Quote from: giszmo on June 24, 2011, 03:29:55 PM

Hi,

I've been working on that question and have a result that is far off the result previously found in the wiki:
My assumption: network growth is 2%/day
My result: 70% to never mine a single block ever.

Old assumption: difficulty growth is 10%/iteration (which is far more optimistic than my assumption)
Old result: 96% to never mine a single block ever. (which is a magnitude more pessimistic than my result)

Who's interested in proof reading? Who has another, maybe simpler solution to provide?
The Wiki link is here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Why_pooled_mining#Alternative_Perspective

The bigger issues is how many coins would you get (50? 25? 10?) and what will the value be in 6 months, 12 months, 24 months.

If you're worried about 50%+ pools, just join a smaller pool. Doesn't that balance out the danger? As long as you're not in the biggest you're a counter balance to them in terms of the network.