When it comes to mining for Bitcoin, there are two major camps: those who own and operate their own mining rigs, and those who join forces with others in so-called mining pools. The latter option has become increasingly popular in recent years, as the difficulty of mining Bitcoin has risen to the point where it’s not really profitable for individuals to do it anymore. But just how long does it take to mine 1 Bitcoin when you’re part of a pool?

To answer that question, we need to look at two things: the total hashing power of the pool, and the pool’s distribution of rewards.

The first thing to note is that the total hashing power of a pool doesn’t necessarily have any bearing on how fast it can mine a Bitcoin. That’s because the difficulty of mining a Bitcoin is adjusted every 2,016 blocks (roughly every two weeks), so that on average, a new block is mined every 10 minutes.

So even if a pool has twice the hashing power of another pool, it doesn’t mean it will mine a Bitcoin twice as fast.

However, the distribution of rewards can have an impact on how long it takes to mine a Bitcoin. That’s because when a block is mined, the reward is not necessarily distributed evenly among all members of the pool.

Some pools use a “pay per share” (PPS) system, where everyone gets paid a certain amount for each share they contribute to finding a block. Others use a “proportional” system, where everyone gets paid in proportion to the number of shares they contributed.

Under a PPS system, it would theoretically take exactly 1/X shares to find a block, where X is the total number of shares contributed by all members of the pool. So if there are 1,000 shares being contributed by 100 members in a pool with a PPS system, then each member would be expected to find one block every 10 minutes on average.

In reality, things are usually not that simple – but that’s still a good way to think about it.

Under a proportional system, things are more complicated. The probability of finding a block is equal to the number of shares you have divided by the total number of shares being contributed by all members of the pool.

So if you have 1% of the total shares being contributed in a particular moment, then you have a 1% chance of finding the next block. That means that on average, it will take you 100 times as long to find a block as someone who has 1% of the total shares.

So how does that translate into actual time? It depends on how much hashing power is being contributed by all members of the pool combined. If there is more hashing power being contributed, then blocks will be found more frequently – and vice versa.

To give some specific numbers: if we assume that all members of a particular pool are contributing an equal amount of hashing power (which is often not the case in reality), then under a PPS system it would take approximately 8 hours to mine one Bitcoin at current difficulty levels. Under a proportional system with the same assumptions, it would take around 80 hours – or just over 3 days – to mine one Bitcoin.

Of course, these are just rough estimates based on some simplifying assumptions. In reality, things will usually be different – but this should give you some idea of what to expect when you’re part of a mining pool.