old-school GPU miner switching to BTC ASIC top mining pool

Hey everyone I'm curious about which BTC mining pool is currently the most popular. When I checked out this site, it mentioned that Foundry Digital is the biggest pool right now. What do you guys recommend for someone who's just starting out?

Actually, I never heard of this website before. The miningpoolstat is sorted with hashrate which is why this foundrydigital site takes the first position. I suggest better don't mine on that pool try viabtc.com or slush pool. Or another pool listed on miningpoolstats. I won't take any risk mining on a not well-known pool and possible manipulated hashrate.

case speaks

Really, you have not heard about "Foundry "before? they have been the largest mining pool for many months, there is no manipulated hashrate here, they found the most blocks and thus they are the largest pool, however, their pool unlike most others isn't public, it's only for large miners, I think the minimum they require is 50ph or so. OP, you need to first decide whether you want PPS or PPLNS payments, after that, picking the right pool isn't difficult at all.

I wonder why you would choose a pool because it's "popular". Even if it's the largest Foundry probably is the least popular since is a closed one and a newbie won't be able to get in anyhow. Rather than going for popular or anything else go for the fees, and payment structure, see if they have extra options to mine the best earning coin, auto exchange to protect you from fluctuations if you're the $ guy, everything you consider to be good or bad and don't forget to test your connection to it, with so little info given god knows if you're not on the other side of the globe from all of the servers, I've seen almost every kind of problem around here so that wouldn't amaze me one bit.

It really depends on what you want. You need to first decide the kind of payout that you're more comfortable with. Here are some definitions: Basically they all are on a scale from solo mining where you get 100% of the rewards when you find a block(and nothing otherwise), up to small payouts for every share for a more stable payout over time. Here are some pools: There's also ckpool solo if you want to solo mine. There's a 2% fee there.

You may want to stay away from the popularity contest so hash doesn't become too concentrated into a pool.  Always best to spread it out to mitigate 51% attack concerns; this is a good mindset to have.