NastyFans: The Bitcoin Enthusiast Fan Club (est. 2012)

[mindtrip]

I am new to the club but I have what is left of my hashing power pointed to the pool

[1713906233]

1713906233

[OgNasty]

I have sold off our twice repaired S7 for 1.85 BTC.  I felt this was necessary to make sure that we will have BTC to purchase 16nm equipment when it is released.

[Squirrel Dearing]

Hey all,
Long time.. I just wanted to let everyone know that some time ago (before Christmas) all miners that I was hosting finally died..

I may try one last thing to get them running again but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, Stay Nasty!

[nonnakip]

Distribution 402462 is complete. nastyfans thanks the donators.

Last 4 weeks distribution NastyPoP payout rates (vs. expected):
window65 0.00001763 BTC per GH/s (72.5%)
window66 0.00000049 BTC per GH/s (2.3%)
window67 0.00000000 BTC per GH/s (0.0%)
window68 0.00003109 BTC per GH/s (140.0%)

[OgNasty]

As some of you may be aware, our payouts have become quite erratic due to the diminishing hashrate of p2pool.  This has been effecting operations and I'd like to hear some opinions from fans about the situation.

We do have some options...  We could explore solo mining a less difficult coin such as PPC and converting the earnings to BTC for distributions.  We could move our hashrate to a larger private BTC mining pool to reduce variance.  We could stick with p2pool and hope that things improve.  We could also do a combination of the above.  Our decision to support p2pool was highly based on doing what is best for Bitcoin, but I feel as though it is starting to negatively effect our operation as centralized mining becomes more and more prevalent.  With the problem seemingly getting worse before it improves, I think the time is now to start discussing alternatives.  Please feel free to share your thoughts.

[wttbs]

As some of you may be aware, our payouts have become quite erratic due to the diminishing hashrate of p2pool.  This has been effecting operations and I'd like to hear some opinions from fans about the situation.

We do have some options...  We could explore solo mining a less difficult coin such as PPC and converting the earnings to BTC for distributions.  We could move our hashrate to a larger private BTC mining pool to reduce variance.  We could stick with p2pool and hope that things improve.  We could also do a combination of the above.  Our decision to support p2pool was highly based on doing what is best for Bitcoin, but I feel as though it is starting to negatively effect our operation as centralized mining becomes more and more prevalent.  With the problem seemingly getting worse before it improves, I think the time is now to start discussing alternatives.  Please feel free to share your thoughts.

PPC is lower difficulty but I don't think it will be (much) more profitable than mining BTC at a BTC-pool. If I may suggest NastyFans Mining could join one of the best pools there is: kano.is. Kano has a good vision on Bitcoin and mining, he runs his pool very good and with transparant and open communication. The pool is also very stable and rather small which keeps decentralized in a way. For more info about his pool check his thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789369.0

[Fingolfin]

As some of you may be aware, our payouts have become quite erratic due to the diminishing hashrate of p2pool.  This has been effecting operations and I'd like to hear some opinions from fans about the situation.

We do have some options...  We could explore solo mining a less difficult coin such as PPC and converting the earnings to BTC for distributions.  We could move our hashrate to a larger private BTC mining pool to reduce variance.  We could stick with p2pool and hope that things improve.  We could also do a combination of the above.  Our decision to support p2pool was highly based on doing what is best for Bitcoin, but I feel as though it is starting to negatively effect our operation as centralized mining becomes more and more prevalent.  With the problem seemingly getting worse before it improves, I think the time is now to start discussing alternatives.  Please feel free to share your thoughts.

Hi Og,

here my thoughts on the Situation:

1. If everybody leaves p2pool it's finally dead ... and i personally don't like that idea! But also, i only mine with 1TH there, because like most of us i have opperating costs...

2. Please don't switch to altcoin-mining in any way. Possible profit or not!

I would propose: Split the Hashrate half p2pool and half kano.is (i just can underline wttbs's comment about kano.is!)
This way there would be nearly guaranteed weekly distributions, and from time to time, one is a bit larger when p2pool hits, or even better have a good luck streak somewhen ... again, maybe, hopefully 

Best Wishes!

P.S.

Personally i would just risk pointing the Avalon6 (is it still there?) to solo.ck  forget that investion and hope for the best! But sure, that gambling with funds, would need a poll ... but i like to leave it here anyway!

[OgNasty]

kano is a for-profit pool operator.  I don't think it aligns with our principles to mine that way.

[Fingolfin]

kano is a for-profit pool operator.  I don't think it aligns with our principles to mine that way.

Ok, i'm not going to comment against your statement about kano...


"We could move our hashrate to a larger private BTC mining pool to reduce variance"

Then i don't know or understand which larger private BTC mining pool you would propose?

[OgNasty]

kano is a for-profit pool operator.  I don't think it aligns with our principles to mine that way.

Ok, i'm not going to comment against your statement about kano...


"We could move our hashrate to a larger private BTC mining pool to reduce variance"

Then i don't know or understand which larger private BTC mining pool you would propose?

I have admittedly not researched what other pools are doing in quite some time.  There are many other factors than just operator fee, but I would like to think that 0% fee pools still exist.  Is ELIGIUS still 0% fee?

[Fingolfin]

kano is a for-profit pool operator.  I don't think it aligns with our principles to mine that way.

Ok, i'm not going to comment against your statement about kano...


"We could move our hashrate to a larger private BTC mining pool to reduce variance"

Then i don't know or understand which larger private BTC mining pool you would propose?

I have admittedly not researched what other pools are doing in quite some time.  There are many other factors than just operator fee, but I would like to think that 0% fee pools still exist.  Is ELIGIUS still 0% fee?

Yes, i think eligius is still 0% but keeps the trx-fees! But i don't know for sure! But i always had a bad felling when i've opend the site, and never pointed any miners there in 2 years mining. Later i've read some "Cat Fight" between kano and the eligius operator ... just underlined my opinion against eligius...


And yes there are other factors then just op fees! Sorry i was to fast in the last post (also i thought maybe you have other issues with kano then the 0.9% Fees)

If you compare a pool with 0% fees that keeps the trx-fees with kano.is that take 0.9% for operating cost and his work, but pays out the trx-fees to miners then you have a better result, income wise.  (Last 100 Blocks at kano.is 1.3% TRX-fees included in the Blocks and before payout he deduct 0.9% op fee)

Regarding  principles:  I don't see the difference (principle wise) between keeping the trx-fees and 0% fee  like p2pool or eligius  or  paying out trx-fees and charging some small operating fees.

So if you dont know any legit "real private" (means not open to the public) pool that operates for free and pays out the Block Reward + trx-fees then i still would vote for kano.is / p2pool split!

You also can read many other good reasons for kano.is, why his phylosophy won't hurt Bitcoin, in his thread ... just have become to large to read up since he had that big grow lately.... But the most important part is simply he don't SPV mine and always fill up his Blocks! That keeps the Network running instead of just stealling Blocks like many others do!

Enough for today! Let's wait if someone else has anything to say... hopefully... and i also think on a bit

Best Wishes!

[OgNasty]

Personally i would just risk pointing the Avalon6 (is it still there?) to solo.ck  forget that investion and hope for the best! But sure, that gambling with funds, would need a poll ... but i like to leave it here anyway!

I feel like that would be a bad bet.  I did decide to do some testing with the Avalon6.  I pointed it at a PPC pool for a bit to see how that process would work (resulting in this donation) and it is currently pointed at Eligius.

UPDATE:

The first gold highlighted Minted Seat has been shipped. 

I have successfully engraved the first silver 2oz Minted Seat.

The 2oz .9999 Gold Minted Seats have sold out.  This will result in a $5,000 donation to NastyFans.

I would also like to explore the issue with member accounts on suspension.  It appears as though there are members who have been on suspension indefinitely.  I think we should explore enforcement of the termination policy.  However, I feel that the current policy is too harsh.  I would like to motion for a poll to extend the term of each probation/suspension/termination period in the NastyFans policy from 90 days to 1 year.  Thoughts?

[Fingolfin]

Personally i would just risk pointing the Avalon6 (is it still there?) to solo.ck  forget that investion and hope for the best! But sure, that gambling with funds, would need a poll ... but i like to leave it here anyway!

I feel like that would be a bad bet.  I did decide to do some testing with the Avalon6.  I pointed it at a PPC pool for a bit to see how that process would work (resulting in this donation) and it is currently pointed at Eligius.

UPDATE:

The first gold highlighted Minted Seat has been shipped.  

I have successfully engraved the first silver 2oz Minted Seat.

The 2oz .9999 Gold Minted Seats have sold out.  This will result in a $5,000 donation to NastyFans.

I would also like to explore the issue with member accounts on suspension.  It appears as though there are members who have been on suspension indefinitely.  I think we should explore enforcement of the termination policy.  However, I feel that the current policy is too harsh.  I would like to motion for a poll to extend the term of each probation/suspension/termination period in the NastyFans policy from 90 days to 1 year.  Thoughts?

Regarding Pools:

Yes, sure, solomining Bitcoin with that Avalon wouldn't have been a realistic bet : )   .....  but nice, you didn't complety overread it.

Anyway, you decided for Eligius, when i read the front page right, they also payout trx-fees. Right?   Then my assumption that they don't, was wrong! Sorry. There is only the payout-queque left that maybe won't be the best for Nasty-Mining:

Quote from there Website : "Miners qualify for a payout once their pool balance reaches a minimum of 40 TBC (0.04194304 BTC) - this is configurable."
Which adress you are mining to there? I'm interested to follow the progress from time to time.

Would have been nice if more members had wrote / or will write their opinion or suggestions  


Regarding accounts on suspension:

I also think an expansion of the timeframe would be nice, even i'm not sure if i will regularly login within 3 month in the future. 1 Year would be approriate in my opinion.


One other thing, regarding expansion of the mining operation:

Is it right that the current ratio for spliting the mining reward is: 75% Donation to Fans and 25% to Nasty Mining?
I think 50% / 50% would lead to better results long term, and gives Nasty-Mining a much better possibilitie to expand!

I think that was discussed in the past, and the current sitiuation was a result of a poll, but maybe meanwhile you (Og) and other members see the Situation different and also want to poll about? Just a thought....

[OgNasty]

Anyway, you decided for Eligius, when i read the front page right, they also payout trx-fees. Right?   Then my assumption that they don't, was wrong! Sorry. There is only the payout-queque left that maybe won't be the best for Nasty-Mining:

Quote from there Website : "Miners qualify for a payout once their pool balance reaches a minimum of 40 TBC (0.04194304 BTC) - this is configurable."
Which adress you are mining to there? I'm interested to follow the progress from time to time.

I wouldn't say I've "decided" on Eligius.  I've done very little besides check out the interface and point a miner there.  I am testing it out to see how the experience is.  Coins are currently being mined to: 1NFovp71B2b1e4DTvLAeN7WXETrJ6u1PdA and 100% will be donated to NastyFans.

Would have been nice if more members had wrote / or will write their opinion or suggestions  

Agreed.

Regarding accounts on suspension:

I also think an expansion of the timeframe would be nice, even i'm not sure if i will regularly login within 3 month in the future. 1 Year would be approriate in my opinion.

Agreed.  I'm sure there will be a poll in the future for this.

One other thing, regarding expansion of the mining operation:

Is it right that the current ratio for spliting the mining reward is: 75% Donation to Fans and 25% to Nasty Mining?
I think 50% / 50% would lead to better results long term, and gives Nasty-Mining a much better possibilitie to expand!

I think that was discussed in the past, and the current sitiuation was a result of a poll, but maybe meanwhile you (Og) and other members see the Situation different and also want to poll about? Just a thought....

There are 2 reasons why the split is currently 75/25.  One is that the donated coins aren't exclusively from mining.  Recently, silver sales have played a much larger role in the distributions.  I believe silver sales should largely be paid out to the seats, so the 75/25 split represents that belief.  The other reason is that I pay 100% of the electricity costs out of my own pocket.  We could spend 100% of the coins on expanding the mining operation and even do funding rounds to get us up to 1PH/s.  However, without first securing something like solar energy to pay for said expansion, I would go bankrupt from electricity costs and it would be game over.  I have been toying with the idea of selling off a large portion of my personal holdings in order to pay for a solar array, as this has been my wish from day 1 and would benefit the organization as a whole in many ways from decentralizing ownership to giving us a responsible "green" reputation.  I'm just not sure the best way to go about doing so.  I think an 85 BTC investment would put NastyMining in a position where we could have room to expand and be able to take advantage of older cheaper equipment.  Perhaps that is something I will put more effort into exploring once the gold coins have been produced.  If there is anyone out there looking to make a large investment (5+ BTC only), please let me know and I will keep you in the loop if a funding opportunity does become available.  Currently, an 85 BTC purchase on the auction is a bit unrealistic due to the result it would have on the seat price, so large potential NastyFans seat owners have been discouraged from entering the market.  This could be a good opportunity to hop in without that concern.  This organization can grow as large as we'd like it to be, but it must be done correctly to ensure that it is sustainable long term.  I do not want to be put in the position where a personal financial hardship or profitability concerns result in scaling back current operations.  I believe solar is the best way to address those concerns and feel there is no better organization to carry this long term responsibility.

[zapeta]

I'm not opposed to pool mining, but I have no idea what pools are out there at this point.  I think that it would be better to have less variance in weekly payout than we currently experience with P2Pool.

As for the suspension/termination - is there a ballpark number of how many seats are suspended or in danger of termination?  What would be the benefit to the rest of us if we started terminating memberships?

One way or another those members paid for seats.  My understanding is that suspended seats don't receive donations, and I can't imagine that there is any significant costs associated with of keeping track of those seats that are suspended or near termination.  In all likelihood, those members probably won't come back, but imagine the negative publicity that could arise if they did come back and found that their seats has been "terminated". 

[DebitMe]

I believe there are a few good options out there to switch mining to besides P2pool.  I understand the appeal of decentralized mining, but unfortunately the hashrate doesn't seem quite high enough to lend enough support to that idea.  I think we could be really well off supporting one of the pools that does a lot of good for the community such as Kano's or Bitminters, as opposed to f2pool and antpool that don't fill blocks regularly.  I understand that this might be against what the group stands for, but options are getting thin.  I also don't support mining lottery style for solo blocks.  Using Nicehash is also a good way to get higher mining rewards than currently being paid, something to think about.

I think that expanding mining operations would be a good route to go.  It seems like silver sales are the main drivers behind distributions currently, and current mining gear will only continue to mine less as time goes on.  By beefing up mining capacity, I think the group would overall benefit from higher distributions, more being put back into mining gear, and more silver and seat sales.  Going about this may be tough though, I know I could offer my entire basement as housing for units, but I would need compensation for electricity (around 8 cents per kwh).  There may need to be some creative conclusions to get there, but my belief is mining should expand.

Other business units may be a good investment as well.  Investing in the creation of a faucet or small payout game could help profits.  There are numerous other possibilities as well where expansion could occur.

I think the login period should be extended, I don't think I will remember to login every 3 months to "renew" my seat.  I personally believe you should never lose your seats and should always get distributions, but perhaps say after a year or so those donations are considered donations back to the group if you don't login, but you keep your seats.

These are a couple of my thoughts, there isn't quite enough money to procure large discounts from major equipment manufacturer's, but there are always deals on these forums if you look hard enough.

[OgNasty]

As for the suspension/termination - is there a ballpark number of how many seats are suspended or in danger of termination?  What would be the benefit to the rest of us if we started terminating memberships?

You would have to get that answer from nonnakip.  I suspect there are more than 2,000 seats that have never logged in since after the original migration from GLBSE.  The benefits to the rest of us are the removal of a liability, a larger reported ownership stake in the fan club, and an accurate current seat count, which will result in more precise statistics.

Using Nicehash is also a good way to get higher mining rewards than currently being paid, something to think about.

Indeed.  I think that setting the miners to take advantage of above average payouts when the opportunities present themselves is something I can do.

Other business units may be a good investment as well.  Investing in the creation of a faucet or small payout game could help profits.  There are numerous other possibilities as well where expansion could occur.

I would love to see NastyFans with the ability create things like this that generate donations to NastyFans.  Anyone can build something that ultimately sends BTC to the donation address. 

I think the login period should be extended, I don't think I will remember to login every 3 months to "renew" my seat.  I personally believe you should never lose your seats and should always get distributions, but perhaps say after a year or so those donations are considered donations back to the group if you don't login, but you keep your seats.

There are reasons why a termination statement exists in the policy.  It isn't reasonable to expect NastyFans to permanently hold the liability for pending payments to users that are impossible to track down.  Every effort is made to locate them prior to their account being suspended.  The goal is not to terminate users, which is why the policy has not been enforced to date.  We are talking about a period of 3 years with my proposal and those in violation of the policy last logged in when the policy was 30 days for each penalty period.  I think it is safe to say they have abandoned the project and should be treated as such.  Not to mention one of the things that makes Minted Seats special is that there is no membership requirement to own them forever.  I do not think it is too much to ask that members sign in once every two years if they don't want to lose any distributions and once every 3 years if they want to maintain membership.  If you have an email address listed, or your username is the same as here, you will receive many notifications prior to that point.

[kroneko]

I have no problem with switching over to a larger pool to up consistency.  I think we certainly did our part to make it as viable as possible, but as with most things it takes a lot of the people in the community to make waves that are needed.  I'd prefer to stick with mining bitcoins too, but that's just my two satoshi.

As for suspension/termination of members, I'm comfortable with us proceeding in the direction proposed.  In reviewing the policy the tl;dr is as follows:

1) You must login every 90 days to remain active to remain active
2) If you go past 90 days you're in probation (donations go to temp account)
3) If you go another 90 days you're in suspension (no voting and donations disabled)
4) Another 90 days you're terminated ( account closed, group determines what to do )

So you're giving people 270 days before their account is terminated, which seems reasonable to me considering there's some effort at attempting to reach members.  While we don't want to lose members, inactive members doesn't exactly help either. 

As for my vote on the terminated seats?  I'd nullify them and if we're under 25,000 - take that difference and hold on to them for a round of fund raising or use in bartering for equipment. 

[smooth]

kano is a for-profit pool operator.  I don't think it aligns with our principles to mine that way.

Ok, i'm not going to comment against your statement about kano...


"We could move our hashrate to a larger private BTC mining pool to reduce variance"

Then i don't know or understand which larger private BTC mining pool you would propose?

I have admittedly not researched what other pools are doing in quite some time.  There are many other factors than just operator fee, but I would like to think that 0% fee pools still exist.  Is ELIGIUS still 0% fee?

Yes, i think eligius is still 0% but keeps the trx-fees!

Their web site home page says otherwise, and claims the fees are paid out.

However I'm not a huge fan of their payout method, which has a small degree of Ponzi-ness to it. That said I should say that I have personally used it.

I like the idea of some of the hash rate continuing to support p2pool because it is good for Bitcoin and some on a centralized pool for regular payouts. Some could even go to plain old solo mining (but solo mining on a centralized pool for lottery purposes is silly, and literal solo mining may be too much work). Splitting it up that way has the effect of reducing overall variance.

On the idea of moving away from p2pool, I would discourage too much emphasis on the recent bad luck as that can reverse quickly, but at the same time I do understand that getting no income from too long can be harmful.

I have only a few seats here so while I'm a spiritual supporter, I don't expect much weight to my views, nor request it.

 

[naypalm]

https://nastyfans.org/mint.json may be bugged as all minted coins have 0 holding value.