Bitcoin Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - v1.06, by Herong Yang
Bitcoin Mining Pool
This section describes what is Bitcoin mining pool.
If one Bitcoin farm with 3,000 miners is still not fast enough, can we build a mining pool of many mining farms and miners networked to work together? The answer is yes.
Actually, today all Bitcoin blocks are mined by mining pools. Here is a list of top 10 Bitcoin mining pools and their hash powers:
Pool name Hash Power Antpool 28% F2Pool 21% BTCC Pool 13% BitFury 9% BW.COM 8% Slush 6% BitClub Network 4% Kano CKPool 4% KnCMiner 3% Telco 214 2%
The hash power of each mining pool represents their chance of successfully mining a block in the Bitcoin block.
If you join a mining pool and the pool receives the Bitcoin reward for mining a new block, you will receive a small percent of the reward too.
For example, you join the Antpool with your Antminer S9 of 14TH/s. Assuming that Antpool has a total hash power of 3,200 PH/s. Here is how low it will take for the pool to mine a new block:
8 ZH / (3,200 PH/s) = 8,000,000 PH / (3,200 PH/s) = 2,500 second = 42 minutes
So on average, Antpool will earn (ignore transaction fee earnings for a moment):
12.5 BTC per 42 minutes = $125,000 USD per 42 minutes = $4,285,714 USD per day
You will earn proportionally to your miner hash power:
$4,285,714 USD * 14 TH / 3,200 PH (per day) = $4,285,714 USD * 14 TH / 3,200,000 TH (per day) = $18.75 USD / day
Now you see the advantage of joining a mining pool instead of doing solo mining by yourself. By joining a mining pool, you can make about $18 USD on each every day. By doing solo mining, you make $125,000 USD on every 18 years.
Table of Contents
Computation Effort of Bitcoin Mining
Bitcoin Mining Machine - "Miner"