Topic: [POLL] Mining Solo or Mining Pool? (once ASIC products are delivered) (Read 5440 times)

Many of the early adopters are going to be able to make a nice amount of money. This isn't to say that later adopters are not going to make a good amount of money, and in fact people who don't adopt this new technology are going to stop making any money at all off of this, but the early you get in the better.

But keeping in mind how mining works and how bitcoin works in general, mining in pools is always going to be the way to go. You will still need to own a substantial amount of power in comparison to the total power in order to solo mine. That is not going to change. I do believe that some people, thought no many, will be able to solo mine right off the bat. But this will quickly become unreasonable as reports come in from the early adopters and more people start placing orders.

I say stick with pool all the way. Find people you are willing to talk to and get to know. Find pools that provide you with the information, rates, and fees that you are willing to go with, and just stick that out. It's not worth spending so much time trying to mine by yourself only to find out it didn't work, and then moving over to pool mining anyways, loosing all of that time and coin you could have had while you tried to solo mine.

I read alot of short term thinkers with ASIC buyers.. that they will only make some roi the first ones that get delivered and only in the first few weeks   ..people will be better off in a pool anyway, why else would people at the moment doing 300gh, 200gh, 100gh plus be mining @pools or so  

So it also means that if you get delivered 3 weeks timespan later u will be out of the game making the first big and fast BTC,s and still waited for alsmost an half year on your ASIC device...mostly making non BTC at all.. i do think this is kind of a
"i,ve been/got f4cked" bij the ASIC promisses don,t u think? especially when only ordered 1 or 2  devices@ 60gh speed.. We will see soon..

Also i think https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/will-mining-become-more-or-less-centralised-123602  has a point there too..
 

Solo mining is a bit risky. Once ASICs are deployed, difficulty could rise dramatically in a matter of days. If you are solo mining with 60gh, it's possible you won't even find a block in that time period. Not worth it.

I'm already testing out stratum on slush's pool with my GPUs so that if/when I receive the ASIC, I can hopefully just plug in and go.

Considering how crucial the first few weeks will be I would say its too risky to solo mine. If you don't find a block it that time and everyone gets their ASIC's (and GPUs fall off) you will have lost a lot of potential profit.

I also plan to switch from solo to slush's pool to recoup the coins I spent on a bASIC because of the exact same reason.  Once I make it back, I will switch back to solo though.

Funny, I was looking to switch from MtRed to Slush's pool once I got my ASICs.  Merely because of the Stratum protocol.  I'm interested why you are switching from Slush to p2pool. 

Yeah it was pool performance that made me go solo mining at first.  I had set up a miner but the pool became unreliable.  Back then, the miner software I chose didn't have a backup pool option, and I didn't want to go through the hassle of setting up another miner's dependencies on an antiquated system.

I'm going to switch from Slush's pool to p2pool. Well, if bfl asics will be supported by p2pool sw.

So long as there are a sufficient number of pools present, it seems as though there is no reason not to take that route other than fees or pool performance problems.

Sorry, I forgot about FPGA's, since the last time I was actively looking at bitcoin, FPGAs were like ASICs today (pre-orders only).  And since I've become active again recently, all talk has been about ASICs.  How many months has it been since they received their minirigs?  Have they made back the $30k investment yet?  If I spent $30k on hardware, I would also pool mine until I made that investment back.


There is one big advantage I can think of.  Pools centralize the network, and solo helps in keeping it decentralized.  Remember that smaller pools are a gamble as well, while big pools are needed to make the payouts more regular.  Big pools are bad for the network since it makes it so much easier for a pool operator to take over the network (instead of needing to get 51% of the hash rate, they would only need to get 51% - current %).

There is no advantage in solo over pool unless you like to gamble.

Not really. People with 50GH include people who have 2 minirigs, which is about 2kW. Not much compared to GPU mining, and they still pool mine.

People with 50GH right now spend a lot of money on electricity, so they cannot gamble on solo mining to keep their bills paid.  With ASICs, power usage will be much less, and I think we will start to see more gambling on solo mining once they recoup the initial cost in a pool.

People are more willing to gamble when the cost is low.  Of course, those with 50GH/s currently will probably end up with 1TH/s and still pool mine to pay for their electricity costs.

One of those single devices or equivalent from the various manufacturers is around 50GH. Even people who currently have 50GH do NOT solo mine. At the current difficulty of 3 million it takes over 3 days on average to find a single block. If you're unlucky, you could fuck up and end up not finding a block for up to 10x the difficulty, or 30 days. You may completely utterly miss any window of opportunity to make something extra even at the current difficulty and by then the number of people who have them will skyrocket, probably to 10x the difficulty.

No matter what your hashrate is, solo mining is always a much much bigger gamble than pool mining.

I think you're better off solo mining for about a week if you're the first to receive an ASIC SC have a decently sized portion of the Bitcoin network. But once everyone else gets their ASICs, you will have a smaller chance of mining coins.

2 blocks in those 10 months...used them to pre-order a bASIC last week.  Before switching to solo, I was pool mining for a few months to recoup the $200 I spent on 2x5770s (so I could justify in my mind that $200 on video cards was a better investment than just buying $200 worth of coins)


I was solo mining with 400MH/s and I will be solo mining with 1 ASIC.  I'm not going overboard with a whole farm, I just want to be a part of bitcoin history.  It's like 15 years ago when I was pointing a Pentium III to various distributed computing sites for free.  This one has potential to make money, but I'm not planning on cashing out to fiat.  I want to make BTC so I can spend BTC and help make bitcoin more mainstream.


ASIC prices should go down as more competition shows up.  I was originally going to wait until ASICs were mainstream before ordering one, but the stars happened to align for me to pre-order one (lucky blocks found with 400MH/s + BTC price going up + cablepair still having first batch pre-orders available last week + I had to reboot my computer last week which made me realize I found a block in July which made me check the forums to see the status of bitcoin).  If any one of those didn't happen, I would be waiting until ASICs were down to $200 before ordering one.

Yes there will be some months when asics owners will have proportionally better rewardings but at cost of new buy. So the asic arriving make you to choose make new investment or you are out of the game.

What will sopose this? Asic's gives +-25x more speed at same investment, if all miners change every GPU of 200MH/s by his equivalent in ASIC's indeed will happen as ckolivas says, we will have a new status quo, you will get 1 $  a day mining with at 5 GH/s, the asic's manufacturers are the winners.

But do this will happen? how many will give up and don't change.

How many will increase the investment?

Who knows?

Now that we are speculating in Mining Speculation forum which is the sex of angels? We can keep talking over and over again about the same, the opinions are like ass, everyone has his own one.

Regards, see us in next thread about what will happens when Asics arrives.

Once everyone kicks into gear you're exactly right. But the first people to receive their devices will have a brief advantage to make a bit of coin before the difficulty jumps up too much. So, if you're one of the first to snag a Single and mine away at 60GH/s solo, chances are you'll probably be able to get a block within 48 hours.

ASIC mining makes you absolutely faster, but relatively the same speed. You'll all be pool mining just like you were before, earning the same amount, only the difficulty will be 50x higher. You're dreaming if you think this magically makes it worth you solo mining.

interesting! How many blocks have you found if you don't mind me asking?

I have been solo mining on 400MH/s for 10 months and will continue doing so if my ASIC preorder arrives

Most probably I'll be continuing with pool mining.

But it all depends; If the difficulty is not too high when my products arrive I may try out solo mining.

Like Nachtwind said there will be many ppl at once that switches to ASIC hardware so solo mining will only be my choice as long as total network hashrate is still low. (compared to what it will be once most ASIC preorders are out)

i agree, those who get their ASIC first are going to be extremely happy

the first 2 weeks are crusial to making a buttload, after that its going to even out pretty fast for the asic holders and the gpu farmers will be left in the dust 

Since a lot of people will be switching in pretty much the same time.. pool mining?

How come all those ASIC believers tend to think they make a fortune as they alone start having those GH and noone else?

Hmm, it honestly depends in my opinion. If the difficulty isn't too high, and finding a block takes a reasonable amount of time, then I'll solo mine. Otherwise, I'll stick with PPS pooled mining 

Just curious