A little confused? Solo mining...

[ryguy]

I guess it comes down to math. At the speed I am running, I should get a block in every 4+ hours.

That's not exactly accurate. Based on what I've seen, at your speed you have about a 65% chance of getting a block after about 5 hours. The chance is only 100% after ~24 hours.

[markdil]

http://rc9.net/calc.jpg

[ryguy]

Yes. Look at the probability of finding a block chart. You have a higher chance of finding a block the longer you run, but don't hit 100% until about 24 hours out.

You can't take the expected value of something as a guaranteed value. As an example, the expected value of rolling a six-sided die is 3.5 but you can roll a 1. Your rolls will tend towards 3.5 on average but only after an infinite number of rolls.

The same concept applies to finding blocks. You should trend towards 5 hours but only after running continuously for a while. If you pop in and out, you won't have the expected value be useful.

[markdil]

I run once a week for 8-10 hours (sometimes more). I do understand stopping and starting is not the best way to do it, but based on my “rig”, that is the only way I can do it.

Oh well, guess I need more hashing power. I thought I had it figured out.

What I do is this. I bought a ton of AntMiners on eBay cheap. The ones that use more electricity than what the produce. So, I run all these AntMiners and sell the hashing power. My electricity is free because I have a natural gas well on my property and a huge natural gas generator. So, I run them for a week, 24 hours a day, build up what I sold, then buy it back and hammer at that LiteCoin block which has eluded me thus far. Guess I will wait two weeks and that should give me 24 hours of hashing power at 2.5TH/s.

[CSZiggy]

why bother, no one cares.

[markdil]

D3’s, S7’s and a few others. I have 30 running. Plus 4 computers with powerful GPU’s. The computers pool mine.

I can’t generate 2.5 TH/s myself, so I sell what I have to NiceHash. Sometime, I may just pool mine with them and build up those funds also. Build up my wallet, then buy huge hashing power when rates are low. It takes about a week to give me a good chunk of runtime at 2.5 TH/s. I may have to wait two weeks and get that number to 5 TH/s.

I know what your saying about being better off not doing what I am doing, but I respectfully disagree. There is always the right combination that will make this work. Once I figure out LiteCoin, it’s off to the big times, BitCoin.

I studied probability and statistics in college, so I do understand my chances. By the end of this month, I will have a LiteCoin block. You can take that to the crypto-bank.

[rickuht]

I don't know that it really makes any difference, but whenever I've pointed miners to a coin solo I've never included the "a=scrypt" argument. If you're mining Litecoin, the system already knows it's scrypt. My setup back in the day when I was tinkering with a MoonLander2 was "c=Marscoin m=solo n=ml2_14" but than again I was never pointed towards a coin that was merge mined...

[spauk]

Merged mining rewards from solo mining are still on PPS mode, so you solo mine the primary coin and the merged mine coin is mined by the pool and you get payout in the coin you're solo mining for your shares. I don't know if it's possible or profitable to solo mine AuxPoW coins, since like you say they have a high difficulty. Luck in a pool is different from solo luck, even though you're doing both solo and pool mining if you solo mine a coin with merged mining on prohashing.

[markdil]

I ran tests, mining at 2.5 TH/s for ten minutes. I averaged SEVEN merged mined blocks in that time frame. None of them paid anything to get excited about. But that is not the point. That is almost a block a minute.

One of the problems I run into is the arbitrary way Prohashing changes the difficulty. When I am really loading up the miners (5,000-8,000), you can’t predict what the system will do. The results are never the same. I run it on a few other pools mining solo and it does not do the same thing.

I am convinced there is a way to make the numbers work. I am starting with LiteCoin to prepaid myself for BitCoin.

Call it a game, business, whatever. I call it fun!

[ryguy]

What I do is this. I bought a ton of AntMiners on eBay cheap. The ones that use more electricity than what the produce. So, I run all these AntMiners and sell the hashing power. My electricity is free because I have a natural gas well on my property and a huge natural gas generator. So, I run them for a week, 24 hours a day, build up what I sold, then buy it back and hammer at that LiteCoin block which has eluded me thus far. Guess I will wait two weeks and that should give me 24 hours of hashing power at 2.5TH/s.

If you have free electricity why are you trying to mine any coin solo? You can sell your hashing power and everything you get paid is profit. Seems like a big gamble to take your easy profits and attempt to turn them into a block.