When I first entered the Bitcoin scene in 2017, I changed my Twitter account (now X) to “@nikcantmine”. (It was a joke that I thought was funny at the time because I didn’t have the resources to mine BTC in high school.) But today, I’m officially a “nik CAN mine.”
The other week I got a gift from A Betaxa completely open source (and very small) Bitcoin miner, while attending the Human Rights Foundation’s Bitcoin Summit in Nashville. It is a very elegant device that allows you to connect to a mining pool or an individual mine on your own.
Nick can mine pic.twitter.com/Mv1OuTyvBM
– Nicholas (@nikcantmine) October 8, 2024
Setting up the device was fairly easy. It was fun to mess around with, and being able to hold a miner in the palm of my hand felt like a pretty cypherpunk game. It sounds like a great way to introduce someone to very small scale mining.
Of course, by connecting this miner to a pool, I would not be able to make any real profit, as this miner is negligible compared to the energy actually required today to mine BTC profitably today. But solo mining with this machine is where things get a little interesting.
Earlier this summer, a solo miner from Bitaxe beat the odds and mined a single block, earning a block reward of 3.25 BTC that is currently worth over $205,000.
Congratulations to the miners who got their first bitaxe block, just 3th small to find the 290th solo block on Solo ckpool! This high a hash rate would only find a block once every 3,500 years on average, or a 1 in 1.2 million chance per day! https://t.co/5Wtu9jydsF pic.twitter.com/D5sSzug42P
– Dr. -ck (@ckpooldev) July 24, 2024
Data It shows that this miner had mined a 500 GHz per second hash rate for weeks, then increased their hash rate up to 3TH just before finding the block. Which is somewhat encouraging to know that my Bitaxe rig is currently mining at over 634GHz/s.
But I’m not getting my hopes up, considering that I don’t have any more hash rate to add and the odds of finding a block with that small hash rate are about 1 in 1.2 million per day, According to To Solo Ckpool’s supervisor, Dr -ck.
However, I got this device for free, so I thought why not plug it in and see what happens? I’ll deal with the energy bill later when I see what it’s worth, and re-evaluate whether it’s worth continuing to work. Having used it, I probably wouldn’t buy one based on its economics alone, because I wouldn’t be able to get my money back unless I won the lottery. But maybe I’ll buy one just for it to be a fun toy.
The odds of me finding a block are 0.001% per day, but honestly, it’s fun to run around hoping to find a single block. I can keep the Bitaxe running 24/7 if I want, because it only requires a 5V power cord plugged into a regular electrical socket to work. I have it set up here on my desk next to my monitor.
Combined with the new Coldcard QI I just got, I couldn’t stop thinking about how great it would be to win solo mining with this and send my BTC reward to a brand new Bitcoin wallet.
This means that there is no public record of me getting a Bitaxe or Coldcard (apart from this article), and I will be getting some great KYC-free Bitcoin.
This article is a takes. The opinions expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.