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CH12: replace dated mining pool example with a timeless example
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@ -1798,45 +1798,18 @@ smaller share of the overall reward, but typically get rewarded every
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day, reducing uncertainty.
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Let's look at a specific example. Assume a miner has purchased mining
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hardware with a combined hashing rate of 14,000 gigahashes per second
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(GH/s), or 14 TH/s. In 2017 this equipment costs approximately $2,500
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USD. The hardware consumes 1375 watts (1.3 kW) of electricity when
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running, 33 kW-hours a day, at a cost of $1 to $2 per day at very low
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electricity rates. At current bitcoin difficulty, the miner will be able
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to solo mine a block approximately once every 4 years. How do we work
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out that probability? It is based on a network-wide hashing rate of 3
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EH/sec (in 2017), and the miner's rate of 14 TH/sec:
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++++
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<ul class="simplelist">
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<li>P = (14 * 10<sup>12</sup> / 3 * 10<sup>18</sup>) * 210240 = 0.98</li>
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</ul>
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++++
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...where 21240 is the number of blocks in four years. The miner has a
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98% probability of finding a block over four years, based on the global
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hash rate at the beginning of the period.
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If the miner does find a single block in that timeframe, the payout of
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12.5 bitcoin, at approximately $1,000 per bitcoin, will result in a
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single payout of $12,500, which will produce a net profit of about
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$7,000. However, the chance of finding a block in a 4-year period
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depends on the miner's luck. He might find two blocks in 4 years and
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make a very large profit. Or he might not find a block for 5 years and
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suffer a bigger financial loss. Even worse, the difficulty of the
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bitcoin Proof-of-Work algorithm is likely to go up significantly over
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that period, at the current rate of growth of hashing power, meaning the
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miner has, at most, one year to break even before the hardware is
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effectively obsolete and must be replaced by more powerful mining
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hardware. If this miner participates in a mining pool, instead of
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waiting for a once-in-four-years $12,500 windfall, he will be able to
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earn approximately $50 to $60 per week. The regular payouts from a
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mining pool will help him amortize the cost of hardware and electricity
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over time without taking an enormous risk. The hardware will still be
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obsolete in one or two years and the risk is still high, but the revenue
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is at least regular and reliable over that period. Financially this only
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makes sense at very low electricity cost (less than 1 cent per kW-hour)
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and only at very large scale.
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hardware with a combined hashing rate of 0.0001% of current the total
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network hash rate. If the protocol difficulty never changes, that miner
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will find a new block approximately once every 20 years. That's a
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potentially long time to wait to get paid. However, if that miner works
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together in a mining pool with other miners whose aggregate hash rate is
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1% of the total network hash rate, they'll average more than one block
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per day. That miner will only receive their portion of the rewards
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(minus any fees charged by the pool), so they'll only receive a small
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amount per day. If they mined every day for 20 years, they'd earn the
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same amount (not counting pool fees) as if they found an average block
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on their own. The only fundamental difference is the frequency of the
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payments they receive.
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Mining pools coordinate many hundreds or thousands of miners, over
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specialized pool-mining protocols. The individual miners configure their
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