That's exactly it. Misunderstanding how it works. I thought that your miners would be split between the two coins, jumping from one to the other, or whatever. But if you say that people merge mining will get the same amount of BTC as those using pools that are only mining BTC, then I'll stick with the merged mining.
Seems a bit hocus pocus to me, but I'll believe you. Hell, it was the original NMC run, way back, that paid for all my equipment, therefore I am very glad to be involved in it again
Seems a bit hocus pocus to me, but I'll believe you. Hell, it was the original NMC run, way back, that paid for all my equipment, therefore I am very glad to be involved in it again
Unfortunately, the profitability of merged mining over normal Bitcoin mining has fallen quite a lot since it was first rolled out but it's still a nice bonus (about 3.6% right now). There was a period after merged mining became available that Namecoin mining was actually more profitable than Bitcoin mining (so the merged mining bonus was over 100%)! Namecoin difficulty is still rising fast so this bonus should continue to drop.
Which is very much expected outcome of increased production without (much) increased utility. There is no something for nothing. For example if we increased the Bitcoin block reward to 5000 BTC does one thing miners would make 100x as much? Of course not. The price of Bitcoin eventually would simply fall to 1/100th of its current value.
If utility for BTC & NMC increases 0% then we should expect the value of BTC & NMC to eventually be equal to BTC prior to merged mining. The good news is the utility of NMC has increase (some) as it is stronger and that should increase confidence in the system. If people value NMC more (as other issues get worked out) then the value of merged mining will rise. If the utility decreases (because interest dies off) then value of merged mining will decrease.