Hashrate marketplace vs mining pool: which one pays you

Are a pool and a marketplace the same thing?

No. Both take your hashrate and give you money back, but that is where the likeness stops. They sell different products.

Reading one as a variant of the other leads to disappointment with whichever you chose.

• On a pool, you are mining. The pool combines your work with everyone else's and finds blocks. It pays you a share of what those blocks earned.
• On a marketplace, you are renting your machine out. Someone buys your hashrate at an agreed rate and points it wherever they like. They keep every block it finds.

How does a pool pay you?

A pool pays you in outcomes. You are paid in the coin, out of blocks that actually happened.

A round is the time the pool takes to find a block. If the round is long, you earn less that day. If it is short, you earn more. Over time this averages out to what the coin really pays. The pool statistics show you the luck behind it.

What this buys you is the upside. You hold the coin, so if it rises in value, so do your earnings. If the chain has a busy day full of fees, you get a share of those fees.

You also carry the variance, the swings from day to day. On a small pool or a slow chain, that is not a small thing.

How does a marketplace pay you?

A marketplace pays you a rate. You get what was agreed for the hashrate you delivered. The blocks are not yours.

If the buyer gets lucky and hits three blocks in an hour, that is their luck. If they find nothing all day, they still owe you.

The payment is usually in a major coin, not the one being mined. Some people want that and others do not.

What you have really done is swap a variable income in the coin for a steadier one. You paid for that with the upside.

The rate itself is not fixed either. It is a market, so it rises when buyers compete and falls when they do not. It can move sharply within a day.

What does the marketplace price follow?

A buyer will not pay more for your hashrate than they expect it to earn, minus their margin. So the rate follows what mining that algorithm is worth right now.

That value is called the hashprice: what a unit of hashrate earns on the coins buyers point it at.

So a marketplace does not escape the market. It repackages it. If mining is unprofitable everywhere, the rate falls too.

What you get is not a better price but a known price. It arrives today instead of being averaged over a month.

A marketplace clearly pays better in one case: a short spike. A new coin launch or a burst of buying can lift rates well above what steady mining returns. Those windows are real, and they are brief.

Which costs does each side not advertise?

• Marketplace fees are taken from the seller. There is usually a payout threshold and a withdrawal fee on top. Check all three before comparing a headline rate with a pool fee.
• Marketplace work can be cancelled. An order ends, and the rig sits idle until the next one starts. Idle time is not paid, and it does not appear in the advertised rate.
• A pool has variance. It costs you nothing on average, but it can be uncomfortable at small hashrate. Solo mining is the extreme version of the same trade.
• A pool has a payout threshold too. On a small rig, that decides how often you actually see coins.
• Neither side removes your electricity bill. That bill is usually larger than the difference between them.

Which one should you choose?

Take the marketplace in these cases:

• You want a predictable number this month.
• You do not want to hold the coin.
• Rates have spiked above what mining returns.

Take the pool in these cases:

• You want the coin itself.
• You are content to let variance average out.
• You would rather not depend on someone else's buying appetite.

Can you change your mind later?

Yes. It is not a permanent decision. The same rig can point at a pool today and at a marketplace next week. Plenty of people switch based on which is paying better.

The rented hashrate guides on this site cover the practical side. They explain pointing rented or marketplace hashrate at a pool. That is the same question, seen from the buyer's end.