Mining: Solo, or Pool...? That is the question!
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Ok.
I have been mining FTC with one card for a few weeks, then I decided to step it up to two cards. I am in the process of ordering all of the supplies to migrate these two cards off of my office PC, and a few more cards to them, and build an ACTUAL mining computer.
This is my first venture in mining, and I know that there are a few of you who follow the forum closely, who have been at this for years. Would y’all advise solo mining, or pool mining?
Here are my thoughts:
I don’t care about regular payouts. This is a long term hold for me, so the frequency of payments doesn’t really matter. I only care about maximizing my potential. Since I have started, I have been on the give-me-coins pool. I have had no issues with the service they provide. It has been painless. For the first month or so, the number of coins I had been paid went hand in hand with the amount of block I had solved. The last few days, that is no longer the case. Currently, I have solved 9 blocks, and I’ve been paid a total of 321.06. If I had been solo mining this whole time, I would have earned 360. I totally understand that it can (and will) go the other way as well, and I may wind up earning more from being in a pool than I would if I go through a stretch solo mining where I don’t solve a block for a while. If I have already solved 9 by just running 2 cards, surely I will solve a lot more frequently if I step it up to 6 or 8 cards, you know??
Here is my question:
From a few of you guys who have been mining and playing with this stuff for years, do you mine solo, or in pools? If you were going to build an 8 card machine, would you throw those hashes into a pool, or go at it solo?
Thank you in advance for all of your thoughts!
PS - give-me-coins charges a 1% tax on the FTC pool, which I absolutely do not care for at all…just one more way that I’m not maximizing my resources, as far as I can tell…
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@jimmy24651 said in Mining: Solo, or Pool...? That is the question!:
guys who have been mining and playing with this stuff for years, do you mine solo, or in pools? If you were going to build an 8 card machine, would you throw those hashes int
8 cards probably is enough to warrant solo mining right now. payout would be regular enough to justifiy it.
if you can get it setup and it is running well that is. assuming you can muster around 4m/s . you’ll get everya block every 16 hours or so. or about $9-10 bucks every 16 hours if we stay at a quarter a piece. figure you get utilities at .11 a kilowat hour and those cards run around 350 watts each you make about $4-5 dollars every 16 hours as long as the cards are paid for and you spend no time on the setup. anything the pool takes from you eats in to it so i’d solo if you can.
(edit: said an hour meant every block)
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I would recommend you try setting up your own local P2Pool node. P2Pool pays out when a member of the global pool finds a block, you can set zero fees on your local node.
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So setting up a local node means you’re still using pool power but you control any costs and admin associated with it? I’m not ready for something like that just learning. If I feel comfortable with this I’d like to have 20 or so GPUs running by new years.
I know nothing about mining but from any stand point, if the numbers add up for you to run solo and your comfortable with the extra labor there isn’t a reason not to. From an ROI stand point, you have a few options
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mine solo and eat costs until it’s no longer sustainable then move back to pool - this lets to keep the most FTC long term
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mine solo and sell enough FTC to cover costs and hold the rest of long - you’ll eventually move back to pool but you’ll stay solo longer covering operating costs
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mine solo and sell enough FTC to expand the operation to remain solo - this eats up more FTC and you hold less but you’ll remain solo for the entire time.
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Call me crazy, but i didnt even take into consideration the fact that the mining difficulty will obviously increase. Expanding the operation makes sense, but i also seems as though you would need to stay in a pool… I am liking the p2pool idea. Looks like i have another thing to go read about…
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I tested both on several coins and now only pool mining. Because solo never get the numbers calculated, for different reasons. And solo orphans are much more painful.
I have run separated FTC p2pool node, but nobody interested.
