Mining with BFL at 440 GHS over 24 Hours and no bitcoin?

Question

Is this even possible. I have been mining for about a month now, steadily building up my machines. When the big daddy from BFL comes (and the 230 is fixed) I will be mining at 1.2 THS. I have never gone more than 24 hours and gotten NOTHING and was wondering if anyone else has had this happen with this kind of power. I am in three pools now, no user names. Have been getting paid regularly all along. SHould I change to a different pool? consolidate and only use one pool? if so what is the best pool at this point in time for payouts?

Answer 1

The reason you aren't getting any Bitcoins is most likely because of 3 factors.

1. It was a streak of unluckiness
2. Difficulty has adjusted and taken a big jump up.
3. You are poorly connected to the network.

Unluckiness

It can be because of general unluckiness because mining is not 100% guaranteed. It's akin to playing the lottery, sure you can buy up all tickets but you can never fully buy it out. Your chance per block reward is determined by this simple mathematical operation your-hashrate / network-hashrate.

Difficulty change

It may also be because of difficulty jumping up, Bitcoin adjusts difficulty every 2016 blocks. At the time of writing, bitcoinclock.com is showing that last difficulty change was 1787 blocks ago. Difficulty changes try to maintain a 2 week interval time so last change was maybe about a week and half ago. May not be that difficulty creeped up on you if what you said happened recently.

Considering switching to a pool, it's your choice but you've got a large enough hash power that it may actually be a lot more profitable for you solo mine. On pools you get hit with fees and other drama. Luck is a big factor in mining, but over a long span of time (maybe a month for you), the amount of profit you make will even out probabilistically and should expect similar profit from pools.

Poor connection

This is a more hidden problem that can rarely occur. You may just not be connecting to enough nodes. Your propagation suffers with low node count and that means you will have a lot of orphaned blocks. By default Bitcoin does not make more than 8 connections.

Answer 2

Consider consolidating to one pool. Pools have a payout time "window" for example, shares per 24 hours. So, the more shares per 24 hour windows mean a bigger slice of the BTC block.

Three pools, no usernames? How are your miners ID'd in the pools' systems? Pools usually require an account/username to ID your miners' work for payouts, unless you're using P2Pool, then it's just your payout addy.

1. My first idea is, unless you're using one of the BIG FIVE pools, you only get a payout once a block is found in that pool. BTCGuild, DiscusFish, Eligius, GHashIO, Slush...those see 5-20 blocks a day. Other pools see much fewer, so don't expect any constant payout unless you're in one of the BIG FIVE.
2. My second idea is difficulty. 2.2+ billion difficulty is rough on a mining chap, and luck plays a big part when mining (many don't tell you that).