Can you solo mine Bitcoin in 2026? Yes, you can, and people do it every day. But you should think of it as a lottery ticket, not an income. A single small "lottery miner" like a Bitaxe (around 1 terahash per second) has roughly a 1 in 6 million chance of finding a block on any given day against today's network. If it does, the reward is currently 3.125 BTC plus fees, a life-changing sum. The expected time to find one block at that hash rate, though, is measured in thousands of years. People still do it because the ticket is cheap, the payout is enormous, and every home miner makes the network a little more decentralized.
This guide explains exactly what solo mining is, the real probability math, the hardware involved (including USB and "mini" miners), the handful of solo miners who have actually won, and how to set it up yourself if you want to.
What Solo Mining Actually Means
Bitcoin mining is a global competition. Machines race to find a number (a hash) below a target set by the protocol, and the winner earns the right to add the next block and collect the reward. Solo mining means you compete alone: if your machine finds the block, you keep the entire reward. You are not sharing with anyone.
The alternative is pool mining, where thousands of miners combine their hash rate and split the rewards proportionally, minus a small fee. A pool smooths your income into a small, steady trickle. Solo mining does the opposite: almost certainly nothing, then potentially everything.
The trade-off is entirely about variance:
| Solo mining | Pool mining | |
|---|---|---|
| Payout pattern | All or nothing | Small and steady |
| Typical result for a hobbyist | Years of nothing | A few cents to dollars a day |
| If you win a block | Full reward (~3.125 BTC + fees) | A tiny fraction, shared |
| Best thought of as | A lottery ticket | Renting out your hardware |
The Real Odds
Your chance of finding any given block is simply your share of the total network hash rate. That is the whole formula:
Your probability per block = your hash rate ÷ total network hash rate
As of mid-2026 the Bitcoin network runs at roughly 900 exahashes per second (EH/s), having peaked above 1,000 EH/s earlier in the year. (This is an estimate derived from difficulty, not a measured number, and it moves constantly.) That is about 900,000,000 terahashes per second of competition.
Now run the numbers for a typical Bitaxe lottery miner at 1 TH/s:
- Share of the network: 1 in 900 million per block.
- Per day (144 blocks): roughly 1 in 6 million.
- In any given year: roughly 1 in 17,000.
- Expected time to find a block: on the order of 17,000 years.
Those are not typos. A single small miner is wildly unlikely to ever find a block. Even a full-size modern ASIC at ~400 TH/s, a loud industrial machine, faces an expected wait of around 40 years mining solo. The reason these devices exist anyway is the asymmetry: the downside is a few dollars of electricity, and the upside is a quarter of a million dollars.
It is the same reason people buy lottery tickets, except the "ticket" also quietly strengthens Bitcoin's decentralization and teaches you how mining works.
The Hardware: Lottery Miners, USB Miners, and Mini ASICs
Most people who solo mine at home are not using warehouse-scale equipment. They are using small, quiet, cheap devices built specifically for the lottery.
Bitaxe (the modern lottery miner)
The Bitaxe is an open-source, single-chip Bitcoin miner. It uses one ASIC chip (the same kind found in industrial machines, just one of them) to produce roughly 1 to 1.2 TH/s while drawing about 15-20 watts, quiet enough to sit on a desk. Because the design is open-source, several vendors build and sell them. This is the device behind most of the recent solo-mining headlines.
USB Bitcoin miners
A USB Bitcoin miner is a small stick that plugs into a USB port. These were popular around 2013-2015 and produce only a few gigahashes per second (GH/s), thousands of times less than a Bitaxe. Today they are essentially novelty and educational devices: useful for learning how mining software connects, but their realistic odds of finding a block are effectively zero. If someone is selling a USB miner as a money-maker, walk away.
Mini ASICs and "mini" miners
"Mini bitcoin miner" usually refers to the same category: compact, low-power devices (Bitaxe-class boards, the NerdMiner, and similar) sold for hobby and lottery use rather than profit. The NerdMiner, for example, runs on a cheap dev board and produces only kilohashes to low megahashes, so it is best understood as a learning toy rather than a serious lottery ticket.
Used full-size ASICs
Some solo miners buy a used industrial ASIC (an Antminer S19 or S21, for example) for more hash rate, 100 to 400+ TH/s. This improves the odds meaningfully (hundreds of times better than a Bitaxe) but it is loud, hot, and power-hungry, and the expected wait is still decades. For most home solo miners, the quiet Bitaxe is the better fit.
People Who Actually Beat the Odds
Solo lottery mining is not purely theoretical. A small number of home miners have genuinely won full blocks, and the events are well documented because they are so improbable.
According to widely reported on-chain records, in 2025 open-source home miners solved at least five Bitcoin blocks, three of them on Bitaxe devices. The clearest example: in March 2025, a single Bitaxe Gamma running about 1.2 TH/s solved block 889,975, earning roughly 3.15 BTC (about $260,000 at the time). The odds against that specific machine on that day were reported at around 1 in 6.8 million. Days earlier, a small cluster of Bitaxe devices totalling ~3.3 TH/s solved another block.
These wins are real, and they are exactly as rare as the math says. For every winner, an enormous number of identical devices have run for years and found nothing. Survivorship bias is the thing to watch: you hear about the winners, not the silent thousands.
Should You Solo Mine?
The honest advice, and the reason this site exists is to tell you the unflattering version: do not solo mine expecting income. The expected return for a home lottery miner over any reasonable time horizon is negative, dominated by electricity cost. If your goal is to accumulate Bitcoin, dollar-cost averaging into spot Bitcoin will beat a lottery miner virtually every time.
Solo mining makes sense for different reasons:
- It is a cheap, fun lottery with a genuinely enormous jackpot and a tiny running cost.
- It teaches you how Bitcoin works at the protocol level, faster than any article.
- It adds a node and hash rate to the network, marginally improving decentralization.
- It is a statement: you are participating in Bitcoin's security yourself rather than only holding it.
Treat the money you spend on the hardware and electricity as the cost of the hobby, not an investment. If you win, wonderful. If you do not, you got a conversation piece and an education.
How to Solo Mine, in Practice
If you want to try it, the setup is straightforward:
- Get a lottery miner. A Bitaxe is the standard choice. Buy from a reputable vendor.
- Choose where the reward would go. Point the miner at a Bitcoin address you control in self-custody, never an exchange deposit address.
- Connect to a solo pool. Most home solo miners use a "solo pool" such as
solo.ckpool.org. Despite the name, it does not share rewards, it simply coordinates the work and broadcasts your block if you find one, so you keep the entire reward (minus a small operator fee). Pure standalone solo mining against your own full node is also possible and is the most sovereign option. - Set the pool URL and your address in the Bitaxe's web interface, and let it run.
- Forget about it. Check occasionally, but the whole point is that you are buying lottery tickets, one hash at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you still solo mine Bitcoin in 2026?
Yes. Anyone can point a miner at the network and mine solo. What has changed is the odds: with the network at roughly 900 EH/s, a small home miner is extraordinarily unlikely to find a block, so solo mining is now a lottery rather than a reliable income.
How long would it take to mine one Bitcoin solo?
You do not mine "one Bitcoin", you either find a whole block (currently 3.125 BTC plus fees) or nothing. For a 1 TH/s Bitaxe, the expected time to find a single block is on the order of 17,000 years. You might get lucky tomorrow, or never; that is the nature of a lottery.
Is solo mining profitable?
For a home miner, no, not in expectation. The likely outcome is that you spend a few dollars a month on electricity and never find a block. People do it for the lottery-style upside, the education, and to support the network, not for reliable profit.
What is a Bitcoin lottery miner?
A lottery miner is a small, low-power device (most commonly a Bitaxe) that mines solo in the hope of striking a full block against very long odds. The name is honest: it is a lottery ticket in hardware form, with tiny running costs and a huge but improbable payout.
What is the best USB Bitcoin miner?
For actually finding a block, none of them, USB miners produce only a few gigahashes per second and their odds are effectively zero. They are fine as cheap educational toys to learn mining software, but a Bitaxe-class lottery miner is the realistic entry point for solo mining today.
Does solo mining hurt or help Bitcoin?
It helps, slightly. Every independent home miner adds hash rate and (if mining against its own node) a validating node, spreading out block production a little and making the network marginally more decentralized.
This guide is educational and does not constitute financial advice. Solo mining is a high-variance activity with a negative expected return for most home participants; treat any hardware and electricity spending as the cost of a hobby.