Lottery miner explained: how a Bitaxe finds a whole block

A lottery miner is a small home miner that mines solo, meaning it tries to find a complete Bitcoin block entirely on its own. If it hits, it receives the full block reward; if it does not, there is nothing. Hence the name: a lottery with a very high prize and a very small stake.

How does the block lottery work?

At its core, Bitcoin mining is a huge guessing game. Miners look for a number that makes the next block hash fall below a target value set by the network. Each attempt (hash) is like a lottery ticket. Your Bitaxe produces more than a trillion of them per second, and the whole network produces several hundred million times as many. Whoever finds a matching value first gets to write the block and collects the reward.

What do you get from a hit?

The block reward is currently 3.125 BTC plus the transaction fees in the block, which at current prices adds up to several hundred thousand euros for a single block. With a lottery miner the reward goes to your own address and is not split with other miners, because you mine solo. Some solo pools keep a small fee.

How high is the chance, concretely?

Very small, but never zero. Your share of the global hashrate sets the probability. With a network hashrate of around 800 EH/s, the statistical averages are roughly:

• Bitaxe Gamma (~1.3 TH/s): one block every ~12,000 years.
• NerdQaxe ++ (~4.8 TH/s): one block every ~3,000 years.
• NerdOctaxe (~12 TH/s): one block every ~1,300 years.

That sounds hopeless, yet these are averages and not waiting times. Every block, roughly every ten minutes, is a new and independent attempt. Solo pools have reported blocks found by individual home miners with very little hashrate. Unlikely does not mean impossible.

More hashrate, better chance

The probability grows in direct proportion to the hashrate. A NerdOctaxe with ~12 TH/s has roughly nine times the chance of a single Bitaxe Gamma. Nothing is guaranteed, though, and whether the extra power draw is worth it depends on your motivation. Whether running a miner pays off overall is examined in Solo mining: is it worth it?

Approach it with the right attitude: you pay a few euros of electricity for an exciting hobby, and a found block would be a bonus you never planned for.

Want to draw a ticket yourself? The usual entry is the Bitaxe Gamma 601. The NerdOctaxe Hydro has the highest hashrate per device in our range, around 14 TH/s, followed by the NerdOctaxe with around 12 TH/s.