Status as of Wednesday, August 23, 2017

[mycide]

i cant agree more with previous speakers. I do see the deal about going "big" but, why are you spending all your spare/free time doing this, i dont believe its just for the fun of it, there is money to make and your already making some.. Maybe it's time to make it your living then.. No Seriously, you should really sort this out no matter what. one time investment if nothing else. If pool runs smooth ur going to see more coming your way.. Like this your might lose people.

I

I guess on massive growing more and more party's are involved, the question will be, do you want that?

And if not, would you consider selling it to investors with confident business acumen and perhaps working as contracted developers to take it forward?

I mean the growth comes here either way, if you dont block registrations, so growing is nothing you really have to do actively.
Sure some marketing or adds online perhaps, but its causing what we see now im guessing, overload on equipment, and scaling it up will cost money.

Sounds interesting that, id be interested becoming part owner atleast

[samangh84]

Steve,

I also think you should expand it to be ready for much more miners. I personally have over 100 D3 dash miners coming in November.

I'm willing to invest to help you expand your servers for more traffic. There needs to be aditional backup server & exchanges in place.

Late payout or delays happens to everyone and miners can wait but simply not getting paid is not acceptable.

[Jalapan]

go big or go home!

besides you prolly got one of the best mining community ive seen sofar.

but you will need a moderator or two to take care of the bots..

[Steve Sokolowski]

Was a pleasure meeting the brothers. I hope I was of some help with the issues the pool faces, but was nice just putting a face to the names per-se, and I enjoyed it either way. For what it's worth, my take in meeting them is that they are concerned with the pool and would LIKE to invest in it. While I personally would invest now as many of us have suggested, I can honestly say I'm more "comfortable" with their goals for the pool after face-to-face meeting.

I think they know my feelings on investing so I'll skip over that, but I would like to comment on the "hash rate was cut in half" part. Yes it was reduced drastically, but I think a bigger majority if those who switched pools left more because they weren't sure they were being credited, with the balanced not updating for what, 10+ hours. Yes, profitability was down, but not as bad as many may have predicted given that a HUGE portion of the coins weren't available. So take that into consideration also when continuing your evaluation.

Anyway, thx again for the face-to-face.

Jason (JKDReaper)

In case of the brothers i would respect every decision, small money small problems, big money... people are judging to easy on the issues there are i guess.

I totally agree with Jason for the fact that people don't know if they will get paid what leads to uncertainty, this would mean you should have a 24x7 supervisor to check and communicate on stuff on a place that is 99.9% available.

Last point is how far do the brothers look ahead? How big is it and do you want to be. Like now it is more an exploded hobby, are you willing to make it a big business or is it to risky? I guess on massive growing more and more party's are involved, the question will be, do you want that?

I would like to know what the biggest problems are in the decision.

Here are some pros and cons:

Pros:

• Project is profitable right now
• The very optimistic scenario (profit remaining the same) can generate a ridiculous amount of money
• Analysis has revealed little competition and pools that do exist seem to be unable to invest the money that we can to get ahead of them
• Project allows for a more flexible schedule
• It would be great to be able to provide a better service quality for customers just because they deserve it
• Unlike other businesses, this is still a private company, so nobody else gets a cut, and there would be no need to give away shares to investors because we can spend our own money

Cons:

• This job isn't as fun or socially rewarding as my current job and requires more work
• Unknown legal risks (this may not be an issue once a lawyer is consulted)
• The last three bubbles have seen big shakeouts after the crash and few miners survived
• The pessimistic scenario of BCC falling and being unable to expand into Dagger-Hasimoto results in only a 30% raise over current salary - insufficient to justify the risk taken if that happens
• Many people involved with cryptocurrency are shady characters and it is not clear what level of manipulation in the marketplace is occurring
• It is uncertain whether single-core hardware is advanced enough to ever be able to produce software to expand significantly (this is one of the areas still under investigation)
• There's a huge amount of pressure being responsible for someone's livelihood when you hire them
• Still investigating whether it's possible that customers who have been turned away by bugs may never return, making it too late to expand
• It may be impossible to prevent all types of DDoS attacks (research is still being performed into this possiblity)
• Bugs could cause enormous legal liability if payouts are made to the wrong people and cause the pool to go bankrupt

As you can see, many of these "cons" are issues that will likely be eliminated with more research as it is performed over the coming days - that's why we're doing the investigation.

[Gr33k]

Yes BCC is a money maker, but others will come and go just like BCC (when it goes PoS).

I think you should progress with it and make some money. Maybe buy some miners of your own to make even more money. You guys are hitting record pool profits and you want to pull out (as I read it...you're not sure) ?!

You have a business here I think I speak on behalf of all PH members that we really find this pool awesome (when it works). I'd like to grow my mining farm and point all my rigs here...We all appreciate your efforts, and hope you decide to continue them.

If you do quit - Please send me the code and I'll keep the pool running with perhaps the help of some of the community members here at least. However, I think you'd be making a mistake to quit the awesome thing you've got going so far..

[Gr33k]

Still investigating whether it's possible that customers who have been turned away by bugs may never return, making it too late to expand

People will always come back if you are profitable more than others...the only way you lose folks forever are when you steal from them. And you folks have proven (at least to me) that you are honest folks

[FRISKIE]

Why is anyone speaking about expansion anyway?

Until Steve makes a commitment to keep pool utilization under control it doesn't make one bit of difference.

Switch payout to PPLNS and you instantly remove the incentive for NH bots and pool hoppers to wreck the show.

Stop the huge hashrate spikes and most of the issues disapear with it.

[micca410evo]

Here are some pros and cons:

Pros:

• Project is profitable right now
  good for now
• The very optimistic scenario (profit remaining the same) can generate a ridiculous amount of money
  still volatile, noteworthy risk
• Analysis has revealed little competition and pools that do exist seem to be unable to invest the money that we can to get ahead of them
  I acknowledge this, here is also a bit of the problem (this pool is for selfish miners, you are supporting scrypt/x11, but last but not least your own wallet as miner, you don't really support/care about any coin or network, if you are mining here you don't care about 1 coin collapsing, this is the main reason i'm trying to keep a bit of my hashing power in LTC {although LTC is looking good for now and probably the future} I still want to support my majority of funds i have in LTC, because i do care about LTC and the system around it. If this pool would take 80% market share you would have a dead market nobody would like PH to control the influence of hashingpower to what coin, because you would get the capability to make succeed/or destroy coins
• Project allows for a more flexible schedule
  You mean in time and for yourself?
• It would be great to be able to provide a better service quality for customers just because they deserve it
  +1
• Unlike other businesses, this is still a private company, so nobody else gets a cut, and there would be no need to give away shares to investors because we can spend our own money
  +1

Cons:

• This job isn't as fun or socially rewarding as my current job and requires more work
  Gotcha there, this reminds me of my time as service desk operative, only people pissing you off and you'll have to see of you like the reward (money for it), although you should see through the negative stuff and enjoy your time with this "special kind of people"
• Unknown legal risks (this may not be an issue once a lawyer is consulted)
  I know laws are an issue, especially in the US, i think it is an utopia to move to another country. I have been fighting with the tax office in the Netherlands daily (biggest headache you can get) and other applicable laws will be a headache point.
• The last three bubbles have seen big shakeouts after the crash and few miners survived
  Bubbles, yes and no. Everybody has a feeling it is here to stay and improve, that's the reason it would be worth doing a business in this sector. The reason is because there is a lot of media attention right now and people try to get a hang of it, i didn't experience the other bubbles, but i see a lot about bitcoin and blockchain on dutch/international television (the general crowds are getting interested in blockchain/crypto's, what is making this bubble less of a bubble)
• The pessimistic scenario of BCC falling and being unable to expand into Dagger-Hasimoto results in only a 30% raise over current salary - insufficient to justify the risk taken if that happens
  i'm missing to much knowledge for this point (after reading again)
• Many people involved with cryptocurrency are shady characters and it is not clear what level of manipulation in the marketplace is occurring
  +1
• It is uncertain whether single-core hardware is advanced enough to ever be able to produce software to expand significantly (this is one of the areas still under investigation)
  I stated before, but i don't know if it is possible to duplicate your environment and make multiple instances work
• There's a huge amount of pressure being responsible for someone's livelihood when you hire them
  staff is a bitch in the Netherlands for businesses, especially starting off
• Still investigating whether it's possible that customers who have been turned away by bugs may never return, making it too late to expand
  mehhh, i don't see this as a con
• It may be impossible to prevent all types of DDoS attacks (research is still being performed into this possiblity)
  It is not, you could spread though to make another pool somewhere else in the world to split attacking risks
• Bugs could cause enormous legal liability if payouts are made to the wrong people and cause the pool to go bankrupt
  This one is a priority i guess

As you can see, many of these "cons" are issues that will likely be eliminated with more research as it is performed over the coming days - that's why we're doing the investigation.

Here is my view on it from basic perspective, take the red part in consideration though (this would be the biggest issue there is in my perspective)

[fattygrub]

Steve - unless you guys adapt to the rapidly shifting and dynamic nature of this business you will likely not succeed.

My impression is that you waste too much time trying to intellectualize things that cannot be captured into a neat mathematical solution with clear probabilities - there are too many factors in a paradigm shift with unprecedented disruption to the existing models.

Advice - act in the present with fast analysis and reasonable risk analysis on the fly. Look ahead a few steps to make reasonable predictions, and waste no time trying to look so far into the future.

To state things frankly Steve - you have been dead wrong with your predictions of a bubble collapse for at least a half year now, and you have wasted everyone's time and profits by not investing time, effort and money into the system, while using constant predictions of the coming collapse to justify it.

With such a poor track record of predictions, don't you think it's about time to listen to your community of experts for a change?

Best regards,
Joseph Aylsworth - AKA FRISKIE

bingo bingo bingo. worded perfectly. Amen and hallelujah! i'd wish the brothers luck too. cept i don't believe in luck.

[micca410evo]

Why is anyone speaking about expansion anyway?

Until Steve makes a commitment to keep pool utilization under control it doesn't make one bit of difference.

Switch payout to PPLNS and you instantly remove the incentive for NH bots and pool hoppers to wreck the show.

Stop the huge hashrate spikes and most of the issues disapear with it.

I would also focus on owned miners first instead of NH hashes, but questions questions..