Q: How can I make a donation to you?
Send your donations to 1LDcrv3Z1XXRwETpjG2YsqT9T2LTi48G4r
Q: How do I connect to the pool?
Create an account if you haven't already, then point your miners to:
HOST: bitcoinpool.com
PORT: 8334
Note: More than one miner can use the same username/password, but if you want individualized statistics for each miner, you'll have to create an account for each one.
Q: Why don't you charge a fixed donation percentage?
We don't charge to use our pool because we believe forcing people to do something makes them want to do it even less. I mean, come on... How many people want Obamacare just because they have to have it? Also, we keep everything below a millionth of a cent.
"Like that guy in that movie... Superman 3, right?"
Q: How does your server calculate payments?
We pay each user according to the percentage of the total shares in the round that were submitted by them. We round that number to the 8th digit after the decimal for compatibility with Bitcoin, and once the solved block has been confirmed, and our pool has received the 50 BTC credit from the block, we pay out each user their share.
If you've earned less than 0.01 BTC, the amount you've earned will be held as an unpaid balance. Once your unpaid balance reaches 0.01 or greater (based on the threshold you set), we will issue your payment. If you have an unpaid balance and you reduce your threshold to below that amount, we'll issue your payment immediately.
Q: What happens if we solve a block with transaction fees on it?
We keep them. Transaction fees are generally fairly small, and since we don't charge donations, we feel it's a small sacrifice to make in order to keep things Free (as in, free speech).
Q: Why do you show everyone's information?
Transparancy keeps everyone honest. You can see that we're not cheating, and we can see that you're not cheating. We don't display your wallet ID, or your IP address though... plus, Bitcoin is designed to be completely anonymous anyway.
Q: What the Eff is Eff?
Efficiency. The percentage of getworks you've submitted answers for vs. the number of getworks you've requested. The higher the number, the more efficient you are. The lower the number, the worse your miner is. You can get a more efficient miner by downloading Phoenix Miner
Efficiency % = (Number of Submitted Shares) / (Number of Getworks Requested) * 100
Q: My EFF is higher than 100%, is something wrong?
Nothing wrong. A getwork can have more than 1 share found inside it.
So if you requested 10 getworks but found 11 shares in them, that would leave you with 110% Efficiency.
Q: My hashing speed (mhash/sec) is different on the server and on my miner?
We view all the shares that were submitted in a 5 minute window (from 5 minutes ago to now), multiply by 2^32 (the size of a getwork) and then divide by the number of seconds in 5 minutes. Then divide by 1000 three times to make Gh/s. It's fairly accurate. Obviously you'll see inflated speeds if you submit more than one share per requested getwork, and the reverse is true as well. It's estimated. As there is no way for us to query the client itself, we have to guess, and this is the closest way to guess.
Q: What is bitcoin?
That's a fairly difficult question to answer in a paragraph, so we'll save ourselves some time and have you watch a short video that explains it: What is Bitcoin?
Q: Who are you?
BitcoinPool.com is run by FairUser & Geebus.
Q: Why did you start a pool?
To put it simply, we personally believed that previously existing pools were being unfair to their users regarding payouts to slower miners, by trying to utilize over-the-top mechanisms to prevent fraud/cheating.
Q: How do YOU prevent fraud/cheating?
We only accept shares from the current block. With the network solving a block every 600 seconds on average, that would only allow a window of 20 minutes maximum to attempt any cheating against the pool. Likewise, with all statistics being available for the public to view, identifying cheaters would not be difficult.
We also deter pool hopping using the method outlined here.
