Topic: Which Pool ??? (Read 2877 times)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

PPS has no variance. You always get the same. All the other methods have some variance, which means you get lucky or unlucky. Some days you get more than PPS, some days you get less. That's how it works. If you want no risk and just get absolutely steady income like clockwork you have to use PPS, but you will usually get less that way over time.

I'm in the same boat.

Also new to bitcoin mining.  I've invested some cash in a used Jupiter.  I'm not looking to get my money in lightning speed here, but would like to see me recover the cash and make some before things change with the new fast miners hit the ground.

I started with BTC Guild when I had PPS, daily income was about 0.08BTC

After a week, he decided to remove PPS, and so I didn't know what to do.....the PPLNS 24 hours estimate on the site showed 0.065/24H  That was a big drop.
I decided to switch to GHash.  I mined with them for 39 Hours according to my calculations, I made 0.33BTC

Then I was reading all about P2POOL, so I decided to go with one, Elizium.name

I realized that after almost a full day, I had nothing.  Yes, I know that I have to mine for over 24H on P2P to see something, but with difficulty going up..up... and money invested, I would like to see me recover as soon as possible, then play.

So I switched to 50BTC as it's still offering PPS.

But from my calculations, GHash seems to make me more than PPS.

Any thoughts??

The weird part is that even though I bitch a bit about luck on a site like Eclipse I did the math with some spreadsheets and the payouts are right on the money for the Month of March. So it is a fine pool to use, it's just the human tendency to focus on the losses (low luck rounds) and ignore the wins (good luck rounds).

Spreadsheets and bitcoin however do not lie. Fascinating.

C

Thanks a lot for making this thread and many thanks to member for their answers, now I think I know which pool I want to join))

You can change the payout threshold of Eligius using the My Eligius page on their site (although most people who aren't tiny miners seem to set something close to one day).

I haven't tried Eclipse.

What do you think of Bitminter? 1% fee but they pay transaction fees and merge mine NMC, which Eclipse doesn't. Seems like that should come out about the same or maybe a little better.

Also p2pool you don't need to set up if you use someone else's node, although there are certainly some disadvantages to that. There are lots of public nodes with 0% fee.  Partial list here: http://p2pool-nodes.info/

Eclipse, DGM, nice, lousy luck this week but that's fine.
Eligius: Nice bunch, takes a day to pay out with .04 payout threshold and 300gh going to it.
P2Pool: No fees, you set up.

C

The best pool fees I've seen is 1%, is there any better rates < 1%?

That is a good plan. If you want absolutely the lowest variance, you should divide your hash rate between pools according to their share of the network. If you want highest expected ROI you should choose the pools with the lowest fee (and payout of transaction fees and/or merge-mined coins) and the lowest risk of getting ripped off (either by the pool or the pool itself getting ripped off). The gold standard for the latter is running your own p2pool node (or solo mining of course).  In reality you probably want something in between, which comes close to the mix described, although I also wouldn't rule out some small share on ghash, say 10-20%.

Technically any no fee site will have the same return in the long run. I'm bringing my systems back to 33% Eclipse, 33% Eligus, and 33% P2Pool.

The money should roll in regardless.

C

Ignore the mumbo jumbo religious talk about network sanctity and 51% share and what not. Let Gavin worry about that stuff. You are here to get ROI first, right? ... Before your ASIC goes obsolete with the difficulty jumps. So Ghash.io is the way to go. One of every 3 blocks goes to them plus a short PPLNS means you ramp up quickly and start making money. Add a little on Eligius and volla you get half the blocks.... Best way to make $$$ ... and best of all they don't rip you off like the others with fees. I'd donate a little to Eligius though.

Mining at https://directpool.net

Main reasons:

1% pool fee
donations goto funding bitcoin projects
It's PPLNS
and last but not least, website layout is too sexy

Thanks for answers!

BTC Guild.  IMHO

I hope you're kidding. ghash.io has a dangerous amount of network share right now. It is the worst pool you could choose to mine on at the moment.

 ghash.io is the way to go !

In that case you should definitely play with p2pool. You shouldn't get clobbered even if you do have some bad luck (or maybe it goes the other way and you get a windfall).


Eligius had very good luck for a while. I'm not sure of the exact timeframe but I remember being at 99%+ on there for quite a while.

Luck lasts a lifetime if you die young.

That's another good point: The problem with being in mining for me is that it's not much of a profitable venture. Actually it is explicitly impossible to make profits (long term profits) in mining because it's a perfectly elastic market or whatnot. That's a part of the reason I haven't jumped to Ants or 28nm or whatever. I'm mostly in it for the fun, learning, and to keep my house warm in the winter. :-)

There is another way to look at luck; bad luck mining could be absorbing other bad things that could be happening in my life. Losing job, kid, car, things like that are serious bad luck. If my mining is a "luck sink" for the bad joss to go to, that's oddly enough ok for me. But that is one of those woo-woo spiritual things, each roll of the dice is independent of ever other roll...

One odd thing about Eligius though: When I mined there in the beginning during the summer/fall last year they had a horrible streak of luck for the few days I was on. I think I had 50% shelved shares and I thought that sucked. So I switched to eclipse, but left eligius as my backup. And over the next few months I realized I got every one of those shares back at the value from September. Oddly enough eligius' payment system seems to transcend the concept of time coupled with difficulty. Which is very, very interesting.

C
C

This is true. Of course it could go the other way. That is, if you get lucky at first and then equally unlucky later. Overall in that case you come out ahead (as you mentioned later).

In reality though, if you are mining for the long term you will be increasing your hash rate over time. If you grow your hash rate at the same rate as the network, equal (good or bad) luck later will balance out with the equal (bad or good) luck earlier.

Keep in mind though, there is no guarantee luck will ever equal out in either direction. Some people are just luckier than others over a lifetime.

Variance is fine, as long as the totals even out over a reasonable period of time. Reasonable being the 2 week block retarget period. One thought in my head though is a bad streak of luck now wouldn't be erased by an equally good stream of luck "later" because difficulty keeps creeping up. Does that skew the equations as well?

For example, if I mine a Th at Eclipse then over the past two days I have made .045btc per day due to the crap luck blocks taking 24 and 26 hours to drop. If everything was normal I would get .12btc a day, so I have .09 instead of .24. Now if everything went back to perfect normal but in two weeks I got a string of great luck to cancel out the crappy (say two days of 6 blocks a day), those six blocks would only pay .20 btc so woudl I be out of (heh heh) luck due to the underlying difficulty pop?

Never dull, thinking about this stuff. By converse though a round of good luck now is worth a lot more later. Ug....

C