Topic: Bitminter bitcoin mining pool - shutdown mining 2020-07-01 website 2021-06-01 - page 87. (Read 325004 times)

I don't think there's any pool hopping happening anymore. Probably not enough pools left that are vulnerable to pool hopping.

If you're still break even at the moment, you should keep going. The price should rise up again. (just my 2 cents)

Much as I'm not a Pool Hopper ( I'm a bet-spreader, not a luck chaser ) I can now no longer make a profit mining BTC.

I bought at £1 / GH, and mined at 1w / GH, but this price crash ( £380 is now only £230 ) has got me.  I'm having to switch off.

A 40% price drop is a killer.  Even with kit only 2 months old.  I mine at break even now.  And all that running around for zero cash seems pointless when there are bills to pay and other sources of revenue I can chase.

Very disappointing I have to say.  Let's hope enough other miners survive.



Thanks for the good service Doc!  I know that my wording is not ideal, but averaging over a months is how this pool does best

"So I try to keep it somewhere in the middle."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DohRa9lsx0Q

 

The shift size isn't going to affect pool hopping, PPLNS is still safe from pool hopping.

Making the shift size extremely small I think would be a bad idea. It would scare the ones that are shocked to see a shift with zero pay. I have to balance between that and the people who think if 10 shifts take 5 days it means they have to mine 5 days with lousy pay before proper pay starts. So I try to keep it somewhere in the middle.

If the law of averages prevails here why not just make it 20 mins like the big pools? heck even 10?  worst case we get some pool hoppers and start catching blocks faster than 5 days....

Yep, this is a really brutal block but overall this month has been great.  You gotta take the good with the bad, no way around it.

I know, I know, but it is still a brutal block.

Our combined hashpower should give a block every 1.35 days. (32 hours)

BUT we got 3 blocks in 24 hours(!) and we got 6 blocks in two and a half days.

We would be above or on the average, even if this block takes 7 days to complete!

Just relax and let the averages work for you...

4d 22:14 and still going... 

This sounds way cool.  I'll give it a try too!  Thanks for setting it up.

This is a good news, so many must look at pools with 1hr+ shifts and jump in, thinking BitMinter with its 12hr+ shifts will take days to fill.

The psychological angle is HUGE, good move Doc.

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.

This change reduces the time it takes from you do some work until it is fully paid. That's a good thing. Also, 10 shifts taking over 5 days has been a problem for newbies and for people who (wrongly) believe you have to work 10 shifts before getting proper pay. With the new setting it will happen more often that there is a shift without pay, but also shifts with very high pay. However, this doesn't change anything if you are mining in the pool 24/7, you earn the same anyway. It only creates short-term variance.

The size of the shifts is not really a big deal. If you have 1% of the pool hashrate then you get 1% of the payouts. That's not changing.

I'm mostly trying to find a balance between the wrong belief that "short shifts give me unfair low pay" and the wrong belief that "long shifts give me unfair low pay". So I don't have to explain things as often.

So does that mean on longer blocks we will be doing work without any credits? I could see that working if we were doing blocks faster.  If we are still getting credit for the last 10 shifts then that would be roughly 10 shifts a day.  And when a block takes 3 days like it is currently then that means 3 days of work with only 1 day of pay?

Or are you hoping the faster shifts will bring in more miners?

For those who prefer Linkedin, a Bitminter Linkedin page has been created at https://www.linkedin.com/company/bitminter

Friday October 3rd we'll reduce shift sizes to 25% of what they are now. That means the amount of work in 10 shifts will be 1x difficulty rather than the 4x difficulty we have presently.

Wow that last bump in difficulty really pushed up the shift length.

If you decide it's something you like, I'll happily pass control of the account to you. 

Right now it's just a little python script on my pc, checking the ID of the most recent block through your API and comparing to the last value seen. Adding the YO API call to your codebase should be easy (it's just a post to a specific URL) if you want to notify as soon as a block is successful.  You can also send a URL or only YO specific users (for example, you could notify an individual when auto cash out succeeds).

Cool! Gonna give this a try