with the high hashrate movement lately and the shorter shift, it would be more off then when we had a more stable hashrate and longer shift.

It is not necessary at all, i'm just kind of use to it.  I will please myself (lol) with the information for each shift. (What exactly I won for my work)

As the usual, Thanks Doc

[ichtus27]

tryed it out all of what you say,
Establishing connection with pool us2.bitminter.com :3333... Error: us2.bitminter.com
Your pool is shown as incompatible therefore we encourage you to contact pool operator to make sure that the pool is using minimal/starting pool share difficulty which is compatible with our service (and thus compatible with today's miners), please send them link to our FAQ on this topic: https://www.nicehash.com/index.jsp?p=faq#faqb3. Thank you!

And this is what i get

[Fahlcor]

It would be very useful if those who want the "estimated pay per block" number back could explain what they get out of it.

Here is how I see it:

The shifts page shows how much work you did at which time and how well it was paid. The payment for a block is many of these lumped into one bigger number, which is much less informative.

Imagine you do a little mining for a couple hours in the morning. Later you mine a couple hours in the evening. We find a block and both the morning and evening work is paid. Later we find another block and only the evening work is paid, as the morning work is no longer among the 10 latest shifts.

Looking at the two payments you got one big first and then one small payment later. You could look at the time the blocks were found and correlate that with your work in the 10 latest shifts at the time, and you'll understand what's going on. But most people won't. They will believe they are being punished for not mining 24/7. Or that "I need to wind up that PPLNS-thing, so I get paid fairly again."

Looking at the new shifts page you can instead look at how much work you did in the morning hours, and in the evening hours. And you can see that the morning work was paid an average rate, while the evening work was luckier and received double that.

I really believe this shows much better the relation between work you did and the pay you received.

What is perhaps missing is showing the 10 paid shifts on the block page (when you click a block in the block list). Would that be of help?

An estimate is not needed to me as I see it.  But when we find a block it would be nice to see how much I made on each one. Otherwise I have to add up the shifts but that could be multiple blocks.

on the blocks page if you had 2 more columns.  My work towards a block and the earnings from the block being found.

I agree Doc the estimate could be misleading again.

The amount earned /block is a fixed number is it not?  I guess also assuming that it confirms.

Thanks

Fahlcor

[Fahlcor]

tryed it out all of what you say,
Establishing connection with pool us2.bitminter.com :3333... Error: us2.bitminter.com
Your pool is shown as incompatible therefore we encourage you to contact pool operator to make sure that the pool is using minimal/starting pool share difficulty which is compatible with our service (and thus compatible with today's miners), please send them link to our FAQ on this topic: https://www.nicehash.com/index.jsp?p=faq#faqb3. Thank you!

And this is what i get

I get this on the verifier

Notice: Pool verificator is still in BETA. It may contain some bugs and it may report pool being compatible while in fact it is not compatible or vice versa.

Pool host: us2.bitminter.com
Pool port: 3333
Pool user: Fahlcor.Westhash
Pool pass: 123
Algorithm: SHA256

Establishing connection with pool us2.bitminter.com:3333... OK
Sending mining.subscribe... OK
Sending mining.authorize... OK
Received mining.notify subscription... OK
Received mining.set_difficulty... Pool difficulty too low (provided=4.0, minimum=16.0)
Waiting for pool to send higher difficulty.
Received mining.notify work... OK
Received authorization result... OK
Received mining.set_difficulty... OK

Pool verification process is complete. Tested pool is compatible!