Back to the christhegoth bet-spreading discussion...
Everyone realizes that switching over to other pools is only going to exacerbate the variance problem, right? Honestly, the pigeon superstition is dangerous enough to sink a pool, especially one that's <1% of the network. Nearly a quarter of the pool's hashrate has fallen off in the past couple of days...
It's about paying the electricity dude. Some of us can't do these bad weeks.
Plus the price of BTC is dropping in the market, which piles the pressure on more. It's only £300 now, and it was £350 on Monday.
I don't like it, but bills is bills. I need a certain amount of my payments safe to make sure I get the cash to cover said bills. It's just how it is I'm afraid.
I'll also be honest:
This has always been a small pool ( with a great GUI and customer service ). Losing 1/4 oh the Hash still leaves it a small pool. What we really need is for a couple of the Petahash Icelandic DataCentres to come over. Trying to nab lots of small miners, who in my experience have the higher electricity bills, is not gonna work. You need people with low electricity bills so that they can genuinely tough these bad patches out.
People based near Solar and Wind farms are good ( Afirca? ), but the Icelandic mines are the obvious crowd to talk to. Even if they only divert 1/4 of their hash ( per business ) that's still some nice hash coming in. It's why Bitmine.ch are doing their hosting out that way.
The problem is how Bitcoin and Electricity cost. We're in a bit of a perfect storm at present by the looks of it.
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/coinfloorGBP#rg120ztgTzm1g10zm2g25A bad week or two in the pool is one thing, but we've got a price drop coming in at the same time. It really does hit the small miners I'm afraid.
And what happens to the BTC price when everyone on the network migrates to the 2-3 biggest pools and we're back at the mining-collusion-scare hysteria again?
BTC price is tied to demand. Will people use it or not? As long as the Big Pools don't cross the 50% rule Bitcoin will remain stable.
At present it's like a WH Smith Voucher or Travellers Cheque. Worth money, but only in certain places. As such you can only do so much. And that is why prices remain low. People are not taking it up as quickly as they could. But, I am still selling what I make well enough ( thankfully ); so the lights are staying on.
The only thing hitting Minter that can be pinned on us is 'bad luck' at present. And that is why I talk about bet-spreading and modding your miners to get a better power ratio.
When bad luck hits the response has to be to use skill to provide people with solutions. That is how you inspire people to hang around. Skill so good ( hopefully ) even bad luck can't stop us.
We're too small to rig the market, but the big pools need BTC stable and effective or they go out of business. Rigging markets is, well, I don't see how you can do it unless you have a ton of BTC you got dirt cheap; and are now flooding the market with said cheap BTC. AT present any reserves the big pools have will start to drop, as their profit ratio drops ( they'll have staff to pay after all ).
Have we seen anything to show that that is happening yet? This price drop harms the BTC brokers as well, and some will take major losses in this Storm. They may end up out of business.
Which is why it is so important our miners survive this storm. Skill. As long as our miners are still ticking over we can get through it.
People need to move electricity to the cheapest provider they can find, and then mod their units to get the best power to hash ratio they can. And if it's old ( like an old s1 ) just switch it off until times are better.