Would you prefer mining Bitcoin solo or in a pool?
When you mine Bitcoin solo you get nothing in return until you find a block. It's extremely difficult and rare to find a block mining solo, but you get the full reward, currently at 6.25₿ plus transaction fees if you get lucky and find one. This is a bit like a lottery.
When you mine Bitcoin in a pool you usually get paid a very small amount over time, independent if you find a block or not. This amount is very small, maybe even less than the cost of the electricity you're paying to mine in some cases.
Which mining method would you prefer, and why?
<p>I would prefer <a href="p2pool.in" target="_blank">p2pool</a>; It's a decentralized, trustless, non-custodial, 0-fee mining pool. It uses a "sharechain" which is merge-mined with the main bitcoin chain to track shares and uses a PPLNS payout scheme to pay miners.</p><p>Some of its' disadvantages compared to solo or trad pool mining though are: harder to set up, more variance and slightly less efficient use of blockspace due to large coinbase txes. The disadvantages are compensated for though, because some bitcoin users donate p2pool miners in order to promote hashrate decentralisation.</p>
<p>Pool of course. Solo mining only has the better expected return in theory (due to no fees) - but that doesn't help much if you find only 0-1 blocks in a lifetime.</p>
<p>Definetly pool mining if its a small operation.</p><p>Just to smoothen out the rewards. There is a reason I dont play the lottery which is the expected return.</p><p>Since the is a running cost like electricity and hardware its better to have some stable cashflow instead of sounding like a gambling addict waiting for the one block.</p><p>You can always compute the probability of you finding the block by dividing your hashrate by the total (average) work on the network.</p>
<p>In both cases, the total cost and risk are high. It is better to rent a miner in a country where electricity is cheap. However, this work is also accompanied by risk, and it is better to use the mining algorithm for other coins, such as Bitcoin, instead of mining it.</p><p>Blake256 R4: This algorithm is now considered one of the most profitable algorithms in the world of mining, it is the main currency for the production of Decred. The only miner available for mining currency with this algorithm is INNOSILICON D9 DecredMaster. which at the time of writing this article has the highest profit among other equipment.</p>