Why do dustcoin.com and coinwarz.com give opposite results of profitability?

It's been several days in a row that I go to dustcoin and see Dogecoin being listed as less profitable than either Digitalcoin and BBQcoin, with the latest being the most profitable.

But then if I go to coinwarz I see the inverse: Dogecoin is the most profitable, next Digital and finally BBQ.

The prices listed for them are not that different, nor is the difficulty - below the values. E.g. the values at the time of writing this question - first columns are from coinwarz and then the values for dustcoin:

coin   vs. BTC                diff.    vs. BTC   diff.
BBQ  0.000048 (Cryptsy)      4.3986 0.00005165   3.192
DGC  0.00036494 (Cryptsy)   11.3679 0.00035000   8.062
DOGE 0.00000031 (Coins-E)  286.6240 0.00000028 271.845

I would've thought that getting the profitability would be a straight away calculation, given the hashpower at your disposal vs. the avg. reward for a coin, plus the difficulty of it's network and the value it commands on the market.

So I can't explain why each site gives the exact opposite answer for these coins in particular - my inner cynic suggests at least one of them gets paid to artificially increase/decrease the profitability of some coins, but I find that hard to accept as well.

Any ideas?

Joe Pineda

Posted 2014-01-07T02:41:09.463

Reputation: 2 040

See also http://altcoin.pl - jet another dynamic list with profitable of coins

– None – 2014-04-29T17:41:29.697

Works, though I find it's interface a bit too... Spartan, so to say. "Minimalist" would call it others - probably I'm too spoiled by seeing the 2 I wrote about too much :) – Joe Pineda – 2014-04-30T04:05:19.830

i wish there's a report button on dustcoin.com obviously the result are not tele with the current market except btc and ltc. For example, peercoin. You can see that the block number are 3 months behind the latest block found. I dun think it is a mistake, i think it is designed to mislead ppl. – None – 2014-09-24T14:37:30.130

Answers

First off, don't listen to so called "profitability" calculates they are always wrong.

and here's why: Each "profitability" site bases the profitability based on the current block on that network vs bitcoins current block. Well most of these coins have a limited exchange volume on exchanges (some as low as 0.001 btc) yet because of that activity they are deemed to be more valuable. What happens next is a huge dump of coins and a market crash. This leads to an increase in diff and a decrease in profitability. Using that theory, you can see that these sites are not going to be correct. Especially depending on the exchange they use and the rates they use. Most coins only convert from ALT->BTC. So that means they will take the BTC/USD price from somewhere like bitstamp and then take the ALT/BTC price from the exchange of choice and finally it will take BTC*USD.

BEGIN EDIT Simple formula these sites use

$profitability = $USDperBitCoin * $BitCoinperAltCoin

END EDIT

tl;dr Exchange rates and exchanges used. Low volume of trade. Unique Difficulty filter algos on unique coins

I suggest you ask the owners of the sites this one.

Joe White

Posted 2014-01-07T02:41:09.463

Reputation: 538

There must be a universally correct way to derive profitability. I mean, the core business of Middlecoin and other so-called "multipools" is precisely to always mine the most profitable coin, sell it immediately for bitcoins (some would say "dump it") and pay miners. And so far they've had some pretty spectacular sessions of very high profits, so clearly they're onto something... – Joe Pineda – 2014-01-07T20:36:03.353

no, there's really not. each coin has a unique algo to determine the difficulty. Most use simple algos like bitcoin, but others (such as freicoin) use filters that are best described as sliding scales.

Multipools really don't make you any more money than staying on a coin or bitcoin. This is why: as soon as the coins are in the miners wallets they are dumped and you make less than you thought you would.

multipools are the worst idea you can imagine. they are Hash attacking networks pure and simple. – Joe White – 2014-01-07T21:01:31.377

Joe White 100% true. I would add that as soon as multipool switch to any coin, diff increases and profit goes to general level. – None – 2014-02-02T21:11:04.963

Hmmm. Once you mine the most profitable coin, it can immediately be converted to a relatively stable coin of choice (usually lite coin or doge). The multi pool principal is sound and can increase profits more than 25 percent, but will soon change when scrypt asics arrive en masses in a few months.

Yes, I do believe that coinwarz gets advertising money for listing currencies at the top!

user15165

Posted 2014-01-07T02:41:09.463

Reputation: 1