Topic: btc guild unlucky of late? - page 2. (Read 4258 times)

Being a bigger pool means the variance is far less noticeable.  Sure, GHash.io might have a block take 2 hours, but then find 4 in 20 minutes, and so on... overall, to you the miner it makes little difference because things balance out.  On smaller pools, that bad luck becomes very quickly noticed.  I mine on p2pool, where the average block time is just about a day.  (Well, right now it is 16.5 hours since the pool is at about 1.25PH/s), but we haven't found a block in just under 2 days.  It's painful.  At 16 hours a block, we should be close to finding our third... but haven't found 1 yet.  But, then again, just the other day we found 4 blocks.

As it stands BTCg has one block for today when they usually have at least 10... guess thats luck down by 90% then huh  

:edit

Actually I've just added this to the post as it looks totally sarcastic... I get the variance, I see it in larger pools like ghash... they typically have a block every 20-30 mins yet some hours they have many more and other rounds take an hour or so... guess being a bigger pool the variance plays out quicker making it easier to observe in a short time-frame.

Funny how that variance stuff works, huh?

It's just the nature of the beast.  People see the words "expected earnings" and "time to block" and think, "that's what is supposed to happen."  The reality of it is that folks are far more likely to come up with conspiracy theories, than to accept reality.  Pool luck up 10%?  Somebody's cheating.  Pool luck down 10%?  Somebody's attacking.  As DrG pointed out, there indeed WAS something that happened and was discovered.  The problem now is that everyone automatically assumes that same thing is constantly happening if the pool luck so much as quivers below the expected luck.  The topic has been discussed on virtually every pool's thread, and people read it and say, "Well, that explains it then" and then start spreading the misinformation.  It's precisely why I posted that silly statement about 5 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Actually I take it back.... btc guild has only found one block today at 10:30am UK time.  Amazing, yesterday they'd found 8 blocks by now.... thats some swinging variance

I've got to admit I've gone native and have been mining at ghash for a couple of days, but only out of curiosity as I've not mined there before.  One thing that hits me is everything at ghash seems opaque compared to btc guild....

For instance if you own ghash cloud hashing and also mine with your own kit sure they give you the number of hashes the ghash kit produced but its presented in such a non-intuitive way... I find myself switching between ghash and cex screens trying to marry up data...  I wrote a very simple php tallying script to produce some figures from the CSV you can download, but the CSV lacks some of the data you get on the screen.....

Once I've had my "fun" I think I'll be switching back to btc guild anyway... worth it for the figures and hassle-free mining.

Well the pool was running close to 105.9% luck if I recall for their 3 month average before the sh*t hit the fan in May (when the withholding attack started supposedly).  At that time nobody complained that the pool might be cheating, although people did allege that in the past back in 2011.

So when it's up almost 7% (106-99) nobody complains.  When it's down 7% something is wrong.

The withholding attack is not hearsay BTW, the person was identified.  But he states his custom version of CGMiner was at fault.  The thing is it could have happened at any pool, and some pools don't even bother with the nice stats. Too bad the withholding didn't go on at ghash.io lol.  The same "attack" also occurred on Eligius and the guy is asking for payment which Eligius held once they discovered the problem.  You can check the pools subforum for this info.

Eleuthria might not be eligible for sainthood but he's one of the best pool ops around.

variance!! do I win a prize? 

Ah... regarding this hearsay about a large hasher withholding blocks, I was not aware of that but as I said at the beginning of this thread I was starting to wonder if it was something like that going on.

Don't get me wrong, I love the pool's site, best interface around and very clear, plus the operators at least appear to be very transparent.  It was just that terrible luck they had a few days ago that left me thinking WTF??

People love to talk without understanding the basics of mining.

It's a 7% drop, expected earnings on any pool should be roughly 99% since 1% will be lost due to lost orphan races.  BTC Guild actually lost none last week, while Ghash.io lost 1.5%.

Their 3 month rating is pretty bad - and it is known that they had a large hasher who was supposedly doing an unintentional block withholding attack.  Those stats won't clear out until August.

Looking at the past 24 hours I see their luck is at 200%.  Last week was horrible, this week has been excellent.  If only we had a name for this variable luck.....hmmmmm 

Best thing I ever did was leave BTCGUILD.

As reported by btc guild their luck seems to be riding around 92.08% over the last 3 months.... another way to look at it is thats an 8% drop in your earnings if you mined for them over the last three months I guess.

What happen to btc guild luck? How many of you are affected?

Sorry about that stryker.  Just to give an example, the next time we're going to see a month with 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays is May, 2015.  After that it's January, 2016.

Me, I accepted it on face value because I'm a trusting type of bloke 

Yes I know that is not true... Lol.  I purposefully wrote a common misconception that is accepted as truth.  It is relevant here because people are constantly posting block withholding attacks as the definitive answer for what is far more likely normal swings in luck.

You know that this is not true, right?

Every month with 31 days has 3 days of the week that repeat 5 times. It's not big deal.

Happens in average once a year to have a month with 5 entire weekends.

Best regards,
ilpirata79

I moved away fro BTC Guild awhile ago, I noticed the luck was getting worse and worse and my payouts were dwindling (aside from factored difficulty), so I left, went to ghash.io and my payouts went back up.  At that time, BTC claimed someone had manipulated with pool with block holding, but I didn't really believe them.

This new york thing is being blown out of proportion by btc guild. BTC guild is in las vegas, so even less of a concern.... "waiting on legal counsel", oh brother, give me a break.    If you're making money hand-over-fist, you would do anything to remain in business. The fact they are so eager to close their doors, is well, odd and suspect. IMHO, they could easily move to a datacenter in canada with not much ado if they were that concerned.   

No not at present but some idiot in NYC is trying to ruin everything, for ALL pools in the US :

Taken from BTC Guild:


This news update is being made to remind all users that BTC Guild is not a bank. Leaving BTC anywhere that is not your own wallet is always a risk that is outside of your control. Automatic withdrawals should always be set to trigger at least once a week, if not more frequently for large users, limiting your exposure.

The above is also important as news comes out of the New York Department of Financial Services, with proposed regulations which are extremely broad. Under the current proposals (subject to public comment and revision), operating a pool within the US will be impossible to do legally without obtaining significant personal information on ALL users, not just those in the US. There would also be significant financial costs which would exceed the amount of money the pool has generated since inception. Since there is no way anybody will mine on a pool with those requirements, it means that any pool in the US will be forced to shut down, or operate illegally and hope they're ignored.

If the regulations are finalized (this is unlikely to happen for at least 3-4 months if not more) in a form that still applies to pools, the pool will be forced to shutdown. This news post is being made as notice that this is an exception to the stated 3-month closure window identified in our FAQ and the forum thread. If the regulations pass, the 3-month window will be reduced to 45 days due to legal requirement to cease operations prior to the regulations taking effect.

This warning is pre-emptive. Nothing has changed as of this news post, and I am still waiting on feedback from legal counsel regarding whether or not it is possible for New York to extend its reach into another state if the pool has users in it from New York. The applicability of long-arm statutes for internet-based business activity is extremely messy.

What happen to BTC guild? Is it true they are closing?

I agree I think its very good at what BTC Guild has come out and be honest, if anything it gives them more credibility in my eyes.

Lets just hope this silly ass law does not go through !

I read that notice on their site.... they are just being cautious because of their 3 month shutdown policy... I'd rather they be open about it.

Its just in case those ridiculous new york bitcoin license/policy become a reality.