Now that you have your Bitcoin mining hardware, your next step is to join the best Bitcoin mining pool.Mining pools are groups of cooperating miners who agree to share block rewards in proportion to their contributed mining hashing power.While mining pools are desirable to the average miner as they smooth out rewards and make them more predictable, they unfortunately concentrate power to the mining pool’s owner.Miners can, however, choose to redirect their hashing power to a different mining pool at anytime.Before you join a mining pool you will also need Bitcoin mining software and a Bitcoin wallet.The list below details the biggest Bitcoin mining pools.This is based on info from Blockchain’s pool share chart:Antpool is a Chinese based mining pool, maintained by BitMain.Antpool mines about 15% of all blocks.DiscusFish, also known as F2Pool, is based in China.DiscusFish has mined about 12% of all blocks over the past six months.BitFury is one of the largest producers of Bitcoin mining hardware and chips.BitFury currently mines about 12% of all bitcoins in three data centers across Georgia.It’s a private pool and can’t be joined.BTCC is China’s third largest Bitcoin exchange.

Its mining pool currently mines about 7% of all blocks.ViaBTC is a somewhat new mining pool that has been around for about one year.BW, established in 2014, is another mining company based in China.It currently mines about 8% of all blocks.BTC.top is another new pool.It does not appear to have a website, so it may be a private pool.Slush was the first mining pool and currently mines about 6% of all blocks.Slush is probably one of the best and most popular mining pools despite not being one of the largest.Bitclub Network is a large mining pool but appears to be somewhat shady.does bitcoin difficulty go downWe recommend staying away from this pool.GBMiners is another somewhat shady pool that should probably not be joined.The comparison chart above is just a quick reference.bitcoin kaufen walletThe location of a pool does not matter all that much.bitcoin nowadays

Most of the pools have servers in every country so even if the mining pool is based in China, you could connect to a server in the US, for example.If you just want bitcoins, mining is NOT the best way to obtain coins.Buying bitcoins is the EASIEST and FASTEST way to purchase bitcoins.Get $10 worth of free bitcoins when you buy $100 or more at Coinbase.Bitcoin mining tends to gravitate towards countries with cheap electricity.As Bitcoin mining is somewhat centralized, 10-15 mining companies have claimed the vast majority of network hash power.With many of these companies in the same country, only a number of countries mine and export a significant amount of bitcoins.China mines the most bitcoins and therefore ends up “exporting” the most bitcoins.Electricity in China is very cheap and has allowed Chinese Bitcoin miners to gain a very large percentage of Bitcoin’s hash power.It’s rumored that some Chinese power companies point their excess energy towards Bitcoin mining facilities so that no energy goes to waste.China is home to many of the top Bitcoin mining companies:F2Pool, AntPool, BTCC, and BW.It’s estimated that these mining pools own somewhere around 60% of Bitcoins hash power, meaning they mine about 60% of all new bitcoins.Georgia is home to BitFury, one of the largest producers of Bitcoin mining hardware and chips.litecoin pool mining software

BitFury currently mines about 15% of all bitcoins.Sweden is home to KnCMiner, a Bitcoin mining company based in Stockholm.KnCMiner currently mines about 7.5% of all bitcoins.The US is home to 21 Inc., a Bitcoin mining company based in California.21 runs a large amount of miners, but also sells low powered bitcoin miners as part of their 21 Bitcoin computer.Most of the hash power from the 21 Bitcoin computers is pointed towards 21’s mining pool.cnbc bitcoin etfmines about 3% of all bitcoins.The countries above mine about 80% of all bitcoins.The rest of the hash power is spread across the rest of the world, often pointed at smaller mining pools like Slush (Czech Republic) and Eligius (US).Table of ContentsWhat is a mining pool?Get a Bitcoin Wallet and Mining SoftwareThe Biggest Mining Pools1.bitcoin mining mit pcGBMinersBest Bitcoin Mining Pool ComparisonJust Want Bitcoins?Which Countries Mine the most Bitcoins?ChinaGeorgiaSwedenUSOther CountriesA Note on PoolsWhy are Miners Important?While we can see which mining pools are the largest, it’s important to understand that the hash power pointed towards a mining pool isn’t necessarily owned by the mining pool itself.There are a few cases, like with BitFury and KnCMiner, where the company itself runs the mining operation but doesn’t run a mining pool.Bitcoin miners can switch mining pools easily by routing their hash power to a different pool, so the market share of pools is constantly changing.To make the list of top 10 miners, we looked at blocks found over the past 6 months using data from BlockTrail.The size of mining pools is constantly changing.bitcoin adam smith

We will do our best to keep this posted up-to-date.If you cloud mine then you don’t need to select a pool; the cloud mining company does this automatically.Bitcoin miners are crucial to Bitcoin and its security.Without miners, Bitcoin would be vulnerable and easy to attack.Most Bitcoin users don’t mine.However, miners are responsible for the creation of all new bitcoins and a fascinating part of the Bitcoin ecosystem.Mining, once done on the average home computer, is now mostly done in large, specialized warehouses with massive amounts of mining hardware.These warehouses usually direct their hashing power towards mining pools.bitcoin charts coinbaseLast updated 10th March 2014 One of the first questions that anyone interested in mining cryptocurrencies faces is whether to mine solo or join a 'pool'.bitcoin bowl 2014 timeThere are a multitude of reasons both for and against mining pools.

However, if the hash rate distribution across the bitcoin network is anything to go by (and it is) then most miners are opting to join a pool.If you’re deciding whether to join a mining pool or not, it can be helpful to think of it like a lottery syndicate – the pros and cons are exactly the same.Going solo means you won’t have to share the reward, but your odds of getting a reward are significantly decreased.Although a pool has a much larger chance of solving a block and winning the reward, that reward will be split between all the pool members.Therefore, joining a pool creates a steady stream of income, even if each payment is modest compared to the full block reward (which currently stands at 25 XBTC).It is important to note that it is important for a mining pool to not exceed over 51% of the hashing power of the network.If a single entity ends up controlling more than 50% of a cryptocurrency network’s computing power, it could – theoretically – wreak havoc on the whole network.

In early 2014, many voiced concerns that the GHash.io bitcoin mining pool was approaching this threshold, and miners were urged to leave the pool.In bitcoin's case, the current difficulty level is so high that it’s practically impossible for soloists to make a profit mining.Unless, of course, you happen to have a garage full of ASICs sitting in Arctic conditions.If you’re a beginner, joining a mining pool is a great way to reap a small reward over a short period of time.Indeed, pools are a way to encourage small-scale miners to stay involved.Of course, bitcoin is not the only currency out there – it’s easy to find lists of mining pools for your chosen cryptocurrency.One method of mining that bitcoin facilitates is “merged mining”.This is where blocks solved for bitcoin can be used for other currencies that use the same proof of work algorithm (for example, namecoin and devcoin).A useful analogy for merged mining is to think of it like entering the same set of numbers into several lotteries.

First-time miners who lack particularly powerful hardware should look at altcoins over bitcoin – especially currencies based on the scrypt algorithm rather than SHA256.This is because the difficulty of bitcoin calculations is far too high for the processors found in regular PCs.If you’re not sure which currency to mine, there is a pool called ‘Multipool’ which will automatically switch your mining hardware between the most profitable altcoin.Multipool updates every 30 minutes, and over time you’ll see balance grow in multiple altcurrencies.If required, the pool does allow you to fix your hardware on just one altcurrency too. said of this type of switching pool: “Loyal coin followers hate them because as soon as the difficulty of a coin drops, the profitability of it rises.Then all the multipools swing round, push the difficulty through the roof in a few hours, then leave again.It leaves the loyal coin followers having to mine the difficulty back down again at very low profitability.” When deciding which mining pool to join, you need to weigh up how each pool shares out its payments and what fees (if any) it deducts.

There are many schemes by which pools can divide payments.Most of which concentrate of the amount of ‘shares’ which a miner has submitted to the pool as ‘proof of work’.Shares are a tricky concept to grasp.Keep two things in mind: firstly, mining is a process of solving cryptographic puzzles; secondly, mining has a difficulty level.When a miner ‘solves a block’ there is a corresponding difficulty level for the solution.Think of it as a measure of quality.If the difficulty rating of the miner’s solution is above the difficulty level of the entire currency, it is added to that currency’s block chain and coins are rewarded.Additionally, a mining pool sets a difficulty level between 1 and the currency’s difficulty.If a miner returns a block which scores a difficulty level between the pool’s difficulty level and the currency’s difficulty level, the block is recorded as a ‘share’.There is no use whatsoever for these share blocks, but they are recorded as proof of work to show that miners are trying to solve blocks.

They also indicate how much processing power they are contributing to the pool – the better the hardware, the more shares are generated.The most basic version of dividing payments this way is the 'pay per share' (PPS) model.Variations on this puts limits on the rate paid per share; for example, equalised shared maximum pay per share (ESMPPS), or shared maximum pay per share (SMPPS).Pools may or may not prioritise payments for how recently miners have submitted shares: for example, recent shared maximum pay per share (RSMPPS).More examples can be found on the bitcoin wiki.The other factor to consider is how much the pool will deduct from your mining payments.Typical values range from 1% to 10%.However, some pools do not deduct anything.Having decided which currency to mine and which pool you'll work for, it's time to get started.You need to create an account on the pool's website, which is just like signing up for any other web service.Once you have an account, you'll need to create a ‘worker’.