Joining a mining pool is an essential part of bitcoin mining. Bitcoin’s hashing power has gone through the roof and your PC is pretty useless. Your bitcoin miner may not generate that much either. In fact, you could very well be staring at losses from electricity costs if you go it alone.
Finding a valid block is a difficult process and the real issue here. Mining pools let miners pool resources together and therefore find valid blocks faster. It makes mining more efficient and more predictable. As a miner, you get a regular payout depending on the amount of computing power you contribute minus the operator’s fees.
The size of the mining pool is one of the things you should consider. Larger pools have more regular but smaller payouts because of the numbers. Smaller ones may have larger rewards but coming at greater time intervals.
Of utmost importance is, of course, the reputation. Sometimes it’s much better to use tried and tested pools than to plunge into the unknown. Each bitcoin pool comes with its unique rules of engagement and criteria for sharing rewards.
Here are four of the best bitcoin mining pools.
Slush pool
With a history dating back to 2010, Slush Pool has got to be the oldest one around. It takes the trust of the community to come this far. It is currently the fourth largest accounting for over 11% of bitcoin network’s hashing power.
The good thing with Slush Pool is that there is a demo miner for you to tinker with. If you are new to bitcoin mining, we advise you to learn as much as possible before you fully immerse yourself. There are many bitcoin pools for beginners where you can start.
Luckily, Slushpool has a simple, easy to use interface for beginners and a more advanced one for the more experienced miners.
There is a scoring mechanism for your hashrate. Switching to another pool then coming back may not be a good idea as you will lose some points.
Slush pool fees are set at 2% which is slightly higher compared to others. Rewards beyond the set threshold are sent out every hour. You can set it to as low as 0.001 BTC.
For registration of your pool address bitcoin wallet will suffice. Bitcoin mining does not guarantee results. If you are not sure, it is best to buy bitcoin from an exchange.
Antpool
True to the sharing revolution, Antpool lets you connect to other miners around you. First off, Antpool is brought to you by Bitmain, the manufacturer of the Antminer, the most popular miner right now. The capability to link to the nearest miners means you can get a faster connection.
The other good thing about this coin mining pool is that there are servers across the globe so you can connect faster from almost any corner.
Antpool now accounts for about a quarter of the total hashrate on the bitcoin network, making it the largest mining pool available.
Payouts are done everyday as long as your rewards exceed a certain threshold. Rewards are calculated using various methods and you can choose your preferred one.
In one, a percentage is charged against the total payout (about 4%) and additional 2% on transaction fees. Another plan offers full payout except the pool gets to keep the transaction fees. Be sure to check out the more methods and detailed calculations on the site.
BTC.com
BTC.com is one of those in contention for the top spot. This mining pool has a better way of sharing transaction fees. This is calculated within a certain period, added to the block reward and distributed. This helps bring in some good profits especially when mining fees are high as was the case around December 2017.
F2Pool
A honourable mention goes to F2Pool which accounts for more than 5% of bitcoin’s hashrate. Like many other mining pools, payout are calculated on a Pay Per Share basis minus a 3% pool fee. Payouts above 0.005 BTC are done daily.
This is another Chinese based mining pool which has been in operation since 2013. The advantage with this pool is that it also supports other coins such as ethereum, Monero, Dash etc. Occasionally, you will get some free altcoins for mining certain cryptos.
One criticism against F2pool is that it doesn’t mine low fee transactions. This is however true for many other pools as well.
These are just the top bitcoin mining pools. There are several others to choose from
Asking how to join bitcoin pool. Simple, you just need to sign up and enter your bitcoin address. Set up with a few clicks and you will be ready to go. Good luck with your bitcoin mining.