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Pool switching:
04-Jul-18:
11:38: I waited until Flypool balance increased over a payout threshold (unpaid balance + immature balance modulo 0.01 = low amount), then switched over to the smaller NanoPool to try them out again, this time with port 16666 rather than 666 to see if that works better.
Still no luck with NanoPool, I'm getting a very high reject rate. I left it running for 25mins after switching to eu2 server on 16666.
12:25: Gave up on NanoPool, no wins, tonnes of rejects, switching over to Slush Pool for now, just while I figure out something else. Poolin.com seems to be the new kid on the block and has about 20% of the hash rate today. F2Pool is PPS only which pays out less overall I'm told so not for me.
Hmm, looks like I'm getting a high reject rate on Slush Pool too now.
Well, as FlyPool is down to only 25% of hash rate today I'll go back there. It's the only pool that has worked for me so far.
SlushPool are only making around 1 block every day which split over all the workers is a lot less than FlyPool were earning me.
Back to FlyPool...
12:48: I set up the EU, US and ASIA FlyPool servers as my pools, no point in having backups that dont work, even if the primary has gone down.
12:55: Well, there is 1hr 10mins of mining I'll never get back. Time to Overclock to 750M.
Z9 Mini Overclocking efficiency data update:
05-Jul-18:
Reached 1.0 ZEC in total payouts! 🍾
Forecast update
06-Jul-18:
Totalling up my investment in mining so far:
3x Z9 Mini, 1x PSU, 2x PCI-e splitters, 1x long ethernet cable =
GBP 3,054.36
USD 4,110.53
BTC 0.48377487
ZEC 16.10151013
So, rounded up, ZEC 16.11 is my official breakeven target, excluding cost of energy which I will have to continually add on over time.
In answer the question I set out to answer, "Would it have been better just to buy ZCash and hold it?", ZEC 16.11 is what I count as the amount I could have bought for my money, and will have to exceed in order to deem this project smart.
Stats update:
Time: 10 days
Energy: 65 kWh
Reward: 1.2 ZEC
Mining profitability calculator results: 06-Jul-2018:
- ZECUSD: $171.25
- ZECBTC: ฿0.0259800
- BTCUSD: $6689.71
- Difficulty: 9,317,985.95639568
- Electricity: £0.1615 kWh = $0.21 kWh (I neglected to add VAT of 5% on previously)
- Daily income: ZEC 0.54330855 (USD 94.43)
- Days to generate one block mining solo: 18.41 Day(s)
- Breakeven horizon: 46.97 days
| Time Frame | ZEC Coins | BTC (ZEC/BTC at 0.02598000) | USD (BTC at $6,689.71) | Power Cost (in USD) | Pool Fees (in USD) | Profit (in USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly | 0.02263786 | 0.00058813 | $3.93 | $0.25 | $0.04 | $3.65 |
| Daily | 0.54330855 | 0.01411516 | $94.43 | $5.97 | $0.94 | $87.51 |
| Weekly | 3.80315984 | 0.09880609 | $660.98 | $41.81 | $6.61 | $612.57 |
| Monthly | 16.29925644 | 0.42345468 | $2,832.79 | $179.17 | $28.33 | $2,625.29 |
| Annually | 198.3076201 | 5.15203197 | $34,465.60 | $2,179.93 | $344.66 | $31,941.02 |
The boost in numbers comes from me increasing hash rate from 30k to 48k based on the overclocking and (so far) quite forgiving difficulty adjustments. Sadly I am so far only running one of the three Z9 minis so in reality breakeven is a lot further off.
Next post: Progress update, in part 5.